I think I developed a crick in my neck while reading Benny's Language Hacking Guide from nodding my head in agreement so much. Although we took very different language-learning paths, it was clear while reading his book that the strategies we'd each came up with separately are very similar. While I can't say that I agree with him on every point (and I'll highlight some of those disagreements below), his book is definitely full of great strategies that, if implemented, will surely increase your ability to converse in your target language.
However, his book purposefully focuses on only two of the pillars that hold up the language temple: speaking (especially speaking) and listening. Writing and reading have been consciously ignored (although you'll certainly make some gains in both writing and reading by following the advice in the guide). Here's how Benny describes his take on writing, which I presume applies even more to reading:
Writing is not social enough for me to care about it. For people with academic or professional goals for their languages then my guide isn't for them. For people who want to improve their relationships with natives, then some of my tips help and I intentionally didn't discuss improving writing skills because of this. [I don't] care about [my] writing level…
So if you're looking for an all-in-one guide to tell you how to improve your speaking and listening
and reading and writing, as Benny says, his guide isn't for you. Following the Language Hacking Guide, the gains made in writing and reading are really just incidental to the gains made in speaking and listening. For a book that purports to be a
language hacking guide rather than a
foreign-language conversation hacking guide, this is the only major issue I'd note.
Nevertheless, given that most language learners seem to pull off the reading/writing side better than the speaking/listening side, I'm not sure that this is a wholly bad thing, as long as you know not to expect much advice on reading and writing.
A good chunk of the book actually has application far beyond language learning: maintaining a positive mentality, staying motivated, being productive, moving from introversion to extroversion, etc. I feel like he could delete the language-learning references and turn the book into some kind of general self-help guide, but as those are definitely things that are helpful in learning a language, they're well placed in the guide. And, to echo another review, Benny's enthusiasm bursts through and it's hard to not be excited about going out and speaking a language after reading the guide. And let's not forget the numerous moments of humor to be found.
Turning away from the content itself, the guide is a pretty-pricy $39 (and will be going up to $49 at some point). It's advertised as over 200 pages long, but that's in slide format (i.e., like PowerPoint slides); the printer-friendly PDF version of the main text of the guide that comes with the package weighs in at only 55 pages, as opposed to the 195-page slide version of the main text. That was actually good news for me; a 200+ page book would be a bit more weighty than I'd expect from a guide, but it was in fact a breezy read. The whole package consists of the main text of the Language Hacking Guide (195 pages in slide format, 55 pages in printer-friendly PDF format, and an ePub version that prints out as 123 pages on my computer), 6 worksheets, a list of "conversational connectors", and over three hours of audio interviews.
So what's the bottom line? I strongly recommend this guide for anyone who wants to learn how to speak and learn how to speak quickly, although you might want to consider something else if your focus is on improving your writing and reading. (Disclosure: Benny traded me a copy of his guide for a copy of our book once it comes out, so while I didn't exactly get it for free, I didn't shell out the $39 either. I'm also participating in Benny's affiliate program, so if you click on a link to the Language Hacking Guide on this site and then buy it, you'll be giving $23.40 of that $39 to me (you can always click here to give it all to Benny).)
For the rest of this review, I'd like to look at a number of specific points in Benny's book, which I've put in three groups based on my own opinion of them: agree, agree but I'd add more, and disagree.