Exploring The Subconscious Aspects of Language Learning

It's counter intuitive when you learn a language. There's so much focus on studying, and manually learning. But are you focusing on the wrong things?

The conscious mind doesn't do as much as we hope.

If you want to maximize your learning speed you have to focus on your other mind. The mind you can't control.

This article will go into everything you need to know about the subconscious mind and how it behaves. Learn to harness that behavior and supercharge your comprehension.

When you learn a language you're not actually doing anything.

Sounds extremely counterintuitive I know.

You probably think to learn something you need to put in work to study it.

It's just common sense.

When I didn't know what I was doing I would put in hours a day studying the language. Doing hundreds and sometimes even thousands of reps.

I definitely put in more than 6 hours a day.

I'd grab a vocabulary book, or native media to mine. I put 20+ words into Anki and I start studying. Maybe I skip all that and go off a list (that I made sure had an example sentence in context). I would manually learn every single word.

I'd see the word, or the cloze blank, and try and consciously remember what it was. I would search my mind, find the word or meaning. Mark it as good and continue. I'd get faster and faster and soon I could always remember the word "In the wild".

And when that word did show up in the wild. I'd hear it, and remember what it meant. I'd consciously dig the meaning out. For a split moment, all my processing went into that word, at the expense of losing the flow of the language.

By all accounts I knew that word. But I did not acquire that word.

BUT THEN...

I was in Montreal for a month, just bumming about enjoying the city.

While sitting in a fast food restaurant, a bunch of children ran in and stared out the waist-high window. One of the children yelled CACHEZ! Suddenly all the children ducked under the windowsill hiding as their friends ran past.

I didn't think much of it, but later on when listening to some french they used the verb again. But this time something completely different happened.

Instead of manually searching my mind for a split second, I understood it like I would any other english word.

Automatically I knew the concept of cacher.

I had acquired cacher.

This is when I realized that you don't learn words manually, your mind learns them automatically. When you see them in the wild with enough Suddenly all the children ducked under the sill hiding as thLearning Versus Acquiringeir friends ran past.t.

You consciously don't need to do anything.

For the intent of this article I'll differentiate the two.

Learned language: Consciously figuring out what a word or sentence means and memorizing it. Involves active recall.

Acquired language: Language your subconscious has picked up on its own. Meaning automatically arises when in contact with this language.

The immersion language learning community has an important concept called i+1.

While being exposed to language in an immersive setting, your mind can only learn language that is i+1. The letter i is your "current language ability, and +1 means one unknown bit of language that you're able to understand.

Essentially, i+1 is optimal language exposure to grow. A sentence with only 1 new piece of information. All you need to do is find the right level of language, and learning will happen fast and quick and everything will be all good in your language learning journey.

But there are a few things I've not seen talked about that differed in my learning experience from the way it's described.

The first one is a massive game changer. In traditional immersion methods you go out, find a sentence and if it has 1 piece of information you don't know, you add it to a flashcard deck and consciously learn it.

The problem with this method starts to show up when you work with sentences you haven't acquired but have learned. You could consciously know every word in a sentence, but if you haven't acquired those words it's not actually i+1, it's i+4 or whatever.

If you go too crazy you'll have learned sentences that are way too complex and you end up stuck consciously translating your language, but stalling out in acquiring it.

Take the next sentence as an example. Lets say you've learned what garden center is, but every time you hear it you need to consciously remember what it means. You've never come in contact with the word fern. Fern is the target word to learn on the card.

I want to go to [aquired language] the garden center [learned language] to buy [acquired] a fern [unknown]

Despite only one unknown word, this sentence is i+2 and your subconscious will have trouble learning the meaning of fern outside of it being an object that's purchasable. It won't have access to it being a plant as you haven't acquired garden center.

The subconscious may acquire garden center though as it's obvious its a place to buy something. This relies on context. If you manually add more acquired language to the card it can greatly improve it. For example:

I want to go to the garden center to buy a fern; Ferns are my favorite plant.

This now adds context to what type of stuff you buy at a garden center, and what type of object a fern is. If you add a picture on the back side of the card, you'll really kickstart acquisition.

But in the end you don't need to search for i+1 language. Your subconscious mind automatically finds it. It's a language learning machine. You don't know consciously what you need to learn next.

Instead, in the wilds of immersion, your subconscious will notice the meaning of unknown words and pick them up automatically when it runs into an i+1 piece of info.

It's painstaking at first, but as your mind acquires more and more language it starts to snowball and you rapidly gain vocabulary and new words. Especially after you've acquired the common grammar structures of the language.

At a certain point immersion will be much better than manual learning and i+1 searching. From there the goal is to pick specific environments to learn important langauge.

It's good to search for media where you understand most of it save a few words. This is done through scopes. Picking specialty media like cooking shows or business podcasts let you focus on potential i+1 hotspots. Soon the host will be yelling at a chef to get turmeric and you'll know what he's talking about without consciously translating.

Another aspect of the subconscious mind that's frequently causes issues in your language learning journey is the time lag between effort and reward.

Not knowing about this feature of your brain can drastically impact your motivation and ability to assess whether an activity you're doing to learn a language is worthwhile or wasting time. It can even lead to taking breaks or quitting because you're not seeing results.

Many times I thought I was wasting my time, I'd spend a whole week doing an activity and feel liek I didn't get anything out of it. Only to notice a week later that I had a huge jump in ability.

It's unfortunate, but we have to deal with delayed feedback.

Our subconscious mind doesn't learn like our conscious mind. When you learn something consciously you'll get immediate feedback whether or not you learned it. But with the subconscious acquisition process it takes time for your subconscious to notice something and compartmentalize it into your Language skill.

On top of that there's no feedback when our subconscious acquires new language; it doesn't alert of us changes. It's only when we come in contact with the word or grammar structure later on down the road that we realize it's automatically being understood.

I've personally found that the impact of my learning lags behind about a week or two. I will watch 36 hours of a show, and from the start of the show to the end I'll feel my language ability is about the same. Then about a week later I'll realize my ability has done a sudden jump. Even if I didn't touch the language for a bit. Many times I thought I wasted my time, then realized I picked up random words from something a week later.

Your effort now will misleadingly feel like nothing is happening. There's no indication when you've acquired a word or that you're getting better. But you just have to trust the process and in yourself.

Your subconscious mind can only acquire what it can perceive. Before we begin with massive immersion it needs to be able to perceive the language. You'll need to make sure that you can:

In order to maximize your learning you should set the perfect stage for your subconscious mind. The learning environment is the most important part of your language learning journey. In order to acquire the language as rapidly as possible you'll need quality input. To do this it's of paramount importance to consciously choose the right media.

Good media is media that gives a lot of context for you to work with. It could be anything from visual cues in a tv show, previous knowledge of the domain to carry you, or a readily available dictionary to reference unknown words.

I've seen the concept of 95% comprehension passed around, and I do agree. However I also feel that even 100% comprehension can help the subconscious compartmentalize and learn the language. I found a lot of benefit watching beginner content I fully understood a few times. Again in the moment it didn't do much, but after a week or two I noticed a major jump.

As long as your mind can fill in the blanks and focus on the words it doesn't know and get clues from context it's perfect.

Don't be afraid to read subtitles like a book.

Not many language learners know this but it's huge in the hypnotherapist communities. The subconscious mind can take commands.

This can help greatly when doing a dedicated study session. All you need to do is tell your subconscious that it's time to learn whatever language you're learning, and you'd like it to acquire new words and understand better.

It's as simple as resolutely thinking:

"I'm studying French now, it's time to focus and acquire as much as we can."

I've found when I've set that ruleset with myself that my study sessions are way better, and that I understand more, pay more attention, acquire more, and even focus better.

You may not see the effects right away, because of the time lag, but it's huge if you do it for a month at the start of every practice session.