Learning Science
How the brain learns — and how to apply it to language and life.
The articles in this section are written and synthesised by AI from published research in the fields of learning science and linguistics.
The sources for each article are listed at the end of the piece — do read them, both for a fuller grounding and to satisfy yourself as to their reliability.
How concentration is actually improved
The question assumes focus is a muscle you train. The strongest evidence says the training barely carries over, and the...
You are not short of resolve, you are short of an appointment
No time, no talent, too old — those are explanations, not causes. What can be measured is duller: one sentence with a ti...
Interleaving: what is worth mixing, and what mixing spoils
The familiar advice is to mix everything up. But for plain vocabulary, studying in blocks comes out ahead. What decides...
In person, online, or blended: what the evidence actually says
The largest meta-analysis says blended wins. The natural experiment of 2020 says one kind of blended was the worst of th...
Applying James Clear’s Atomic Habits to language learning
A 900-day streak, and still unable to order a coffee. The habit succeeded exactly as designed — the design was just poin...
How US Military Linguists Learn Languages
More than twenty thousand American service personnel studied Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute, which went on...
Barbara Oakley’s Learning Methods, Sorted by How Well They Hold Up
Before she was an engineering professor, Barbara Oakley was a linguist: Russian at the Defense Language Institute, a deg...
Applying Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits to Language Learning
Covey’s book is not research: he read two centuries of success literature and distilled the advice. So the honest way to...
How a nine-to-five adult actually learns a language every day
Working adults are not as short of time as they think — they are short of decision-making capacity at nine at night. Thi...