Woman determined to learn 13 languages in three years
Ellen Jovin, who runs Syntaxis, a company that teaches writing skills and email etiquette to employees of Fortune 500 companies, is trying to learn 13 languages in all over the course of three years, and lingering no more than three months on any particular one.
Her lessons are not just about sitting in her apartment at the Ansonia listening to language tapes—though she does a lot of that, too. For example, to learn Italian she traveled to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and volunteered at an Italian deli. To learn Arabic she got a job at the Arab American Association of New York teaching English to women, many of them in hijab, in Bay Ridge.
She has also created her own system, which starts with hours of listening to language tapes while stretching, running in Central Park, even while trying to fall asleep. “I have a hard time sleeping,” she said. “One thing I discovered with this project is if I play a lesson it will relax me and I can go to sleep. I’ll be on lesson 16 and I’ll wake up on lesson 18.