Universe of Memory 03: The universal guidelines to structure your language learning

Hi!

Just like in nature, there is a specific order to things in learning languages. Those who violate it are doomed to pay the terrible price - they will inevitably flounder about and usually give up.

Here is how you can tell that it's happening to you:

• 1. Your current language routine is very haphazard.   

• 2. You keep starting and stopping because you really don’t know what you are doing.   

• 3. You really struggle to come up with a daily learning schedule, especially one that is intense.     

• 4. You have difficulty allocating your time.

Is there any way out of this madness? Yes. But as always, it's very different from what you usually hear.

Probably you've seen recommendations of this kind - read 10 minutes, then talk to somebody for 15 minutes, then do your flashcards, and watch TV series for 20 minutes.

That's crazy to expect from anyone to follow this kind of a learning plan. One sensible look at it should tell you that the cognitive load for any learner, in this case, will be through the roof!

There are way better solutions. Here are some strategies which I suggest to my Vocabulary Labs students:

• 1) At any given level, always prioritize vocabulary acquisition. Your vocabulary size is the single best predictor of how fast you will improve all the other language competences.

• 2) Always concentrate on learning actively. Once you feel frazzled, move on to passive learning.

• 3) If your goal is to communicate, ignore reading at A1-B1 levels. You can't talk to someone unless you understand them.

• 4) Once you achieve your basic fluency (usually around a B2 level), talking to others stops being a good learning strategy. Words used in conversations tend to be very repetitive and thus such an approach won't get you much further.

Of course, there are many other guidelines which, if implemented, will significantly optimize your learning and give it a nice structure. The feeling of knowing what to do every day is definitely very liberating and will help you restore your sanity.

Tomorrow I will show you some ways in which you can deal with overwhelmedness.

P.S. The Enrollment to my course Vocabulary Labs is open. This is the only course on the market which will give you deep insight into all the aspects of learning a language, especially learning vocabulary and grammar. Vocabulary Labs will both simplify and accelerate your learning.

The course is based on the immutable principles of memory and will optimize your learning in every possible way. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you want to learn. Vocabulary Labs  gives you all the tools to pursue your goals with maximal efficiency. So far it has been used successfully by participants from over 20 countries to learn over 40 different languages (e.g. German, Tibetan, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Burmese, etc.).

Contrary to the most solutions on the market which offer you a chaotic bunch of methods, Vocabulary Labs guides you through all the complexities of the language-learning process in a step-by-step manner.

P.S. 2 - Here are two previous e-mails in case you've missed them.

• Why so many people fail at language learning

• Terrible learning strategies that kill your progress

Talk to you soon,

Bartosz