Memory skills for Science and Language are different. Watch the video here or read the blog.

Ever wondered why you can remember most things, but vocabulary is difficult - especially when you want to use it?

Memorizing for language needs a flexibility to respond to different people in different situations. And if you have learned language as grammar rules and fixed phrases you will sound stilted and not fluent - especially when you are trying hard to remember that word or phrase!

It is very easy to think that the kind of memory skills for science and language are the same. But they are not.

Some methods of teaching language assume that if you can remember vocabulary, or if you can remember phrases, or if you can remember grammar rules, then you will become fluent.

But this is not correct.

The kind of memory that you use in math and science subjects is to do with memorizing precise data, precise formula, precise sequence, and the practiced application of those will give you the results you're looking for.

Memory for language is much more complicated. Not only do you need to remember words and phrases but you also need to remember context, pronunciation, intonation patterns, word stress, sentence stress, linking etc.

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This is much more complex than memorized rules because language itself is of necessity much more flexible and requires much greater awareness of human interaction than science related learning does.

So, while learning context, pronunciation, intonation patterns, word stress, sentence stress, linking etc. are good...you need to have an inbuilt awareness of how to reform all of these in question, negative, and statement form, and do substitutions across each and every part of each phrase in subject, verb, object, adverbial and complement.

The kind of memorising you use for language must have built into it a flexibility to respond to different people in different situations, and if you have learned language as grammar rules and fixed phrases you will always sound stilted and never sound fluent.

If you would like to enroll in a specialist fluency course, contact us at

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