Learning and memory go hand in hand because your brain processes the new things you’re learning together with the old information you already have. You also have two different areas of memory: short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory handles the new information received by the brain. It can only hold on to things for approximately 10-25 seconds. It also has limited capacity: it’s only possible to keep 4-7 things in mind at the same time. In contrast, long-term memory is like a nearly…
’I’m too old.’ ’I would like to learn German but it’s too difficult.’ ’I’ve never been good at languages and I never will be.’ These are probably the most common excuses people make for why they can’t learn foreign languages. Age is an advantage – no matter how old you are People often think that you can only learn languages when you’re young and that age is just a burden. However, this isn’t exactly true, because the experience brought by…
Did you know that the key to fast and efficient learning is a good night’s sleep? Sleep studies have shown that the best way to remember the things you learned during the day is to sleep well after exercising. This is because the events of the day really do feature in your dreams. While you’re sleeping, your brain is working on the things that happened during the day, such as having practiced something. This activates and strengthens the new neural…
Children pick up languages with a sponge-like ease, but for many adults at different stages of life learning a foreign language is an overwhelming, if not an impossible, task. Or so it seems. Today we would like to focus on the question in the title: What is the best age to learn a new language? And, consequently, is any age better than another for language acquisition? WordDive TeamA mighty mix of language learning professionals, engineers, designers, user interface developers, gamers…
One of the key principles of the WordDive Method is to learn things permanently. Now all WordDive users together have learned 2 000 000 study items permanently. Thanks and congratulations to everyone who participated in reaching this important milestone! Two million Permanent items, July 8, 2013 Permanent learning is important for two reasons Learning the pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary permanently frees your working memory to concentrate on what you want to say. It is more useful to learn things…
The previous article laid out the complex nature of vocabulary acquisition: new words are not learned instantly, but through a multi-stage, incremental process which normally proceeds from receptive to productive vocabulary knowledge. The first stages of this process are essential: learning the correct spelling and pronunciation and the precise meaning(s) of a word builds a solid foundation for your language skills as a whole. But the next step can be defined as critical: if a learner is not able to…
