Book Summary: Fluent Forever
Gabriel Wyner’s Fluent Forever looks at strategies for maximising your memory skills and learning languages faster. Remember more words, more accurately and more efficiently.
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Quotes:
Our capacity for visual memory is extraordinary; we only need to learn how to take advantage of it.
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
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.
Book Summary Notes: Fluent Forever
- Images and other personal connections make remembering easier for the brain. Remembering words and concepts is all about forming the connections needed for them to stick.
- Connecting words and personal experiences is one of the best ways to make a thing stick in your memory.
- The human brain processes words on four levels. Structure, sound, concept and personal connection. A study from 1970 showed that when students were tested between those 4 areas, they were much more likely to remember the words that had a personal connection.
- Using these principles, if you want to learn a new word it makes sense to try and tie it to a personal connection.
- A memory experiment from 1960 also showed that anchoring images and text increased the likelihood of recall. This even works if the image and word are completely unrelated.
- Recall is far better than review. According to the ‘forgetting curve’ we retain only about 30% of what we learn after 24 hours and only 10% after a year.
- Instead of going over and essentially relearning something to try to remember it, we need to train our mind to recall the information instead. This tells the brain that an idea or word is important and should be remembered.
- Spaced repetition systems (SRS) are a great way to trigger our memory recall systems. Spaced Repetition works by making you recall a word just as it’s about to slip out of your memory. When successful, it will slowly increase the amount of time before showing you that word again. This will eventually lead to the word being converted to long term memory by the brain.
- To learn a language quickly make sure to study the sounds of the language and learn correct pronunciation. Use simple stories, usually the kind written for children, to also help with learning a language faster. All languages are taught to children in a progressive pattern that is also excellent for adult learners to follow.
- Resist the urge to translate when you are learning, focus instead on being able to recall what it is your looking at. Use a dictionary but don’t simply write out in your native tongue what the words mean below them.
