Brain Connections

Many people have a false belief that your brain is a library that you can keep shoving books in and expect to remember. It is not, your brain is an amazing piece of tech that remembers things by their relevance to you. That's why if I say 9/11 you think of the twin towers and not what you were wearing. The brain sorts information and creates connections and things are more easily remembered when they have multiple connections.

When I started studying physics and biology I also took some time to learn some latin roots and it has been invaluable to me for remembering terms. In my head if I hear a word that has 'photo' in it I know that photo means light so when I see photosynthesis I see the two words photo=light synthesis=unification/construction/making something and then it is easier to remember that photosynthesis is how plants make their food from light.

That is just a simple example but their are much more crazy things, for example memorizing some of the periodic table. Harry Had Little Brilliant Bananas Coming Out From Near Nanna's Mouth And She Put Some Containers And Ketchup Sideways To Virtually Corrode My Feet Cos No-one Called Zoey.

And so on, the sillier the better because now I don't need to the silly phrase to remember but it certainly helped.

Even better than that Memrise lets you create flashcards that have silly pictures to help you remember as well as phrases. I remember the one for remembering the kanji for noisy and it had three women shouting (because the kanji for noisy contains three kanji for women). Very simple but still very easy to remember.

So remember brain connections are the way to learn!

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• (Re)learning Kanji Using "Kanji in Context"
• The Different Ways To Learn Kanji, As I See It
• Resources for learning languages and culture

An Important Note on Immersion Learning

Many people herald that immersion learning is the absolute best way to learn a language, but I say all things in moderation. Our brains will always take the easiest road to understanding something and so when you are totally immerged in a language you're brain will be looking out for words in its native tongue. The trouble with this is that your brain switches back into your native tongue when it finds it and this is not good for your learning. What can also happen is that you become overwhelmed and stressed out by being plunged into a new culture and language constantly and need escape.

These are the two cons of immersion learning but with artificial immersion you can avoid them. Artificial immersion is used by people who usually cannot afford to travel to their destination to learn and instead create that sort of environment from themselves. It is a very handy technique that you can utilize from the comfort of your own home with very little effort.

First you'll need a space that you can fill with things covered in your target language, magazines, books, posters, online radio in that language, videos and whatever you can lay your hands on. Remove anything in your native tongue or throw a sheet over it so you can't see it. Now discipline yourself to spend an hour in there each day in the morning. I say morning because if you put it off than it will be harder to do it.

That's all it takes to have a little artificial immersion in your home!