The eternal pessimist in me considers those who have mastered a foreign language as the lucky few.

They’re either born into a multilingual household, blessed with a brain sporting the absorbent qualities of quilted paper towel or have been on their ‘gap year’ since the turn of the millennium.

Benny Lewis basically falls into the final category, having been travelling for the past 11 years – but the self-confessed mediocre school student attributes his mastery of 12 languages to a change in approach where coursework is ditched for conversation.

‘I hung around in Spain for a while but six months later hadn’t picked up any Spanish,’ he says. ‘I figured it was because I didn’t have the language gene and I was bad at languages at school. People told me it was simply because I wasn’t getting out there and using the language, so I dramatically changed my mindset.’

Fluent In 3 Months is a book based on Lewis’s blog of the same name, on which 500,000 readers per month follow his language-learning exploits and digital nomad lifestyle that earned him the title of National Geographic Traveller of the Year in 2013.

‘After Spain, I went on to Italy, France, Brazil and Germany, doing the same thing, starting from scratch and learning the language by speaking it,’ he says. ‘I expanded as far as Quechua – the Inca language – Klingon and American sign language. Lately it’s been Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.

‘The change in approach was something I wanted to pass on. I figured I was helping enough people to learn languages in person to do it on a greater scale with a blog and things just exploded.

‘The book is everything I’ve learned in 11 years of full-time language learning. It’s all the changes in mentality and, of course, the techniques, because there are plenty of tricks to mastering a language from scratch.

‘Language books are generally written by people with PhDs in linguistics or born into multilingual environments and I didn’t see anything that was relatable. I did poorly in school – barely passed German – and felt people would relate to that.’

One of Lewis’s top tips is to use obscure associations for remembering words. The word ‘gare’ (French for station) reminds him of Garfield the cat, so he pictures the feline running for a train.

Meanwhile, if someone returns a conversation in their own language, listen for particular words or segments you recognise rather than whole sentences.

Lewis admits not everyone agrees with his ‘speak from day one’ approach but says: ‘It sounds very intimidating but go up to a native speaker, open your mouth and say whatever you know. It’s not about studying until you’re ready but getting into it no matter how prepared you are.

‘The academic approach where you don’t dare make a mistake for fear of a big red ‘X’ doesn’t work for languages.

‘Language is fluid, it’s not about being right or wrong, and it’s about generally conveying your point. I made the change and started speaking bad Spanish, being comfortable to start talking like Tarzan.

‘Instead of saying “I would like to go out tomorrow”, it was just “Tomorrow. Dance.” After a couple of weeks, I had an amazing realisation that I was speaking Spanish.

‘It wasn’t beautiful but in time I became comfortable with it and was able to correct my mistakes and reach a mastery level.’

Could the title ‘fluent’ be considered a red herring – or una cortina de humo, in Spanish – then?

Lewis says: ‘The problem here, though, is that if you have such high criteria for fluency, then I have to confess, I’m not even fluent in English, my native language.’

Lewis says he found the invented language Esperanto easiest to learn and US sign language the most expressive with Japanese or Chinese the most daunting.

A stumbling block may be being unable to travel. Lewis says: ‘If you can’t find any foreign-language communities where you live, you can find someone to speak with online. You can always get virtual immersion by listening to radio or reading foreign news.’

Fluent In 3 Months (Collins) £9.99 is out now.