The Best Way to Truly Learn a Language without Memorizing (in 3 Steps)

in this video I'm going to respond directly to a question that's in a comment because there's something about the way this question is phrased that it's just lends itself perfectly to an explanation that I think is important to give so I've created 370 common Spanish phrases with AI and I'm studying them using Ani flashcards is memorization the best way to learn these or would you recommend another approach after Gathering useful phrases what's the best next step to truly learn the language excellent question question all right 370 common Spanish phrases in Spanish is awesome that's totally

cool now what if you could memorize all of those that would probably be good right however just having memorized phrases doesn't necessarily mean that you can communicate with those phrases all it means is that you can recall them but we're not interested in recall but rather reflex that's a big Mantra in the method reflex not recall so I'm going to present to you a three tier tower system that's going to show the priority okay the first tier is patterns patterns all right the grammatical patterns if one of your 370 Spanish phrases is the cats are

drinking milk and that's kind of a parody phrase right more of one of those apps that tell you silly things I'm not saying that's the best phrase to learn however it does have useful pattern information that you can extract from it like the DNA from a mosquito and to create you know Jurassic Park type of thing you can extract the DNA extract the pattern and use it to to generate other things so the cats are drinking milk in Spanish would be Tom right if that's one of the phrases that you're trying to memorize I want

to point out the difference between memorization for the sake of memorization for recall and memorization for reflex okay that's the major distinction so memorization for the sake of recall is and you come along and you say okay give me a flash card how do you say the cats are drinking milk can I go oh um oh very good you got it okay good job give me your next flash card oh how do you say the couple days later the cats are drinking milk oh yeah I'm practicing recall only okay reflex is if there was a

question on the back of that car that said what are the cats doing right now oh the cats are well the you know or or if the question said what are the cats drinking are the cats drinking juice no no um every expression in Sp every one of those 370 Expressions asks at least one question many ask more than one question so the cats are drinking milk answers asks the question what are the cats drinking what are the cats doing um what's going on in your house right now you know um I'ma traveling to Cuba

in May answers the question what are your plans for spring you're traveling to what country you're traveling to Cuba when okay so if you can induce yourself to say those 370 Spanish phrases not through recall not through oh how do you say how do you translate that do you remember how to say that it's not about remembering how to say it it's about actually needing to say it right so it's about expressing thoughts now memorizing words tier two is Q&A questions and answers that's what we've just talked about I like to use question cards I

will put a question on one side answer on the other so what are the cats doing make 370 question cards that way you're not just trying to memorize words but actually quizzing yourself actually having to answer the question do you understand you're not trying to say the cats are drinking milk you're trying to tell me what the cats are doing the top tier it's real people so you mentioned truly learn a language I think that's why I caught on to this question so much to truly learn a language well what's the real measure at the

end of the day of how well you know a language and if you've really learned it starting at tier one it's not about how many words you know I'd rather you know 10 words and be able to converse just with those 10 then no 10,000 words and not be able to converse so a better metric then how many words you know is how many questions you can answer if I ask you what are the cats doing what are the dogs doing what's going on in your house right now what are your plans for the weekend

if I can keep asking you questions and be able to answer them that's a good metric to see how how well you know the language but truly have learned the language I could know 370 Spanish Expressions I could be able to answer 370 questions that you asked me in Spanish but if I walked outside right now and went around the corner and jumped into a street party where everyone's speaking Spanish would I be comfortable would I be able to use it there would I be able to say relevance would I be able to think on

my feet like if someone asks me what's going on am I going to say something cool or am I going to say like the cats are drinking milk where's the bathroom like the library you know so the top of the castle the top of the tower there it's how well you can do with real people to train with real people the only way to do that is with real people it can be online it can be apps where you interact with people live and unscripted but in my opinion to be able to say that you

truly speak a language it means that you know the patterns of the language so you can think on your feet in theory you're practiced in the back and forth sport of questions and answers but most importantly I can actually use the language live unscripted on my feet with native speakers whom I'm just meeting hope that helps thanks for your comments a very good question and let me know what you think when I S to