What you learn here has the potential to completely change your life! I have specifically applied these four secrets to the development of all of our Spanish Power Course Materials, and have found over and over that students who follow these instructions achieve very high long-term retention of material.


Secret Number One: Relax

The number one factor to getting long-term retention is relaxation, in other words, "chill out." People who are relaxed and "de-stressed" remember information well. To get serious results in learning you cannot take it too seriously, and if you do, you will have serious learning problems.

Have you ever seen pictures of brain cells under stress? The brain cells expand and actually make it difficult for the neurons to pass through your brain. The term "mental block" is a physical reality. If I push you, you will want to push me back. Pressure produces resistance. If you push your mind too hard, or in the wrong ways, your mind will rebel, and you will have trouble remembering things for any period of time.

I cannot overstress (no pun intended!) the importance of a relaxed mind and environment if you want to learn well. This has many practical applications and we will work through several of them. Some of the best learners are people who do deep breathing, yoga and meditation on a regular basis. These people have very fertile minds, as well as do most musicians, artists, and actors. Most of the time, these types of people have a fairly carefree view of life, and this keeps their minds in a relaxed state.

Here are some great ways to relax your mind...

1. Be positive about your own ability to learn.

I cannot tell you how many people I have talked with who say things like, "I am too old to learn," "I do not have a very good memory," "I never was any good at learning language," "I am really forgetful," etc. It is a fact that "you are what you think!" You've probably heard the saying, "As a man thinks in his heart so is he." There is loads of documentation regarding the power of positive thinking and the destructiveness of telling yourself negative things about yourself.

Make it a practice to tell yourself that you do have good memory and that you can learn well. Eventually, reality will catch up with your internal belief system.

Imagine the mental stress involved in trying to do something that you have already told yourself that you "cannot" do, or that will be "hard." Stop telling yourself things like, "I cannot," "This is hard," "I'll never get this," or worse yet, "I am so stupid." None of those things are true! If you have this kind of "stink’n think’n," you are only creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you fear you will not learn, then you will not learn. The primary reason is because you are setting up so much mental stress that it becomes impossible.

2. Do deep abdominal breathing with your eyes closed.

Most people in the Western Hemisphere breathe through their chests. Unfortunately, this is not the best way to breathe. The human body is designed to eliminate up to 70 percent of the toxins in the body through breathing and this is done through deep abdominal breathing, not short breathing through the chest.

Here is a great breathing technique I learned several years ago that will help you. It is done in a 4 - 6 - 8 sequence.

Breathe in through your nose for four seconds. Please make sure you put your hand on your abdomen, and that you actually fill your abdomen with air. Hold the breath for six seconds. During this time you should let your mind go blank and let go of any concerns and thoughts that you have.

Slowly exhale through your mouth for eight seconds. You should feel like a tire going flat or like a balloon that is slowly releasing air. When I do this I can feel my shoulders "tingle" as I release the stress. Repeat this at least three times each sequence.

I recommend you do deep breathing at least three times daily; in the morning, at noon and again in the evening after work. I also recommend that you do this before you sit down to have any extended period of study.

3. Exercise at least three times weekly in a peaceful environment.

There has been a lot written about the benefits of exercise to allow a person to relax. This is true if when you exercise you allow yourself to have peace and quiet so that you can meditate.

This is not true of people who exercise in a busy or loud environment. I stopped going to a gym because I could not relax there — TV's, music, people talking. I was mentally better off sitting at home on my sofa! To aid in developing a good memory, you should exercise regularly, if possible, in a peaceful environment.

4. Visualize yourself at peace.

I think that if you asked 100 thinking people what they really want in life, most would say, "peace." If you want to be at peace, then you need to train yourself to be at peace. Visualize yourself in peaceful surroundings and settings.

My all time favorite "peaceful" place is up on the top of a mountain in Puerto Rico looking over the Caribbean Sea. I mentally go there several times a week. In fact, I had a mural painted of this exact scene in one the rooms at Bilingual America's headquarters so that I could "go there" more often.

5. Give yourself enough time to learn something correctly.

In other words, be patient in a learning process and do not try to "cram" in information too quickly. In the right kinds of learning systems you will be able to learn things well within a bigger process. Remember, too much pressure will produce resistance.


Secret Number Two: Be Ridiculous

This simply means when you are learning you need to have fun! Things need to be a little humorous, a little ridiculous. We all know that laughter produces a relaxed mind, and now you know that a relaxed mind is critical to strong learning. Let me give you a good example of what I mean by learning in a ridiculous way:

While learning Spanish you will need to learn a lot of new words. Let's say you come across the word "the oak tree." "The oak tree" in Spanish is "el roble" and is pronounced like "l row blay." That is the letter "l" then "row" then "blay."

You have a choice; either learn "the oak tree - el roble" by looking at a book or by using a retention card. As you learn you can mumble the information to yourself ...or... picture a big "el roble" falling right on top of you and you start screaming "EL ROBLE, EL ROBLE, EL ROBLE." I guarantee if you picture the tree falling on top of you and start shaking your body as you are saying, "EL ROBLE, EL ROBLE, EL ROBLE" you will remember the word.

If you are learning the word for "the food" (la comida) then do not just say "la comida." Imagine yourself starving to death after having been abandoned in the wilderness for 10 days, and someone puts your favorite food in front of you and you say, "La Comida a a a a a a a..."

There is a basic law of memory that you need to understand. You will always remember what you do with passion and emotion! Lifeless, emotionless learning is not only boring, it does not work very well. If you want things to "stick" then you must have fun when you are learning. Be dramatic and do crazy things to remember information.

This makes sense, doesn’t it? Actors and actresses can remember their lines because they put words within an emotional context. You can and should do the same, if you want to remember what you study.

The people who struggle with this are your "left-brain" analytical thinkers. People who are very "fact" oriented and have difficulty with "out-of-the-box" thinking are "left-brain."

In general, women learn language more quickly than men because they tend to be more "right-brain" in their way of viewing things. All I can say is whatever your gender and tendencies, it is worth the extra effort to learn with lots of ridiculous passion and emotion. Not only will you learn more quickly, you will have more fun in the process!


Secret Number Three: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

It has been said that repetition is "the mother of all learning." Do something enough times and eventually you will get it no matter how hard-headed you are! The way to reduce the number of times is to apply the first two secrets that I gave you; relax and be ridiculous. If, however, you do not want to relax and be ridiculous you can actually get long-term memory by just doing the same thing enough times in enough different ways.

The average person needs at least 15 repetitions of the same thing to begin to store it into long-term memory. That means that every new word that you learn should be "cycled" through your brain at least 15 times if you want to remember it. This is critical in language learning because you may use one word in a conversation, and not use it again for two to three weeks! If the word is not truly stored in long-term memory, you will have trouble recalling it again after two weeks.

No repetitive memory system is one reason among many why so many language courses are not successful. In other words, they give you the information, but they do not set up the correct number of repetitions you need to actually achieve long-term memory.

For this reason, (among others) many people go through language courses, get good grades, or feel like they understand things but still cannot recall words and structures in a real conversation. One of the things we do in all Bilingual America Spanish Courses is to set up repetitive memory systems. Unless you do not follow instructions, you will learn!

When we do a Language Learning Aptitude Assessment we grade your memory ability by asking some pretty pointed questions that give very accurate results. By doing this we can accurately set up the proper amounts of repetitions that should have for your particular memory skill set.

If you want to learn using course materials that have repetitive processes built into the system, whether it be vocabulary or structure, then you will love our Spanish courses. The fact is you cannot get out of a lesson without having worked with each vocabulary word at least 15 times, and each structure taught a minimum of 60 times! It is built right into the learning system, and absolutely insures that the Spanish will be retained.

Secret Number Four: Retroactivity

Retroactivity is a close cousin to repetition. Repetition is how many times you repeat something in a given time period, retroactivity is how long you use and apply it from when you initially learned it. You can do 20 repetitions of something over ten minutes or you can do 20 repetitions over five days. If you do it over five days (retroactivity) it will store more easily into long-term memory than if you do it so many times (repetition) in ten minutes.

Information is stored into long-term memory most easily in manageable bits and pieces. You do not want to attempt to "cram" things into long-term memory. It will not go there, it will go into short-term memory.

The good news is that you do not have to figure all of this out since it is already done for you in all of our Spanish Courses. We determine the amount of repetitions and retroactivity on a customized basis after seeing the results of your Aptitude Assessment.

Different people need different amounts of repetition and retroactivity. I challenge you to find one Spanish Course anywhere outside of Spanish Power that uses specialized repetitive and retroactive learning systems. If you find one, please let me know because I have not seen one!

Closing Thoughts to Remember...

If you apply these "Four Secrets to Retention" to your learning activities, you will learn. You can be sure any course you ever take at Bilingual America will be filled with learning that is relaxing, ridiculous, repetitive and retroactive in nature!