4 Techniques for Switching Your Brain into Language Mode

December 2, 2021 Kerstin Cable

Have you ever heard of a phenomenon called "Priming"? Priming is what psychologists call it when your brain adapts to the environment around it without you realising. For example, you might automatically walk slower in a nursing home than you do in a gym. The brain helps your body to adjust, and this also affects your memory and even your confidence and the whole way you interpret situations.

How Priming Helps You Turn on Your Brain

Priming is largely unconscious, but now that you’re aware of it you can also use it to your advantage when learning languages. The idea is to switch your brain into “language mode” and use cues from your environment to help you get into the right zone.

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How Subtle Prompts Help You Stay in The “Language Learning Zone”

When I was a German tutor, I’d teach many people in their lunch hour. They would stay in the office at their English-speaking workplace, close the door and open up Skype to start chatting German with me.

In those situations, I’d commonly noticed that it took them a lot of time to warm up, relax, and start chatting away. Having thought about the learning environment and what it means for your performance, I came to the conclusion that these students need to make a brain switch from work mode to learning mode.

In this article on Wired, the author describes how a mere glance at the native speaker will prompt them to blurt out native words.

The different role you need to play as a language learner.

And there’s more at play than just the language you’re speaking.

Many people who work in management or office-based roles are in an environment that looks a bit like school, but demands a completely different behaviour. “Professionals” don't just go out and try things. They are expected to control their creativity and maintain a professional image at all times.

When you think about the good mindset for language learners, it's a contrast: You'll do well if you can combine curiosity, discipline and a complete disregard for embarrassment!

How to Start Switching Your Brain Into a Different Mode

Switching up a part of your environment can help you become a better learner, with simple prompts that take seconds to implement.

Try out some ideas that learners and teachers can use to make priming work in the right way:

1. Listen to Target Language Songs and Watch Movies

I will not promise you that watching an awful lot of films in a foreign language will magically beam fluency into your mind.

The real benefit of surrounding yourself with the target language is that you stay engaged with it and develop knowledge of the country. In terms of the priming benefit, it will work magic. Plus, you get to do it while putting your feet up or driving.

2. Find a Suitable Slot in Your Schedule

Schedule your learning sessions for the right times. For example, I like doing my chatting in Spanish on the drive back from Zumba - partly because the Spanish lady is captive in my car, partly because we've just spent an hour having fun and dancing around. Others also swear by having a nice glass of wine to relax or using breathing exercises.

Another great tip is to create a learning corner in your home - somewhere quiet, free from distractions and full of positive associations.

3. Visualise Your Life as a Successful Language Learner

School classroom teachers have known for a long time that putting up posters and displays around the classroom can get pupils in the right state of mind for learning. They don't have to be written in the foreign language, but just reminders of what's great about the country you're learning about.

Take a tip from this and create your own language learning displays full of things that interest you about your language. They could be recipes, tickets from old trips, tourist brochures or printouts from the internet. I particularly love vintage posters.

You can find more inspiration on my Pinterest boards for German, French and Russian.

4. Warm Up in Your Target Language

In my teaching role, I try to start my lessons off easily with some smaller warm-up activities like asking students how they are or offering them a drink.

Recently, I received the great tip that using the same warm-up activity every time for regular students is actually helpful - here I was worrying people would get bored, but the learner's perspective was that knowing "what's coming" allowed them to prepare and feel confident at the start of the lesson. That puts every learner in the right state of mind for success.

A Festive Take on Using Your Environment as a Study Aid

Click here for my article on learning a language at Christmas (even if you don’t celebrate it)

First published July 2013. Last updated December 2021.

Language Learning Methods: Will Immersion Teach You A Language Faster?

February 21, 2014 Kerstin Cable

As I was replying to a comment on this lovely blog the other day, I got to read more about one of my regular reader, Angel. She is a Pokémon nut and challenging herself with the impressive language combination Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. Such an ambitious and fearless lady. You'll be hearing more from Angel very soon as a regular writer here on the blog

In her comment on my blog, Angel mentioned immersion classes. She says:

Another reason I'm reviewing Japanese again is one of the interviews I saw in your book mentioned immersion. I want to take immersion classes once I finish reviewing everything (and) make sure that I'm not just going by the level I ended up at in college.

What's an Immersion Language Course?

Immersion is an interesting topic, and one of those words that always come up in language learning a bit like "polyglot method" or "language exchange". There is a bit of misinformation and myth around when it comes to the topic, so I decided to give you guys the Fluent summary.

First of all, let's look at the word. The OED has immersion as the "deep mental involvement in something" and points out that in foreign language learning it means your teacher will only teach you using the foreign language. That's all - immersion is not dependent on where you take the class or who you're learning with, it just means fewer explanations and more target language content. You do not have to live anywhere but where you live right now to make this work.

Advantages of Immersion in Language Learning

Many language learners dream of immersion classes as they promise quick results and otherwise unattainable levels of confidence, all wrapped up nicely with an impressive target language accent.

And all of this is kinda true - immersion works particularly well when building up to bilingualism, that means speaking two languages at practically native level all the time. This type of class challenges the brain in unique ways while forcing a learner to engage with the way language is used. There's no time for getting lost in grammar and rules, the point is to listen, copy and learn how to use language right.

Some more reading about advantages of immersion can be found over at Omniglot.

Guided Immersion Classes

Stephanie from To Be Fluent is an immersion language teacher in Canada, and she's keen to point out that sometimes explaining complex grammar and style issues does require English. But here's how she describes her classes:

We do lots of grammar, and also lots of reading and discussion. We read an article and discuss current affairs every morning. We also work a lot on oral interaction: asking and answering questions, telling stories, listening to dialogues (most of them work-related), doing role-plays of work-related situations (ex. running a meeting, giving instructions to a new recruit, dealing with problems at work, writing a memo). We also make time for "fun stuff" like watching French TV shows and playing games.

Immersion classes sound great! The key ingredient that the learner must have along with some determination is clearly time: It cannot happen while you're spending most of your days out of the foreign language environment. A true immersion environment requires at least a few hours spent speaking the new language, every day. That's probably why many people develop a simplistic view that learning a language comes naturally as a result of moving to a new country. The better logic looks like this: No fluency without classes, no immersion without time, but time can definitely equal immersion and will give you results.

Andrew Weiler, who writes at strategiesinlanguagelearning.com, makes the important point that people forget the dream of "Learning like a Child, naturally, carefree" is bobbins, because adults are not children. Immersion classes used too early in language learning will result in frustration and the feeling that you're "stupid" for being unable to learn just by copying. Your ego thinks it can understand things first time, and you'd be denying yourself a core understanding if you jumped straight in at the deep end.

And furthermore, immersion is a teaching method that focuses on communicating by sound and vision and can neglect important learning methods like note-taking and revision. The way to use it is key here.

Conclusion

Immersion is a trendy word among language learners and I have an allergy to trendy sometimes (anti-authority streak? teenage rebel?), so I do not personally use the word when describing how I teach or learn a language. The thing I find particularly important when I teach a language is that "immersion" must not mean "there is a teacher rambling at me in a foreign language and I can understand every 6th word".

Immersion will be right for you if you can follow these three simple rules:

1) Commit

As we've seen above, immersion means putting in the hours to study a language. Of course listening and reading are core parts of this, but producing target language sentences every day is another big part. Immersion classes work extremely well as language learning holidays or short programmes, but they're much rarer as ongoing programmes over the years. So when you decide that this is your chosen language learning method, make sure your schedule can handle it.

2) Structure

Good immersion tutors know that the key is to adapt your teaching and content to the skills or the learners. With that in mind, it's easy even for complete beginners to learn through gentle immersion, and I believe that the structure of guided lessons is a perfect environment. If you feel that you have to tackle immersion-style learning all by yourself, make sure you have Skype and italki ready for real world practice.

3) Know Your Limits

If an overambitious learner may use a bombardment of random target language content as a learning technique, they might as well just look at a flag for an hour. Don't put unreasonable demands on your understanding. Instead, know that it is a lot better for your learning to address the words and structures that you don't know, than to hope you will just assimilate them as if by magic. The "copy and speak" method does work, but only if you actually understand the input that you are getting.

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Kerstin's 3 Steps for Learning Topical Vocabulary

December 20, 2013 Kerstin Cable

Topical vocabulary means the words and expressions that all relate to one topic, for example cookery, education or firefighting. Today's article introduces a foolproof 3-Step Method, plus get involved by posting your next vocab topic in the comments, and we'll feature you in a blog article next year.

Why is this useful?

If you make it your goal to learn all the words in a language, you'll never know when you're done. Setting a goal like "500 words" is also though, because who counts all the new words they're learning?! So bring on the topical approach. You can get into a topic you're interested in and feel like you're really getting somewhere.

Learning topical vocabulary is not difficult - here are 3 steps to success:

1. How much do you know about this in English or your native language?

The key here is to set your goal posts right, so that you'll know the detail of what your topic is all about. Plus, remember that language is never isolated from what it talks about. In other words, the success in remembering vocab is based on knowing what you're talking about. If you want to write like an expert about history, better know the facts before the words.

For example, I once worked at the fabulous Panaz, who make all kinds of flameproof fabrics. I was their Export Sales Administrator, on the phone all day taking and confirming orders in French. I could have learnt all the words for fabric and upholstery I wanted, but these customers wanted someone who first knew her stuff, and then knew all the words for it.

So here is Step 1: Be sure you know what you're talking about, and then you'll know which words and expressions you need.

2. Note it down, then relax-repeat-remember

Forget talent - repetition is the heart of success. Many people recommend "SRS", which means a spaced repetition system. In other words, you will have to go over words again even if you remembered them today. The repetition of running through those lists is what makes it go in, so it's got to be a routine for a week or two. Remember Fluency MC? It's relax - repeat - remember.

For more ideas on getting that vocabulary to stick, check out 6 Techniques for Learning Vocabulary.

Step 2: Follow the 3 R's: Relax, repeat, remember.

3. Test yourself twice

It's easy to check how many words you know, so make your first test an article in the paper and a TV show about your topic. With libraries, the internet, YouTube and Facebook at your service, I challenge you to find something you couldn't read a lot about in almost any language. How about searching for the #tag on Twitter (see below)?

Now for the second test, maybe a little bit more daunting but this is going to be more fun too: Have a conversation, chat about the topic, go listen to someone and say what you think! Of course it should be possible to bring most conversations around to your chosen topic (and an amusing challenge, too!) eventually, and then throw in the new words, ask questions and feel the power. You've just become an expert!

Step 3: Test yourself once by consuming, and twice by producing language.

Twitter search result for "Flameproof" in German - there really is media for anything

Favourite topics?

As always, I want you guys to get involved and think about how this article will serve you best, so you are invited to write a comment below and tell me what your vocabulary topics are. How about Christmas, cookery or knitting? Or look at the cool Sally Holmwood, who's currently studying personal banking words for her part-time job in an international bank.

Don't miss out on the launch of the Fluent Guide to Vocabulary Learning for Self-Directed Language Learners.

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent - The Language Learning Blog. Don't forget - if you sign up to our newsletter, you will receive a free Guide to the Best Language Learning Resources!

3 noteworthy techniques for remembering vocabulary once and for all

August 26, 2013 Kerstin Cable

Welcome back, Fluent readers, hope you are enjoying a spectacular day. Today, let me share three tricks with you that can boost your memory - without brain surgery!

The following three techniques might seem counter-intuitive - there's talk of switching off or going back to school! But there is a lot to be said for considering your own productivity levels and best hacks before you set off learning something.

In this article, I'm sharing three ways that were very successful for me for learning languages in the past 20 years. Which one is your favourite? Let me know in the comments!

1. Be accountable and smart with your lists

This one is for the times when you feel like putting in the graft of language learning - and so you should!

Vocabulary lists are crammy and annoying and remind you way too much of high school, but you know what? That part of your teacher's methods wasn't all bad. Surprise pop quizzes and learning words by rote have their place, because the method establishes important routines and reminds you that language learning requires accountability. It also has an even more important use: applying your words.The reason no one ever managed to learn a language from someone who points at stuff and names it is that this taught them zero about making sentences.

So when you are writing a vocabulary list and doing your own revision, here's what you need to do:

Commit yourself to knowing at least 90% of all the words in your list before you move on to another
Ask someone else to quiz you on this so you don't cheat
Keep lists in a file for repetition after a set a mount of tim after a few weeks
Write down the prepositions and other connections that go with a particular verb. For example, don't just study the German word "auf" but connect this knowledge with the cases it corresponds to.

2. Build strong associations

This technique is as old as the hills and still completely under-appreciated because it just feels contrary to instinct. So let me surprise you by saying: yes, it works to remember a word through a really complicated picture or idea. The trick is to make it something that makes you smile.

For example, a student and I once tried to find a good way of relating to the French word for cloud, which is "nuage". We decided that, since the word sounds a little like "new age" in English, we could think of hippies...in a cloud.....of smoke! Since then, I have been completely unable to forget the word.

3. Relax already!

The best way of remembering is when something's fun or relaxing. We have seen this in students successfully using music, poetry, art and stories for their vocab. Want an example? What do you think of when I write #thicke? Gotcha. Think of Fluency MC - relax, repeat, remember. It works. But the key to making things stick with this technique is that you must follow the most important rule to get the best results:

Know your limits!

Repeating what you learn is great, but it's based on not trying hard. As a result, you have got to take the "relax" part very seriously. Make sure you don't try to push towards ambitious goals - one word per song will be fine, after all you weren't really trying anyway. Repeat a few things that you really love, not 1000 things that you feel indifferent about.

I hope you found at least one tip above that will rock your world, and if you did you might enjoy my upcoming book: The Ultimate Guide to Language Skills.

Got any better ones? Leave me a comment here or say hi on Twitter or Facebook. Can't wait to meet you (in pixels).

How you can make your progess visible with a tracking routine

July 19, 2013 Kerstin Cable

Here on the Fluent Language blog, we have previously covered the idea of invisible progress and how it affects your motivation. No language learner will find it easy to maintain high motivation and dedication when they feel like they are going along without much direction. So how do we make the progress a little more visible?

This is a look behind the scenes of a language tutor's work - all the prep and track work that students might not see, but that will be an important part of the service. My aim is not just to help my students learn, but to keep them going and keep an eye on what's already been covered and I do track every lesson.

The Eureka moment doesn't come without Eureka work

Think Outliers and practice hours and remember that you are working systematically towards the moment when it all falls into place. Not as beautiful a story, but achievable.

Here are a few steps that you as the language learner can take in order to keep track and stay motivated.

Step 1: Decide where and how you will keep track

You will need a consistent place to do this, and one that is easy to use and very accessible. Basically, what we are looking for is a template which can be as low-key as a desk calendar or as high-powered as Evernote.

The important things are as follows:

Make sure it's accessible enough for you to use all the time. If you travel, a paper notebook might be better than an app that needs to be online all the time.
Make it consistent, so that once the template works for you, you'll only need to fill it in. Predicability is key here.

For me, formatting and printability were more important than universal access so I settled on creating a template that works for me, in MS Word.

Step 2: Write desired objectives

Self-taught learners in particular should have an idea of where they want to get to. The key to planning is to mke sure your objectives actually make sense. So write down a 1 month goal, a 3 month goal and a 12 month goal. This can be as poetic as you like, so "Have a conversation with a real German market trader" can go up there.

Step 3: Break it down into smaller tasks

I insist that you cannot actually have that market chat without taking lots of individual steps, and here's how I may break them down:

Learn all the numbers and currencies
Cover question making strategies in German grammar
Select items I would like to buy
Learn words for products
Learn market-relevant verbs and phrases
Arrange for travel to the German market

You should be looking at the long-term goal and breaking it down into smaller steps, then list the smaller steps as SMART goals.

Smaller steps for arranging travel to the German market?

Research German market towns
Choose trip destination
Ensure trip dates match market opening times
Choose travel companion
Book flights
Book accommodation
Exchange money
Sort out visas
Leave space in my suitcase for purchases from German market

If it looks so simple that it's all obvious now, remember your original goal was to talk to a German market trader. How did you think that was going to happen?

Step 4: Check in regularly

The check in dates are the ones you chose in your objectives, and you are looking for an idea of how much closer you have come to the overall goal. These check ins are a great contribution to knowing whether your language learning project is running on time or behind, and they will also give you a chance to fix anything that's going very wrong.

Should you be checking in and realising you've been way too ambitious, you only need to stay calm and work out what you actually got done. That's your realistic working pace. Apply it to future goals, without judgement. You will now know if you can achieve the end goal in a year or not, and will be able to add 2 months on at the end if required.

Plan, Track and Optimise With The Language Habit Toolkit

If you want a step-by-step guide to creating your personal language learning system, check out the Language Habit Toolkit, featuring language trackers, goal-setting guides and a review sheet to help you cut out the unnecessary and speed up your progress to fluently communicating in any language.