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

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

Learn the top thousand words in your target language. Write out definitions and examples whenever you’re not entirely sure what a word means. About halfway through, you’ll find that you can understand a monolingual dictionary. Use it to help you learn the rest of your words.
3. Go back to your grammar book, skim through it, and grab any remaining bits of information you’d like.
4. Read your first book while listening to an audiobook.

PERSONAL CONNECTIONS: I can’t give you your personal connections, but I can give you questions to help spur your memories. Use them whenever you have trouble finding a good memory for a new word. When you do, ask yourself about your new word rather than its English translation. Instead of asking about the last time you saw your mother, ask about the last time you saw your mère. Even when the words sound almost the same (timid/timide), you’ll create more useful connections when you mentally hear those words in the accent of your new language:

Concrete Nouns: When’s the last time I saw my mère (mother)?

Concrete Nouns: When’s the first

website, Fluent-Forever.com.

Phrase books from the Lonely Planet company are cheap and come with a tiny,

Fluent-Forever.com

ESSENTIAL FACTS (YOU NEED TO REMEMBER THESE!):
• Picture: Can you remember what this word means? What’s it look like?

• Pronunciation: Can you say this word out loud?

But there are also a lot of facts that would be nice to remember. We’ll call these bonus points. You get a bonus point whenever you add a nonessential connection to a word. While it’s essential that you remember how to say “macska,” it’d be nice if you remembered that matrac (mattress) starts with the same letters. If you remember both, you get a bonus point. Yay! You’ll remember macska (and matrac, for that matter) better the next time you see it. If you don’t, that’s fine. They’re just fake points anyway, and you might get one next time around. Here are bonus points for our macska card:

BONUS POINTS (IF YOU CAN THINK OF SOME OF THESE WHEN YOU REVIEW, YOU’LL HAVE AN EASIER TIME REMEMBERING NEXT TIME):
• Personal Connections: Can you think of any personal connections with this word? (Do you like cats? Can you think of a cat you know?) (My cat’s name is Lily.)

• Similar-Sounding Words: Can you think of any other (Hungarian) words that start with the same sound or spelling? (Matrac [mattress] also starts with “ma.”)

• Related Words: Can you think of any other (Hungarian) words that relate to this word in meaning? (farok [tail], kutya [dog], állat [animal])

When you review your cards, give yourself five to ten seconds. Recall whatever you can, then turn the card over (or press the Turn Card Over button if you’re on a computer), and check your answers on the back side:

• Many simple cards are better than a few complex cards.

• Always ask for one correct answer at a time.

That being said, it can be nice to have some suggestions about what to do first and what to do next. I’m happy to oblige.

Over the previous three chapters, I’ve suggested the following:

1. Sound Play: Learn how to hear and produce the sounds of your target language and how spelling and sound interrelate.

2. Word Play: Learn 625 frequent, concrete words by playing Spot the Differences in Google Images, finding personal connections, and if needed, adding mnemonic imagery for grammatical gender.

3. Sentence Play: Begin turning the sentences in your grammar book into flash cards for new words, word forms, and word order. Use written output to fill in the gaps missing from your textbook.

Here’s what I suggest you do next:

1. If you haven’t already done so, learn the first half of your grammar book. Make flash cards for everything you find interesting.

2. Learn the top thousand words in your target language. Write out definitions and examples whenever you’re not entirely sure what a word means. About halfway through, you’ll find that you can understand a monolingual dictionary. Use it to help you learn the rest of your words.

3. Go back to your grammar book, skim through it, and grab any remaining bits of information you’d like.

4. Read your first book while listening to an audiobook.

5. Watch a full season of a dubbed TV show, reading episode summaries in your target language ahead of time.

6. Get a ton of speech practice. Get as much as you possibly can, either through an immersion program, a language holiday abroad, or through teachers on italki.com. If you get a private teacher, talk about the next thousand words from your frequency list and add specialized words for your particular interests. Together with your teacher, create example sentences and enter them into your SRS.

Then rinse and repeat as desired.

Note: even when you’re focusing on a book or TV show, never stop doing flash card reviews. Your flash cards get more and more useful the longer you use them. I like to review my flash cards for a full year before I stop completely. That way, I’ll have an easier time retaining all my words and grammar, even without doing any maintenance later.

Also, never entirely stop creating and learning new cards. In the past, I’ve run into situations where I wanted to maintain one of my languages without learning anything new. I did my daily reviews, but I stopped learning new flash cards. It got boring fast. At least in my experience, flash card reviews are only fun when you’re learning new things at the same time. So make sure you always have something new to learn—even just a couple of new words a day makes a huge difference.

• With the advent of ubiquitous, high-speed Internet connections, you can get quality speech practice anywhere.

• Whenever and wherever you practice, follow the golden rule of Language Taboo: no English allowed. By practicing in this way, you’ll develop comfortable fluency with the words and grammar you know.