Thanks so much to SolutionsIQ for hosting us at their training center – a great space and a very supportive partnership. We had a diverse crowd at our April 1-3 workshop in the Seattle area. Some attendees came with fluency, wanting to learn more how to teach – Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Lushootseed, Latin. Others… Read more »

From April 14th-24th, I (Willem Larsen) will be presenting WAYK at various venues in Boston, MA. For the first few days, I’ll be at Agile Games 2011, April 14th-16th. From the 17th-21st I’m available to do talks and demos on “Where Are Your Keys?” and the Fluency Hunting Model of accelerated learning. If you’d like… Read more »

For all of you dying to get a written version of the WAYK techniques, we’ve self-published about 15 copies of a 60 page booklet. This book covers about half of the techniques we consider vital and fundamental to play, 24 in all, giving more in depth background. The technique entries are almost the same as… Read more »

From Lonely Planet’s website (maker of guidebooks, phrasebooks, and other media): ‘Responsible travel’ means assessing our impact on the environment and local cultures and economies – and acting to make that impact as positive as possible. We’re including more information in our guidebooks and on this website on how you can personally travel more responsibly…. Read more »

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txdBOES235k&w=480&h=390] WAYK staff Evan Gardner, Willem Larsen, and others, will be playing four days of WAYK at the Life (“Learning in Freedom Everyday”) Unschooling/Homeschooling conference in the Portland area. http://lifeisgoodconference.com Registration is only $60 for adults and $40 for children over 3, for 4 days. WAYK will staff an exhibitor booth with a game… Read more »

When fluency hunting, you are never concerned with translations or explanations, because you are always looking to acquire an intuitive, whole-body understanding of the language or skill through riddle-me-this. Meaning is a complete, whole-body experience, not an intellectual one. Discovery, revelation, insight, the “Eureka!” moments of our lives are most richly felt, and most deeply… Read more »

During fluency hunting, you remain aware of everyone around you – young children playing, passers-by, and peers watching the hunt. You know that all these people are lunatic fringe, fully part of play, though they might not realize it, and you take care to hunt as obviously! as you can so they can follow along…. Read more »

When fluency hunting, you use limit to move through ascending levels of complex performance, leaving a Travels with Charlie roadmap behind you, and calling sorry, charlie on yourself or others anytime bite-sized pieces come up out of order. One quick look at the Big Picture can make all the details fall into place. We call… Read more »

While language hunting, when you periodically discover single words and concepts in your target language, you ask for them to be included in a Craig’s List (CL) of like concepts/words, accelerating your movement through the language and raising the chances of remembering the single word you discovered. Lists are an ancient mnemonic. There are many… Read more »

We often say, “WAYK is a copy-cat game, not a learning game. No learning allowed!”. This can seem rather tongue-in-cheek, as if we secretly mean, no really, we want you to learn, this is just a way to make it fun. But no – though seemingly paradoxical, we actually mean it. WAYK really is a… Read more »

Here’s player David Edwards, at Stanford University, sharing Mandarin with a friend for the first time. It’s a lot of fun to watch, and with subtitles too! Keep in mind we’ve never played with David, which makes it all the more fun to follow the game. We’re always really excited when we see video of… Read more »

In the midst of play, you or another fluency hunter spots a way to accelerate the learning environment. You enshrine it as a technique by giving it a catchy name, and contract it as part of play from now on. Culture is an agreement between two or more people. One of the major goals of… Read more »

In order to keep players fluently participating in the game, you ensure all new information emerges in bite-sized pieces. Q: “How do you eat an elephant?” A: “One bite at a time.” Massively complex skills or projects are almost effortless when tackled one bite at a time. Once you’ve learned this technique, you’ll begin to… Read more »

While fluency hunting, you constantly double check your sense of the accent in play through my turn/your turn, maintaining a back and forth rhythm between yourself, your fellow players, and your fluent fool. Everything honest is a conversation. There are countless examples of alternating flows in the natural world. Back and forth exchanges are a… Read more »

While fluency hunting, you want to share a technique with another player. To demonstrate its value and context, you go first, applying it in play. Later, you see your fellow player is ready to absorb another bite-sized piece of improved accent – so, you go first, modeling the accent you want to transmit. Lead from… Read more »

[vimeo=20128505] Here you can see Willem hunting Yiddish language for the first time, with the help of fluent speaker Selma Zack, in February 2011. Just moments before the video starts, Willem has begun by asking Selma, “How do you say ‘What is that?’”. Almost all of the rest of the language hunt is spent immersed… Read more »

You are fluency hunting a skill comprised of uncountable bite-sized pieces, with the option of using and sharing hundreds of accelerating techniques. Yet this doesn’t overwhelm you, because you always bring up new information just in time. Information and ability is acquired most deeply and rapidly at the moment of its greatest relevance. If you… Read more »

Over the past couple years, as we’ve been working to share WAYK with a larger audience, we’ve collected a lot of feedback on how to present the game. One piece of feedback, that we’ve received many times, has to do with WAYK itself. It runs something like this: “Do I have to learn sign language… Read more »

You may have hunted dozens of skills and languages – or none. But no matter what, every time you sit down with a new fluent fool to fluency hunt their skill, you will always start at the beginning, by copy-catting, and mumble your way to fluency. Attaining excellence requires you first embrace foolishness. Perfection is… Read more »

[vimeo=20063545] Here’s the fourth video in the series, which covers the third persons, He/She. It’s worth noting that, as always, we are applying tq mumble to leading a game in Irish – this is not perfect, fluent adult Irish, of any accent. But it is the Irish game that any new game leader will be… Read more »