Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

by Gabriel Wyner

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. —Nelson Mandela

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. —Dave Barry

I encountered three basic keys to language learning: 1. Learn pronunciation first. 2. Don’t translate. 3. Use spaced repetition systems.

Not only can a beginning student skip translating, but it was an essential step in learning how to think in a foreign language.

Forgetting is our greatest foe, and we need a plan to defeat it.

This is the immersion experience, and it defeats forgetting with brute force.

Language learning is one of the most intensely personal journeys you can undertake. You are going into your own mind and altering the way you think.

In this book, we’re going to addict ourselves to language learning.

Never settle for safe when you can have fun instead. Your language will become a constant companion, living in your head. If you like your language, then you’ll have fun studying it, and when you have fun, you learn faster.

frequency dictionary typically contains the most important five thousand words of your target language, arranged in order of frequency.

monolingual dictionary

thematic vocabulary book. These books arrange the words in your language by theme: words about cars, words for food, medical words, and so on.

FOR THE INTERMEDIATES If you’ve already spent some time studying your target language, adjust your shopping list as follows:

I list my favorite Internet resources on my website (Fluent-Forever.com/language-resources),

A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. —Alexander Smith

This technology derives its power from five principles of memory: • Make memories more memorable. • Maximize laziness. • Don’t review. Recall. • Wait, wait! Don’t tell me! • Rewrite the past.

Each rat’s maze was spread throughout its brain.

neurons that fire together wire together.

You’ve activated the shallowest level of processing—structure—and moved on. On the other hand, you activate regions throughout your brain to determine whether you like PIZZA.

To keep you sane, your brain consistently works at the shallowest level of processing needed to get the job done.

The next time you see Edward, this parade of images and memories will come rushing back, and you’ll be hard pressed to forget his name. This gives you valuable social points, which are sometimes redeemable for wine, cheese, and board game nights.

KEY POINTS • Your brain is a sophisticated filter, which makes irrelevant information forgettable and meaningful information memorable. Foreign words tend to fall into the “forgettable” category, because they sound odd, they don’t seem particularly meaningful, and they don’t have any connection to your own life experiences. • You can get around this filter and make foreign words memorable by doing three things: • Learn the sound system of your language • Bind those sounds to images • Bind those images to your past experiences

KEY POINTS • Rote repetition is boring, and it doesn’t work for long-term memorization. • Take the lazy route instead: study a concept until you can repeat it once without looking and then stop. After all, lazy is just another word for “efficient.”

In school we learn things then take the test, In everyday life we take the test then we learn things. —Admon Israel

If you want to get better at recalling something, you should practice recalling it.

At the moment where your performance is judged, your brain realizes that it had better get its act in gear.

KEY POINTS • Acts of recall set off an intricate chemical dance in your brain that boosts memory retention. • To maximize efficiency, spend most of your time recalling rather than reviewing. • You’ll accomplish this goal by creating flash cards that test your ability to recall a given word, pronunciation, or grammatical construction. Coupled with images and personal connections, these cards will form the foundation of a powerful memorization system.

If it’s hard to remember, it’ll be difficult to forget. —Arnold Schwarzenegger

By next week, you’re most likely to forget the words you knew best—those words that you remembered immediately. You’re 20 percent more likely to retain the words that took a little more time. But the words that took the most effort to recall—those you had all but forgotten—will etch themselves deeply into your consciousness.

The harder ur brain wordks to recall a word, the longerd n better it'll remember it :0

KEY POINTS • Memory tests are most effective when they’re challenging. The closer you get to forgetting a word, the more ingrained it will become when you finally remember it. • If you can consistently test yourself right before you forget, you’ll double the effectiveness of every test.

Every act of recall imbues old memories with a trace of your present-day self.

This trace gives those memories additional connections: new images, emotions, sounds, and word associations that make your old memory easier to recall.

In practicing recall, we are striving to continuously rewrite our memories. We create a memory for gato, and we build upon that memory with every recall until it is as unforgettable as an ad slogan.

KEY POINTS • Every time you successfully recall a memory, you revisit and rewrite earlier experiences, adding bits and pieces of your present self to your past memories. • You’ll make the best use of your time when practicing recall if your earlier experiences are as memorable as possible. You can accomplish this by connecting sounds, images, and personal connections to every word you learn. • When you do forget, use immediate feedback to bring back your forgotten memories.

We want our original memories to be as deep and multisensory as possible (1: Make memories more memorable). We want to study as little as possible (2: Maximize laziness), and practice recall as much as possible (3: Don’t review. Recall). We want our recall practice to be challenging but not too hard (4: Wait, wait! Don’t tell me!). Last, when we practice, we want to nearly forget those original experiences but not forget them completely. When we do forget, we want immediate feedback to put us back on track (5: Rewrite the past).

When you try to memorize someone else’s work, you are fighting an uphill battle with your brain’s filters.

One of the reasons why language programs and classes fail is that no one can give you a language; you have to take it for yourself. You are rewiring your own brain. To succeed, you need to actively participate. Each word in your language needs to become your word, each grammar rule your grammar rule.

Content in the knowledge that every detail will become a permanent memory, you become the architect of your own mind.

As soon as your daily reviews become frustrating, it gets harder and harder to sit down and do them.

KEY POINTS • Spaced repetition systems (SRSs) are flash cards on steroids. They supercharge memorization by automatically monitoring your progress and using that information to design a daily, customized to-do list of new words to learn and old words to review.

Last, you’ll be making two cards for many words: a comprehension card (bear = ?), and a production card (big, furry animal, likes to eat honey = ?).

You will have two customizable time commitments: creating your flash cards and reviewing those flash cards.

If you can connect your review time to another regularly recurring event in your life (e.g., breakfast or your daily commute), you’ll have an easier time establishing a new language habit.

Start with a small number of new cards (fifteen to thirty) per day; you can always decide later if you want to go crazy with your flash cards. As mentioned earlier, you can learn thirty new cards per day and maintain your old cards in exchange for thirty minutes a day.

Over the next few chapters, I’m going to show you how to break sounds, words, and grammar into their smallest, easiest-to-remember bits. You’ll memorize each bit individually.

A Tip for Missed Days When dealing with a bloated review pile, continue learning two to three new words per day. It will spice things up a bit without adding much to your time commitment.

Remember, your SRS is just a fancy to-do list.

Accent is the soul of language; it gives language its feeling and truth. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile

These changes occur more quickly in the spoken language than in the written language, so each language eventually splits in half.

Every time you encounter new input, it improves your understanding and fluency in every aspect of your language. This process only works if you can successfully connect the words you read to the words you hear.