Knowledge is power, so the saying goes, but when it comes to learning a language, knowing what you don’t know is surprisingly powerful. The secret to learning languages faster isn’t really about speed at all…
Progress killers: Unknown unknowns
Donald Rumsfeld famously pointed out that knowledge and ignorance come in two flavours: you know some things you know and you know some things you don’t know – but not everything. You’re blissfully ignorant about some stuff you know and many more things that you don’t know.
Unknown unknowns, the things you don’t know that you don’t know, you’re helpless to do anything about.
If you’ve learned a second language beyond beginner level, you might be aware of this. It’s one of the biggest hurdles to progressing your language skills. Most people have no clear idea of what they should practise to improve. Do you? Maybe you have a vague idea of what you know but probably no idea of what you don’t know, nor the mistakes you make without realising. No-one corrects you, and unless you have a language tutor with you 24/7 it can be very time-consuming working out what to do to improve.
If only there was a map to show you what you know and don’t know…
Be a language know-it-all with Brainmaps
Our AI – KwizBot – starts to build up a picture of your language knowledge from the moment you take our level test and he continually updates it as you improve. We call these pictures Brainmaps. It’s by analysing these that KwizBot knows exactly where you need help. He skips you past stuff you know and focuses you on what will help most.
You can literally see what you know (green), what you don’t yet know (white/yellow) and those pesky mistakes you keep making (red). Grey represents areas where we have not yet tested your knowledge.
Brainmaps are such a powerful tool that we made an interactive version of them available to our Premium students. Language teachers can also use them with our features for teachers. Brainmaps let teachers see at-a-glance what their students need and can plan lessons and homework quickly and easily. They give unprecedented insight into student knowledge – it’s kinda like having language teachings superpowers.
See them in action:
The real secret to learning languages faster isn’t about cramming things into your head any faster, but to stop wasting so much time. We knew it worked, so we asked our students to tell us how much faster they felt they were learning using Kwiziq. We were impressed. Knowledge really is power when it can accelerate learning a language by up to ten times.
Curious to see what your Brainmap looks like? Get started by taking our French test or our Spanish test.
Author info
[Follow on Twitter: @gruffdavies] Despite the very Welsh name, Gruff is actually half French. Nowadays, he's a tech entrepreneur (and some-time novelist) but he used to be a physicist at Imperial College before getting hooked on inventing things. He has a special interest in language learning, speaks five languages to varying degrees of fluency and he often blogs about language learning, science, and technology. As well as co-founding Kwiziq, he is the author the Amazon best-selling SF thriller, The Looking Glass Club and the inventor of the Exertris gaming exercise-bike and Pidgin, a free online tool that makes drawing flow charts and relationship diagrams as quick and easy as describing them in pidgin English.
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