When you want to learn something fast (especially a foreign language) you should take a few minutes before you start to learn how human memory works.

When you understand how human memory works, and when you use the right study methods, all your learning will be much faster and easier.

Here’s the key fact about human memory that will help you learn fast.

100 Repetitions Quickly Counts as 1 Repetition

If you do a lot of repetitions in a short period of time, your brain will count that as just one repetition and you will forget it quickly, but if you do say 10 repetitions at time intervals that start at about 15 seconds and then increase, you will remember what you learned much better.

You can prove this to yourself with the following party game.

When you meet an interesting man at a party, try to remember his name by repeating it 100 times in a row. Then don’t talk to him or think about him for the rest of the evening.  Just before the party is over, find him and see if you can remember his name.

You probably won’t.

What’s the problem?  You had plenty of reviews. You reviewed his name 100 times, why did you forget it so quickly?

Now try a different method. Go to a party, but this time take a stopwatch with you. Meet an interesting woman and get her business card.  Write a description of her on the back side of her card.

Take her card and your stopwatch and leave the room (or people will think you are strange.)  Thirty seconds after you met her, ask yourself, “What was her name?”. Look at her description on the card.  Say her name out loud, and turn the card over to check yourself.

Reset your stop watch for one minute and do the same thing.  Think about anything you want for that minute other than the woman or her name.  When the minute is up, look at her description again and say her name out loud.

Do the same thing 2 minutes later then again after 4 more minutes, then 8 minutes after that.

After five properly spaced repetitions, you will have a much more stable memory of the woman’s name, than if you had said her name 100 times quickly in a row.

Of course you don’t need to go to a party, and you definitely don’t need a stop watch to try this.  Just write anything you want to remember on one side of a piece of paper and a description of it using different words on the opposite side.   For example write the words, “Pam’s phone number” on one side and write 555-1212 on the other side.

Then remember and say her phone number out loud with increasing time intervals as described above.

What our online software does, is take this proven method and makes it really easy to use.

Two Essential Things for Making Memories

1.  You need to be asked the question (not told the answer)

2.  You have to be asked the question again at increasing time intervals.

You can do this with paper flashcards, but it’s a LOT easier with software.

When you study on our web site, our software tracks what you have studied, and when you studied it. The software then calculates when the word or phrase should be reviewed just before you were about to forget.  This makes a stable retrievable memory in the least amount of time.

Try Our Language Learning Program

Our language learning program is a very good example of how to use this concept.

Here’s what to do:

1.  Click on your language and watch the video.
2.  Click “Try It” and watch the “How To” video twice.
3.  Learn for 30 minutes right now!

French -  Spanish -  German -  Danish -  Irish -  Russian

What if We Don’t Have Your Language?

If your language is above, try it now.  If not,  please use the contact us form below to tell us what you want to learn.  We can add new languages very quickly.

We strongly recommend Pimsleur if we don’t have your language.  Read our Pimsleur Review.  No we don’t get any money from them.  Their technology is obsolete, but it still works and most other programs don’t.  It’s also the best for the blind.

Great Articles on Language Learning

These articles will save you a lot of time, and make your learning a lot more fun!

How to Learn Any Language (over 20 articles)

Rosetta Stone Review – Why it Doesn’t Work

Please tell us what language you want to learn. Feel free to ask a question. A friendly human will reply.