languagepolyglot

[languagepolyglot]

STOP USING REPETITION

The title of this post is “Stop Using Repetition”. I know that may sound like blasphemy to some if you, and I can already hear the comments saying it’s just clickbait. You may also be confused because I said in my last post I was going to share the Anki decks I created that changed my life. You may be thinking, “Anki, but isn’t that repetition?”

Stick with me, because what I’m about to tell you might blow your mind.

I wasn’t born knowing 5 languages. It’s been a long journey with lots of twists and turns, hard won lessons, failed attempts and overshoots (ask me about learning Italian, Wolof, and Old Church Slavonic while building my podcast studio and doing guerrilla marketing 24/7 😮‍💨). So strap in and get ready to learn new most effective way to stop making excuses and level up in whatever you’re target language is, once and for all.

Why repetition?

So, why use repetition in the first place?

Look, we all know it’s a tried and true learning technique. I’m not here to talk about what repetition is. You learned it school, or maybe you learned it even before that. Potty training is repetition, and it also exists in nature, like Fibonacci numbers and planetary motion.

But when it comes to learning languages at high velocity and with maximum results, repetition is NOT doing you any favors.

Why NOT repetition?

Buckle up, because we’re about to peel back the Real Truth about repetition-based learning (RBL). We’re about to go from blue-pilled to “rep-pilled” and start to see RBL for what it really is.

I’ll cut to the chase: if you don’t remember a word on the first try, you’re doing something wrong.

Let’s draw an analogy. Remember learning to ride a bike? Maybe you used training wheels for a while, wobbling around and pretending like you were balancing yourself on two wheels but you weren’t really, you were just pedaling.

Remember what happened when your parents took the training wheels off? You fell down and everyone laughed at you because it looked like an idiot. No one was there to catch you.

That’s what RBL does to you. If you don’t commit a new word to memory the first time it see it, you have a false sense of security that “oh, I’ll just get it next time”. “Oh, I’ll snooze this card”. The excuses go on.

Not sound harsh but life doesn’t give you training wheels. When I was taking my C2 exam in Indonesian last year at the NYC consulate I couldn’t just stop the test and say, “Bisakah Anda mengulanginya?” (Can you repeat that please?) That would have meant an instant fail.

I’m about to show you a whole new frontier in language pedagogy backed by hundreds of hours of study, maybe more.

Introducing FTW

This is the first time I’m sharing with the world my innovative method of language study called First Time Word-acquisition, or FTW.

Here’s how it works: I’ve engineered a new kind of Anki card that I call a “transient” card. It’s simple but sophisticated idea: after you’re shown a card the first time, the English translation will never be visible to you again. It will effectively self destruct.

This might sound like lunacy, but in my own experimentation, I’ve recorded a 20-400% increase in learning efficacy using transient cards.

Why does this work better than reviewing the same cards over and over?

Time saved. There are only 24 hours in a day, which is both a lot and not enough. If you really want to achieve greatness, you need to use every hour as though it were just a minute. Less cards, more words. It’s that simple folks.

More motivation. No one is going to remember any words for you; you need to remember them like you mean it. Only having one chance to learn will give you a warrior-like focus and the drive to be better at recall.

In a future post I’ll be sharing an actual example of a transient deck, but for now I hope this is helpful food for thought about how to always be looking for new gains, new hacks, new strategies for unlocking everything you could be doing right now instead of reviewing the same material over and over like a baby.

Seuraavaan kertaan asti… (Finnish: until next time)

[languagepolyglot]

Hey guys, what’s up. This is my first post here. My name is Elk Barrington and I’m a BA in Modern Lsnguages and Philosophy (double major) from Valley Springs College, a liberal arts college in the Intermountain West.

You may not have heard of Valley Springs because it’s small, but it punches above its weight when it comes to language study. In fact, it was once called “Middlebury in the Mountains”. That was in the 80s but in my opinion it’s still as relevant as ever. There’s a summer program where you can immerse yourself in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and even Quechua. You have to sign a contract saying you won’t speak English for the whole summer. You haven’t lived till you’ve had to tell your roommate to get more toilet paper from the store in Quechua — LOL.

I also have a minor in East Asian Studies. I was going to minor in Korean but it turned out they don’t teach Korean. Fortunately, however, I can say that I was a visiting scholar for six weeks at the Busan Institute of Philology. That experience had such an outsized impact on me. Much more on that in future posts.

Philosophy is also very important to me and is one of my great loves, but this blog is going to focus on languages. I am fluent in five languages which makes me just shy of a hyperpolyglot (HPG). Join me on the road to becoming an HPG, full of lots of techniques I have devised, CRAZY Anki decks, and life hacks to absolutely smash whatever language you are trying to learn.

As they say in my new favorite language Finnish (even though it’s insanely difficult) — mennään! 👋