How To Learn Deeply
If this sounds familiar, don’t despair. You can move much closer to your
goal of speaking excellent English simply by adjusting the way you learn.
You just need to slow down and repeat everything you learn again and
again. For example, I tell members of my courses to repeat each lesson
daily for at least seven days. This is the case even if they think they know it
well after listening to it twice. If it’s still difficult, I advise them to listen to
the lesson daily for two, three or even four weeks. Remember, it’s not a
race. The point is not to memorize, or recite the phrases back like a bird, but
to truly deeply understand the phrases you are learning.
Often I get a question like this from a student: “A.J., can I learn two
lessons in a week?” That’s a good question. People want to go faster. They
want to do more. I understand that. But if you ask any of my advanced
students, they will all give you the same answer: No.
Why? Because deep learning is important. You need to repeat each audio
every day for seven days. More is fine. Yes, 14 days is better, 30 days is
even better than that. Less than seven won’t get the job done. You won’t be
doing enough repetitions to have the material sink in deeply. It’s
challenging to pace yourself, because I know many people think that faster
is better. But it doesn’t work that way. You need to repeat each audio at
least once a day for seven days. You’re doing this because you want your
knowledge to go deeper and deeper. You are learning for mastery.
Julia, a student from Italy, at first had a hard time accepting this idea. She
thought she would get bored and that it might be a waste of time. But she
wanted to improve her English, so she was willing to try it. Over time, she
says, she realized she had spent years learning English but not in a deep
way. “When I studied the second lesson,” she says, “I had already forgotten
the first. “
These days, Julia sometimes listens to an audio for an entire month
before she moves on. “It’s not hard work anymore,” she says. “I’ve
developed a way to listen and learn deeply and it has really helped my
English.”
