Polyglot Discord Server presents:

Effective Learning
This is meant as a collection of tips, tricks, and proven methods, as well as different learning
techniques, for learning faster and remembering better.

You’re free to add your own experiences, research and methods you found from other
sources, also, it doesn't have to be just for language learning. If you want to add your own
ideas, please do so in form of a comment (It’s best if you say your Discord username, so that
we can credit you). I’ll check in regularly to add it. This is so that nobody deletes it.

This project will always be work in progress. So it's a good idea to look at it regularly.

Also, even if some tips might sound like it won’t help much, even if it’s not much, there are
many methods that won’t help much, so if you use many methods that won’t help much,
they’ll help a lot.

By the way, there is a category specifically for language learning tips.

I recommend writing a list of things from this document that you think you could use and then
integrating them into your learning process one by one.

You should also try as many methods as possible to find out which works best for you.

There is always a way to improve your learning technique.

0. Terms and Short-term

- SRSlist​: ​http://memrise-users.wikia.com/wiki/SRS_-_Spaced_repetition_System

- ADHD​: People with ADHD have trouble focusing on tasks, that don’t interest them,
they’re also very forgetful.

- Binaural Beats​: They can enhance learning ability and focus. (Seizure Warning). You
need stereo Headphones to use it.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaurale_Beats There is no Wiki site for this in English,

so you will have to use translator if you don’t speak german.
1. Others
● Breaking the subject down into smaller bits of pieces

● It’s not about learning hard but learning smart

● Everyone has their own methods, that work for them and often not for others, but that
doesn’t mean, that it’s not worth giving another method a try.

● A friend of mine told me this method: put a paper beside the toilet that you want to
learn and then instead of reading the newspaper just read the paper.

● A friendly recommendation. If you own a 3DS, learn Japanese and like RPGs and
don’t want to buy a Japanese 3DS: Bravely Default has a Japanese narration and
textboxes option, even in the European version. The Pokemon 3DS Games to also
have a lot of language options and it should be very light on kanji if you play the
Japanese version. There is even a feature in Steam where you can look up which
games support the language you’re learning.

● Learn daily. If you learn ten minutes a day, that’s more effective, than learning 1 hour
a week.

● Peer to peer learning: Sharing your knowledge with the others with a focus on the
communication. You learned from their point of view and their mistakes on the
subject.

2. Motivation
● Learning in a fun, but ineffective way is always more effective than learning in an
effective, but boring way.

● Gamification: Habitica, Habitica Anki add-on,...

● Motivation Cycle: Goal - Motivation - Doing - Repeat. Having a goal in your mind
makes you motivated, and motivation will have you be more successful in reaching
your Goal. The Goal should be as clear and specific as possible. It’s important that
you know why you’re learning it. If you don’t know why then that might be a cause for
a loss of motivation. Slice your goals into pieces, you won’t be able to do it all at once
and doing this will give you a sense of achievement.

Make a list of goals you want to achieve. And then break them up in smaller goals. If
possible break these goals even further into goals. Achieving something is one of the
best motivators.

● The five finger rule:

1. Find strong motives for your goal: to impress my friends, so that I can travel
to Japan, so that I understand anime, because of the culture, because it’s cool, etc.
 2. Ask yourself what else you could get through it: Better Memory, Better Job
chances. Use the sentence: It does also have the benefit of…. when finding these
lesser motivations.
3. Use ​OnlyIfThenReward ​rewards. for example: only smoke the cigarette
after you learned those 20 words, or only eat chocolate after you finished reading
that article.

4. Motivate yourself by telling yourself reasons for doing it. For example, I
decided that I’ll learn today yesterday, so I’ll learn today.

5. Make yourself aware of your achievements as often as possible.

● Learn in a place that you like learning. If you like learning in your bed or learning in
the cafe, then do that.

● Take an official test and get a certificate. Having a time limit will raise your
motivation.

3.Concentration and Focus

● Create an atmosphere when you’re learning. Clean the desk, put the books on the
desk, turn on that sweet lo-fi music on and you’re ready to go.

● Use binaural beats that enhance concentration with stereo-headphone, but if you
have a history of seizures, I do not advise this.

- For people with ADHD or similar “disorders”, who don’t want to rely on the medication
(These are tips specifically for people with ADHD, that doesn’t mean they won’t work
for you though. But stay away from stimulants if you don’t have ADHD, since these
stimulants can be addictive. ):

● There is something called binaural beats. It’s a special sound, that stimulates
the brain. There are some audio files for people with ADHD, often called
something like Binaural Beats ADHD Relief. You need stereo-headphones to
use it.

● Use background noise or music with headphone to cancel out sounds from
the outside.

4. Input
(Different ways to get that stuff easier into your head)

● Use as many senses as possible.

 ● Creating or doing something is a really good way to learn something. It’s really easy
to remember things you created. Like for example writing a text about the subject in
your own words is a very good way to remember the facts.

● Making your own examples about the information you’re trying to learn.

● Proving that the subject you’re reading is true. For example, making an experiment in
chemistry.

5.Spaced Repetition
● Many people call this the key to learn effectively.

● Computer Programs or apps: Anki, Quizlet, Supermemo,...

● The Gold List Method.

● Delete cards if you got a certain interval. That’s to ensure you don’t get addicted to
learning with SRS and start hoarding information in it. (That can actually happen,
Matt vs Japan made a video on it.) And it does that you don’t have too many cards to
learn. You won’t need to keep every word in the SRS, because if you use immersion,
then you’ll encounter them a lot of times and if not then you don’t need them anyway.

● You can use a program called Subs2SRS to make Anki cards out of subtitle video
files

6. Specifically for Language learning.

● Learning sentences instead of words. That way you’ll learn how the words are used
and you’ll be able to learn grammar as a bonus. Also, for people learning Japanese,
it’s a good way to learn grammar. The 10000 sentences method is basically the
same. I think it’s very helpful for Kanji learning if you put the furigana on the back.

● Don’t learn the 1000 most common words. but the 1000 words that come after that.
The reason is that the 1000 most common words while being the biggest part of the
sentence are also the ones that don’t give a lot of context out of the sentence.(I’m not
sure if this is completely correct, I read it somewhere, but I don’t remember the exact
numbers)

● The 10000 sentences method. (AJATT) Learn 10000 sentences with SRSlist, which
will take about 18 months. This is a very popular method. Especially among
Japanese learners.

● Passive listening. Even if you don’t understand something you will still train your
listening skills, because at first it all sounds like one word, but after a while, you’ll be
able to know when a word starts and where it stops. That’ll be helpful for immersion.
● Deconstructing the language. (Controversial, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to try it.)
https://tim.blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn-but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-
a-favor/

● Learn words and such that prove useful in your daily life. Don’t learn all the lawyer
terms when you work in an ice cream shop, learn what you need and find most
interesting before moving on to other things.

● Learning through thinking: Try to think in the language you’re learning. If you don’t
know a word or something you want to think then google it or use a translator.
If you don’t know a word and can’t look it up, then just think of an image or
something. The goal is that you change your default thinking language. This might be
difficult at first, but it won’t be like that forever. It’s important that you immerse
yourself for this technique, so that you will learn to say things in the right way.

This method uses these principles to learn the language very fast:
- The fact that we think a lot. So we will repeat the words we learnt a lot and therefor
not forget them.
- We learn things better by recalling them.
- We tend to think more often about things, that are new. So when you’re searching
the words you want to think, you will most of the time think of new words, that you
haven’t mastered yet. This replaces spaced repetition algorithms.

I recommend to try to think about words you looked up purposely because

sometimes we forget words very fast unless we don’t think about them again. Tho
after it is placed in the short term memory it should become a part of your “thinking
vocabulary”

● Immerse yourself in the language as much as possib

● Radio, TV, Anime and Netflix, Video Games, as long as it’s something
fun(and of course it has to be in the language you’re learning).

● Set your phone and computer to the language you’re trying to learn.

● Move to a country where they speak the language you want to learn.

● Find an online or local speaking partner in the language you want to learn.

● Pattern recognition. When you hear words or phrases try finding patterns, this
often happens unconsciously, but doing it consciously can boost your learning
a little bit.

● If you’re an Otaku, then buy Japanese mangas and try to read them. And if
you’re an Otaku and learns French, like me, then go and buy the French
manga Radiant. It deserves a lot more attention anyway.

● Speaky is a gold app for making contact with native speakers. Talk and write
with them to improve your language skills.
 ● Learning through comprehensible input:

○ (More about comprehensible input in the Learning Theory section(9) )

An easy way to get comprehensible input is by watching or reading something
first in your own language and afterwards in the targeted language, that way
you get the context and have an idea of what is written/the people are saying
even if you don’t know the words.

● Kanji, hanzi, Hebrew, etc:

● Reading as much as possible. (Mister obvious strikes again.)

● For Kanji (And hanzi):

○ Don’t learn the reading separately but learn them the way they appear
in words.

○ Learn them in the right order

7. Mnemonics
● Method of Loci:

Imagine a place you know. Like for example your house, or even your own body.
Walk around in this place and put objects into it, that are associated with what you’re
learning. For example, if you want to remember the colonies of Great Britain then
imagine things you associate with those countries in your room and place them into
it. Even better if you have some interesting ideas about where to put them. If you’re
now writing the exam, then think about your room. Remembering all the countries will
be a lot easier.

8. Specific for Exams

(If you don't need it after the exam anymore):

● Reviewing the subject as fast as possible to find holes in your memory and learn
them.

● Reviewing before an exam with Quizlet is very fast and easy. I normally take all the
cards I need to learn to use the “card” option and mark those with a star that you
don't know. After you went through twenty, set it to “only stars” and then review it.
Take the star away if you knew it. After that continue with the next 20 cards.

9. Learning Theory
● (This isn’t scientifically proven, at least I don’t think so, but it’s based on my personal
experience with learning languages simply through listening.)
Words are more than just meanings. For example:
 You see somebody finishing his homework and he stretches and says “yatta”
Now you associate the word “yatta” with homework, with stretching and with the
feeling of finally finishing something.
Then you see somebody running a marathon and he says “yatta”
Now you associate the word with exhaustion and finishing something and with
marathon, sports, homework, etc. Even tho you maybe still don’t know the word,
you’re going to know how to use it, because you’ve seen it. “yatta” can be translated
to “I did it” in English. If you just learn the meaning you won’t have all those
associations that tell you how this word is used, what emotions are at play, if it is
casual or polite talk. All those things are important, but you won’t get them through
learning plain old meaning. It’s about getting a feeling for the language not a
understanding.

● Many people believe that when we become adults we are unable to learn new
languages or that we aren’t as good as children at it. But the only difference between
us and children in regards to language learning is that we learn it the wrong way.
children learn languages through comprehensible input. Comprehensible input is
when you know what the other is saying without knowing the words or the grammar.
For example through gestures, the situation, contest and the mood.

● According to Steven Krashen, an experts on the field of language learning, who

researched language acquisition, came to the conclusion. That there is only one way
we learn languages and only one way only. And that is through comprehensible
input. In fact he say that even when we don’t want to learn it, we will because our
brain does it on it’s own and it’s something one won’t notice.

10. Language Theory

● Word Frequencies:
○ In English the 1000 most frequent word take up 85% of what you’re going to
say 3000 words will cover up 98 percent of what you’re ever going to say.

11. Famous polyglots

(These guys have some very good and less good tips on language learning.):

● Tim Ferriss.

● Steve Kaufmann.

● Matt vs Japan (Youtube).

People who have contributed in this doc:

NekoEcho - Loci learning technique and peer to peer learning

WeepierTadpole8 about words that you should learn and words you shouldn't.

JBoy Advance, notdog - for correcting my English spelling.

JBoy Advance - risks with binaural beats.

JBoy Advance - fixes with grammar.

notdog - some tips about learning through video games

12. Scientific Papers Online

http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf