If anyone is not familiar with the saying in the title of this blog post, the full version is, "Where angels fear to tread fools rush in." It alludes to someone doing something hastily, not thinking about the consequences. What I actually want to say is that the right approach to language learning is precisely that: to rush in. This goes directly against the approach which starts a language learner off slowly learning the alphabet, progressing to learning some basic words and by the third of fourth lesson starting to learn very basic sentences, saying things you would never say in real life like, "The dog is red," or, "The house is there." I am suggesting you get on with learning, even before you might have had a chance to find out some basic things like how many letters are in the alphabet or how you pronounce all the sounds. And there is a theory of language learning that states that you should always be one step ahead of your theoretical knowledge,...