Reps Are For Biceps, Not For Brains

Remember those days in school when you were made to repeat lists of words along with their meanings, a hundred times each, at gunpoint in an attempt to stretch our English vocabulary? Most of us do. And, not too surprisingly, the experience was frustrating at best. It’s still a mystery how this extremely dead-beat and downright inefficient learning method caught on as the winning classic that it is today in almost every school around the world! Is there a more effective alternative? Turns out there is. And it is not only more effective but also comes with zero calories! Easy Spanish must also have an easy absorption method.

No, we are not going to discuss some wonder drug or some obscure black-hat trick that inexplicably enhances your memory without any effort. What we will be discussing here is a rather insignificant-sounding practice in common use by men and women learning Spanish throughout the world for centuries. We neither invented, nor discovered it. Nor is this the first time we will be discussing it. Quite a few articles have been done on visualization earlier as well and this is just a reaffirmation of the same concept as discussed before. Why? Because this technique is just too powerful to be taken lightly. We, for one, could never harp on it enough!

What’s wrong with the reps?

Rote learning was never motivating enough
Photo credit: Julien Harneis licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

So what’s wrong with the classical way of cramming using reps anyways? Unless we understand and appreciate the chinks in this armor, we would not be able to appreciate the tremendous benefits of visualization.

Let’s see how the process works. Say, as a part of your Spanish assignment, you have to memorize a list of the names of animals in Spanish and one of them is burro (donkey). How would you go about it? You would go, “Burro, donkey. Burro, donkey. Burro, donkey...,” maybe a few hundred times. Perhaps you would repeat the exercise the next day and going a step further to reinforce your memory, write it down a few dozen times. Done? Do you remember it now? Of course you do; you have worked your ass off at it after all! So what’s wrong with this method?

First off, a typical language would have an inventory of at least a couple of thousand words that you must know in order to be able to have anything more than a survival conversation in that language. With the amount of torture you went through doing all those reps for just one word, can you calculate what you are expected to put in to be able to even start conversing in Spanish? Is it practically possible? One does not and cannot really know for sure. We do know, however, that an overwhelming majority of Spanish learners end up quitting half way through and an overwhelming majority of those quitters quit due to monotony and boredom. Also, words you memorized using such insane number of dull reps are programmed to fall off your active memory the moment you need to recall them the most. Ever experienced that it’s-there-but-not-coming syndrome? Need this be clarified any further?

So how does visualization help?

The biggest flaw in the classical method is that despite your million-and-a-half reps, you are making no connection between burro and “donkey”. Your brain is getting no reason to associate the Spanish word with its English counterpart other than the fact that you have repeated them in combination so many times. So, the only handle or cue your brain has is the memory of you yelling out the two words in quick succession over and over again. Not the best thing to depend on, sound. Human mind retains pictures and moving images better and for longer than plain sounds. That’s an established fact of life so no debating this point.

Flatulent with all those beans in his burritos
Photo credit: Adam Rosenberg license CC BY-SA 2.0

So how does visualization help? Well, the simple rule of this technique is to feed your brain with what it most desperately needs to aid memory. How? By creating a mental picture. A funny, outrageous, stirring, emotion-inspiring, unforgettable picture in your mind that links the two words together conveniently. This image acts as the visual cue your mind always needed in order to not only retain the word forever but also recall it whenever needed. This is visualization. Imagine. Visualize. The more sensational your image, the easier for you to retain and recall. What is extremely important is that the image must serve as a link between the two words otherwise it won’t serve its purpose.

Coming back to our burro, one could imagine an obese, flatulent donkey eating a huge bean burrito. This image quite efficiently links the animal with its name in Spanish via the already-known word, burrito. Believe me, the image doesn’t have to make sense at all. In fact, try to make it stand out even more by adding some outrageous elements to it. For example, the donkey could be farting while biting into the burrito because of all the beans he’s been eating lately. This would give your picture a fun element that is so easy to recall. Make it bigger, more vivid, more colorful, and more outlandish and you will never again forget a word of Spanish, we bet!

By the way, it took me some five minutes to come up with this image while learning the word, burro, and some 10-15 seconds to imagine it with closed eyes for the first time. That was during the first few days of my Spanish-learning program and more than 10 years down the line today, I still don’t need to make an effort to recall the word.

Want to see more of visualization at work? This website had featured an article helping you to quickly assimilate the names of your body-parts in Spanish. Life is easier than you think!