The idea of learning English while sleeping is certainly very attractive. Hypnopedia or the concept of learning through sleep was very popular during the last century, especially in the post-war period and during the 1970s and 1980s.
Popular culture and science fiction movies are full of references to subliminal learning systems during sleep, not only in relation to languages or other academic knowledge, but also to modify behavior patterns.
In fact, many of the cassettes intended to be listened to while the user slept were not to learn languages or universal history, but to “wake up more motivated”, “be a person of more influence” and even to lose weight, that is, to improve staff.
Currently, it is possible to find on YouTube hundreds of videos of “neuro-linguistic reprogramming”, self-hypnosis and, of course, to learn English while you sleep. The big question is, is this really an efficient study strategy for you to improve your language skills? Today we will delve into this topic.
Can you learn English while you sleep?
The interest in learning English (or anything else) while sleeping coincides with the social ideology of increasing individual productivity that flourished after the industrial revolution. The psychodynamic theory of the subconscious, by Sigmund Freud, also played a relevant role in his theoretical support.
In other words, given that being productive 24/7 was increasingly important for society, the hours spent sleeping began to be interpreted as a “waste of time” and countless attempts arose to take advantage of them for constructive purposes, the vast majority related to aspirational aspects characteristic of the middle class.
The underlying theory of hypnopaedia was that the stimuli we hear while we sleep are stored in the unconscious mind and during wakefulness make their way into consciousness.
Later, when MRI scanners made it possible to identify the different patterns of brain waves that occur during sleep phases, hypnopaedia (already a thriving industry) built on the idea that the brain is receptive during certain oscillations that occur. They can take advantage of it to “put” information into it.
The only problem is that the theory that we can learn anything while we sleep is based on an erroneous premise: the brain is not “wasting time” while we sleep, quite the contrary, it is performing cognitive and physiological consolidation functions of the utmost importance for our survival.
What does the brain do while we sleep?
Sleep has everything to do with learning, but the process of acquiring new knowledge occurs while we are awake, and the process of consolidating it in memory (transporting it from the hippocampus to the neocortex) occurs when we go to bed. Unfortunately, there is no strong evidence to show that you can do both at the same time.
During the night, the brain selects which short-term memories are worth storing in long-term memory and discards the rest of the inconsequential information to make room on the “mental desk.” That’s why after a good night’s sleep, we learn new information easier than after five hours of study.
Of course, many experiments have been carried out in this regard and some results, which are not conclusive by themselves, have been interpreted from a reductionist perspective to ensure that it is possible to do something as complex as learning another language while we sleep.
Let’s see some representative examples:
- Several studies from the last century supposedly showed that people who fell asleep listening to an audio with words in another language and their meaning, had a higher percentage of correct answers on a test the next day.
- But later it was shown that this was due to what the study subjects had been able to hear before falling asleep, or during moments when they woke up. In other cases, the methodology and results of the experiments were simply not reliable.
- Some sensory stimuli from the environment can infiltrate our dreams (as happens, for example, when we start dreaming about smoke and are awakened by real smoke because we fell asleep with dinner in the oven). However, dreams are not remembered unless we wake up during REM sleep, and that also means that we woke up in the middle of a sleep cycle that was not completed.
- Dream memories, when they are not accompanied by complex recurring narratives or great emotional intensity, tend to be volatile, fleeting and imprecise, precisely because they only remain in our temporary memory for a moment. So even if we do manage to dream up a whole list of English verbs, chances are those memories won’t survive the end of the day.
- A 2015 study widely cited in the media, stated that it is possible to increase the retention of words in another language that are learned during the day by up to 10%, if the user listens to them again during certain stages of sleep.
- This would be very significant were it not for the fact that the sample of participants was extremely small: fifteen people. Furthermore, even if the results were reliable, the hassle of plugging into a device that matches the words to the correct brain waves is still highly inefficient compared to what can be achieved with other waking study strategies.
- In 2019, a study from the University of Bern revived interest in hypnopaedia by verifying that participants, who had been played a recording with an invented word and its meaning (for example, “tutu” = “tower”) , the next day they could not remember the meaning, but they did associate “tutu” with a large and tall object. That is, the information was stored at a semantic level of highly generalized abstract relationships.
How to improve learning English?
If what you want is to improve your English faster by resorting to the endorsed discoveries of neuroscience, here are three study strategies that really work:
Leverage the power of partnerships
It has been shown that memories function as semantic networks and not as isolated nodes. And when we say “memories” we can refer to words, images, sounds, smells, sensations, motor sequences, emotions, etc.
That is, when the word “kitchen” is “turned on” in our brain, the circuits related to “food” and “cooking” are also pre-activated, and even those that allow us to remember “family”, “delicious” or ” sees it”; the evocation of the movement that our wrist makes when we chop an onion and the smell of it frying in oil.
Therefore, it is much more efficient to try to learn a list of English words and phrases related to a specific context or situation, because this gives our brain the opportunity to learn the way it naturally does.
If, in addition to learning English with semantic fields, you put all your senses into play (for example, by taking a cooking class in English), the information you learned during the day will consolidate much more efficiently in your brain while you sleep.
Practice the 4 English skills in each study session
You already know that language proficiency consists of four key skills: understanding it, reading it, speaking it and writing it.
Following the same principle as in the previous point, if during a lesson you try to exercise these skills together, you will create neural activation networks that not only focus on understanding a word when you read it, but also on identifying it when you hear it, activating movements of the speak to pronounce it and the fine motor skills required to write it.
Going back to the example of the cooking class in English, ideally you could listen to the teacher read the recipe while you read the book, but also transcribe it by hand and finally explain in this language the steps you followed to prepare it. the dish and if you made any variation “to taste”.
Study when you feel in the best mood
It has been widely proven that we learn better and faster when we are in a good mood. On the contrary, stress, frustration, fear or sadness are cognitive obstacles that practically make it impossible for us to concentrate on acquiring any kind of knowledge that does not seem to be a priority for our survival.
So that time of the day when you feel most positive and energized is the best time to take an English class. If you cannot modify your schedules, what you can do is improve your mood before studying by listening to your favorite songs, doing half an hour of exercise, taking a hot bath or playing with your pet.