UPDATE MAY 13, 2016: We are no longer accepting applications for this internship, but please enter your name at the link below to be notified first on any new opportunities.

​Hey everyone, Idahosa here.

I am excited to announce the launch of the first ever Mimic Method Summer Apprenticeship program.

This July 1st, anywhere between 1 to 3 rising stars will join us in Budapest to help us grow The Mimic Method Organization.

The apprentices who demonstrate the most promise during the summer program will be offered a full time position on our leadership team, with major growth opportunities starting in September.

Will you be one of them?
​

_My favorite youtube channel to practice my German with is Easy German.

In each episode, an interviewer goes into the streets of a German city to ask strangers questions like “What do you think about Americans?” and “What makes you happy?” 

The responses are then edited, transcribed into German, and translated into English in the video captions.

What’s great about Easy German is the organic nature of the responses. Nothing is scripted or rehearsed - these are real Germans speaking in real German.

A few months ago, I contacted the producers and pitched the idea of me asking people “What is some good German music to practice German with?”

My secret plan, however, was to gradually coax the interviewees into singing the songs out loud for me on the spot. 

The producers were skeptical. 

“Berliners aren’t exactly known for their willingness to sing in public. It’s hard enough to get them to answer simple questions.” 

Indeed, Berliners are notorious for their hard-to-crack outer shells. But I've always had a knack for cracking shells.

“Don’t worry - Getting people to sing despite themselves is how I make my living.”

So they let me have a go at it, and the final product was just released on their youtube channel. 

Click above to watch, and if you have as much fun watching the video as I had making it, be sure to share it to your friends on facebook and twitter!

Keep on Flowin!
- Idahosa

PS - Stay tuned for some major announcements about new learning opportunities in the coming weeks...​

Two weeks ago, I moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  I will base here for the next three months while I focus on rolling out version 1 of The Mimic Method app.

There are many reason why I chose Ho Chi Minh city as my operation headquarters.  Firstly, Ho Chi Minh has a very low cost of living, which means that I can reinvest more of my business profits into the continual development of this app.

Secondly, there is a fair-sized community of software entrepreneurs here, and as I once wrote in this guest post on Mark Manson’s blog, it is important to surround yourself with the people you want to mimic. 

The third reason I chose to come to Ho Chi Minh is because of the Vietnamese Language.  The Flow of Vietnamese is very different from what I’m used to. Not only is it tonal, it also contains several sounds that are extremely different from anything you would find in English or any romance language. 

Not surprisingly, not many foreigners can speak very well at all.  Indeed, many of the expats here have completely written Vietnamese off as “impossible” to learn.  

That’s why Vietnamese is the perfect language to demonstrate the training process in The Mimic Method app.

The Flow of English is finally completed, and it is slated to be the best English sound-training program that this planet has ever seen.  

Like all my other Flow Series Courses, The Flow of English uses song-training to develop the learner’s ability to accurately perceive and produce the real sounds of English.

I put emphasis on the word “real,” because there is an enormous difference between what we think English sounds like and what it really sounds like.  

This is important, because we learn and teach languages based on what we think they sound like.

In other words, English teachers and learnings are teaching and learning the wrong stuff!

Let’s take a closer listen...

Don't worry I'm still alive!  Unfortunately, I had to de-prioritize this blog and the "Flow Breakdown" series to focus on developing my language courses..  

Over the past year, I've been receiving a lot of positive feedback from students on this program, but there is still a lot of improvements to be made. Now it's time to implement everything I have learned and do a complete makeover of The Flow Series.

I am currently applying everything I've learned this past year to my development of The Flow of English, which is currently in beta (send in an application for beta-testing here). 

Here are the main improvements you can expet to see in this course and all future Flow Series programs:

• Smart Video Feedback
• A lot of Targeted Drilling
• "Meaningful" Rewards for Mastering the Flow

Let's take a closer look at each one...

After a lot of positive feedback for my first Flow Breakdown video, I have released a second one - "Trust in Science" - a breakdown of the Brazilian Portuguese song "Rios, Pontes e Overdrives" by Chico Science and Nação Zumbi.

I take a different approach with this video and focus more on the meaning of the lyrics and their context, leaving the Flow training for this blog post.  Other things I cover are:

• The History of Chico Science and the Mangue-bit (mangue-beat) cultural movement.
• The physiology behind the articulation of Nasal Vowels
• How to drum one of the key rhythms from the Afro-Brazilian genre of Maracatu

Please be sure to comment in the video or on this post about which aspects you prefer and don´t prefer in this Flow Breakdown compared to the last one.  With your feedback, I plan on continually growing the Flow Breakdown series into an fun and informative resource for you.

If you want to checkout the free Flow-Training materials for this song, or if you want to learn more about the music and phonetics, continue reading!

For those of you new to The Mimic Method, "Flow-Training" is the technique I use to develop sound mastery in a foreign language.  By "Sound Mastery," I'm referring to the ability to:

• Accurately perceive the nuances of the target language's sounds, and
• Effortless reproduce those exact same sounds (i.e. speak with good pronunciation).  

Hearing and mimicking the sounds of a foreign language will ALWAYS be extremely challenging at first, since the act of speech requires a finely tuned ear and well-trained motor coordination.  

The purpose of Flow-Training is to get us through the process as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I've written about the Flow Training process before, but only in bits and pieces.  In this post, I will describe the steps to Flow Training in detail, using my learning of the song "Africain" by Sexion D'assaut as a case study.  

No matter what language you're learning, the steps for Flow-Training will always be the same, so read closely and be sure to leave a comment if you're unsure about how something applies to your target language.  

Let's get flowin...

I'm happy to announce the launch of a new Youtube series I created - "The Flow Breakdown."  In this series, I will release a weekly video examining the phonetics, musicality, culture and meaning of a song of mine (or your) choosing.

Most of the songs will probably be from one of the four second languages I speak (Spanish, French, Portuguese or Mandarin), but I will also try to collaborate with others to do videos for songs that I personally do not speak.  I'll also do some English flow breakdowns too for you non-native speakers.

In these videos, I break down:

• The syllables and rhythm of the lyrics (i.e. "the Flow)
• The Cultural background of the song.
• The significance of the lyrics
• Some musical/instrumental element of the song

Each video will be accompanied by a blog post with practice exercises for those of you interested in actually learning the song.  I'm still experimenting with what to include in the video and what to include in the full blog post, so please comment either below or on the youtube video page with your suggestions.  Also, please send in requests for songs that you would like to see broken down.

Today's breakdown video is for the Pacific Afro-Colombian song "La Memoria de Justino" by Grupo Socavón.  Read on to get the full Flow breakdown of the song.