Bartosz 05 (Jan. 22): Terrible learning strategies that kill your progress

Hi!

If you have ever struggled to remember vocabulary, know that you're not alone. Many people feel that they need to work on their memory or get some good strategies for learning their target language.

No wonder. The whole learning process sometimes seems like the seventh circle of hell. Every time you learn a new language, you forget the ones you've learned previously.

Or you learn a language and feel quite confident. That is until you realize that you are forgetting the words you already know. So you make a smooth transition into the eight circle of hell, and you start experimenting. Duolingo, Memrise, shadowing, etc. You try out all these wonderful apps and methods, but you still feel that you're spinning your wheels.

Here are a couple of strategies which will help you get unstuck.



1) Limit your passive learning.

I get it. 98% of online "experts" tell you that it's the best way to progress. It's not. Very far from it. Let's talk about facts, not opinions, for a second.

Is reading that effective? Think again.

"Horst, Cobb, and Meara (1998) specifically looked at the number of words acquired from a simplified version of a novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, which had 21000 running words. The novel was read in class during six class periods. It was found that the average vocabulary pick-up was five words."

"Lahav (1996) carried out a study of vocabulary learning from simplified readers. She tested students who read 4 readers, each one of about 20 000 words, and found an average learning rate of 3–4 words per book"

Both reading and listening have a very important place in the learning process but not when you just start to learn.

You will always learn the fastest if you:

• a) first learn actively until you get exhausted

• b) and then learn passively as much as you want to.

2) 'Train how you fight, fight how you train.'

Marines' motto is one of the best tips which will guide you towards the success in your learning. If you want to learn fast, your learning method should be as similar to the real application of languages as it's only possible.

Let's assume that you want to learn your target language to communicate. Communication means that you need to learn a word and build a sentence with it using the appropriate grammar rules. Your default learning method(s) should include all those elements.

Now, a couple of quick questions for you:

Does Memrise, or any spaced repetition software or app, meet these criteria or are you just mindlessly reviewing flashcards? Mostly without any context.

What about your typical flashcards, mnemonics, favorite websites, etc.? Not really, right?

What if you use pre-made decks or other lazy solutions? That's another hard no.

If you don't train how you fight, you're wasting unnecessarily tons of hours each year. Or you don't make any progress at all.

3) Stop exceeding the capacity of your short-term memory (aka memory span).


Your short-term memory is the bottleneck of the learning process. If you strain it too much, you will suffer some nasty consequences. Migraines, general disgust towards studying are among the most popular ones. And let's not forget about rationalizations.

If you have ever felt the sudden urge to plaster your walls rather than to buckle up and start learning, then you know what I am talking about.

How to deal with it?

The simplest solution is to always divide vocabulary you want to learn into smaller chunks. You want to learn a word only in the minimum viable context. It's the kind of context which contains only the necessary information needed to boost your chances to memorize the said word.

If you want to learn the German word 'der Stuhl (chair);, don't try to memorize it in the following phrase: 'Ich habe einen sehr schönen und teuren Stuhl gekauft.' Rather go with 'Ich habe einen Stuhl gekauft'.

Just these three strategies should help you learn much faster and save you countless hours.

Tomorrow, I will show you how structuring your language studies in the right way can further increase your learning pace.

----

P.S. My course Vocabulary Labs has just opened. It's a comprehensive learning system that teaches you step-by-step everything about learning vocabulary, learning strategies for different levels, mastering grammar, improving your listening comprehension and much more.

All with a humble (and extensive) support of yours truly and a 60-day guarantee. If you're stuck or simply want to learn fast(er) then you simply won't find anything better in the language learning world. Here is how you can join.

----

P.P.S. Here is my yesterday's e-mail in case you missed it.

• Why so many people fail at language learning.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Bartosz