![]() How do you re-access that saved language knowledge? There’s even an incredible case where an adoptee was able to relearn words from a language she didn’t know she’d spoken, because she’d lost all memory of it- that’s how powerful relearning can be! How to relearn a language And learners are kind of amazing at relearning vocab: People recover vocabulary they’d known while abroad and words they’d learned when taking classes in their home country. ![]() So scholars have focused in particular on how well people who have forgotten a language are able to relearn vocabulary. Specifically, you forget vocabulary faster than you forget grammar. And interestingly, this information isn’t forgotten at the same rate. So when you forget a language, it’s more than just forgetting a single date: You forget a bunch of different information. When you know “a language,” you don’t just know a single thing: you know vocabulary (sometimes thousands and thousands of words!), and you know grammar, and you know pronunciation, and you know a bunch of other things as well. If you had forgotten a language, could you possibly recover it? More recently, researchers investigated whether the savings paradigm also applied to language. He reliably found that he’d relearn them way faster than he learned them in the first place: The information was saved. Ebbinghaus did experiments where he would first memorize lists of information, wait until he’d totally forgotten these lists, then relearn them-and time how long it took him. It was discovered in the late 1800s by a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus. This psychological phenomenon-that relearning can happen rapidly and reliably-is called the savings paradigm or savings method. So the process of relearning is like pulling that pen out of the drawer. It’s like a pen you’ve put in a drawer: It’s still there, but you can’t use it until you pull it out. But when you forget something you’ve learned, the information isn’t destroyed-instead, it’s just inaccessible. At one point, you learned this information and it was fixed in your long-term memory. Rather, you’re effectively using techniques to find information that you misplaced. In each of these instances, you aren’t trying to construct new information. Maybe when trying to remember what you wanted to buy, you went through a mental picture of your refrigerator. Maybe when you forgot that name, you had a vague sense of what that name was- I know it starts with an "m"- and you tried to reconstruct the sounds you knew. Have you ever forgotten someone’s name? Or something you wanted to buy at the grocery store? Or where you put your favorite pen? Maybe you retraced your steps, imagining yourself going through the act of putting down that pen. If you go back to French, you’ll be able to re-access memories you likely thought were lost to you, and you’ll progress far more quickly than you did when you were studying French the first time! Much like riding a bicycle, you’ll find that your skills are still there, buried in your brain and muscle memory, and that with a bit of structured practice, you’ll be avoiring and etreing like you were in the old days.Ĭurious why that is? Let’s explore the “savings paradigm” and how it applies to language! The savings paradigm I’m delighted to be able to tell you that your French may be forgotten, but it’s not gone. Is there any advantage to French? I could tell you a few words but not much more, so I feel like I might as well start from the beginning with something else. ![]() Long ago, in high school, I studied French and actually knew it pretty well! Now I'm thinking about either starting with a brand-new language (Spanish?) or going back to French. Okay, okay, stop booing at my pun, let’s just get to the question. So this week’s Dear Duolingo topic is a real trip down memory lane. Before coming to Duolingo, I studied second language acquisition at The Ohio State University, where I also did some work on language forgetting. Hello hello! My name is Hope Wilson, and I’m a Learning & Curriculum Manager here at Duolingo. Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for language learners.
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