It has been known for very a long time how the brain and the memory works best.

Already in ancient Rome the advocates were using these methods to memorize what they were going to present in the court.

It is a sad fact that this old knowledge is rarely used nowadays and they are hardly talked about in school in particular.

We could say that the brain resembles a multimedia application. It uses sounds, colours, pictures and actions to remember things effectively.

There are also always associations to things one already knows and you could say it is like a mindmap.

The more illogical and the more humorous these associations are and the more actions they contain the easier they are to remember.

You could actually compare it to cartoons like Tom & Jerry or the Flintstones.

How can we use this to learn more efficiently?

Let me show that with an example of learning words in a foreign language.

Let’s use French for this purpose.

The word for door in French is ”la porte”.

The trick is now to make an association to something you already know.

Perhaps it could be ”Port” – Port wine – the famous wine from Portugal.

It sounds much like the French word and it is close enough for the brain to make a connection.

Now make a connection between the door and ”port”.

Perhaps you can see the famous French actress Brigitte Bardot standing in front of the door dressed only in bottles of port wine.

If you don’t know who Brigitte Bardot is choose any famous French actress whom you know – maybe Catherine Deneuve, Sophie Marceau, Audrey Tatou who have made films that English speaking audiences have enjoyed. Other French actresses are Virginie Ledoyen, Emmanuelle Beart, Irene Jacob, Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Elodie Bouchez,  Ludivine Sagnier, Natacha Regnier.

It is important in this case to choose a female character because the French word la porte” is feminine.

Then you vividly imagine this scene in your mind’s eyes.

So the important things here are: 1) the sound alikeness 2) the conscious association and 3) the character representing female or male.

Now, every time you think of a door and wonder what it is in French this picture will pop up. You will easily remember the French word and you will know it is a feminine word because there is a female character in the picture.

You can make up your characters. They don’t need to exist. Experiment to see what works best for you. You can use the same characters in your pictures or you can have different ones.

If you are learning German you would need a third character to represent the neuter gender, unless you are brave enough to conclude that if there is no character then it is neuter. It can be a little risky though e g you might have forgotten to add a character but it will probably work well in most cases.

It might seem like a lot of work to do this and it is true to some part. On the other hand, how many hours did you spend in school learning French and you did still not master it when you finished school.

So it is well worth doing this job.

However, you can make it easy for yourself since there are ready made language courses implementing these method and you can learn more about them here:

Click for fast language learning

How come that small children can learn a bed side story before they can read, in the age of 2 – 3 years, and remember it word by word after hearing it only once or twice?

The next article will deal with this questions. So come back and learn more about how the brain works and what you can do on your own to make learning easier for you.

And there is so much choice in terms of what course to take, or what learning strategy to implement. There are literally thousands of courses out there. One thing to remember is that you need to pick a course or courses that suit your own learning style, pace, method and personality.

…and while it is a long, hard slog remember that learning a language is like eating an elephant – it can only be done one bite at a time, chunk by chunk. Chew it, digest it etc, and slowly your knowledge will build and build over time.

But you must put in the hours. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) says that to get to what they call Level 1 which is basic pleasantries and basic conversation requires about 240 hours of study!

To get to a level of operational proficiency you need about 750 hours of study!

So get going!

Here it is in a French sentence:

Valérie n’a pas pris de gants pour lui dire ce qu’elle pensait.
Valerie did not pull any punches when she told him what she thought.
Valerie did not mince words when she told him what she was thinking.

Learning idioms and proverbs and sayings is a great way of improving your French.

Children however learn to ‘fit in’ with their peers, and therefore MIMIC their counterparts to ‘be part of the gang’. In this way children develop a perfect accent, particularly if they learn a language prior to passing puberty.

One lesson here is that adults can better learn a language by mimicing their foreign colleagues if they are trying to learn a foreign language. They need to try and ‘become’ that person, or a person of that culture.

Children introduced to a new environment also are often ‘involved’ witeh the language, and subconsciously learn the rules in context particularly if in a total immersion situation. During play they see, act out and feel the language in its natural context and environment.

One language training organization says that you can actually develop your own simulated language immersion program which basically involves you listening to radio, watching TV, movies, videos and DVD’s in the target language that you might be learning.

By watching foreign movies in particular you see the words, phrases and expressions of your target language, being used in real live conversation, and being acted out in context.