Will listening while falling asleep help you learn a foreign language? Nope. But it still may be helpful.
Posted on November 8, 2007
Filed Under Learning
In fact, never thought of writing on this eternal controversial topic — learning while sleeping. That’s just like “Is there life on Mars?”. Or kind of that.
But have read today How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour and could not refrain from covering the slippery subject myself.
Can you learn a new language while sleeping? The short answer is “No, you can’t”.
Does it make sense to listen to spoken foreign language before going to sleep? The short answer is: “Yes”.
And what is the help from listening?
The effect is improvement of your listening comprehension skills.
Basically, the more you listen to foreign speech (at a suitable for you level, of course; that is, you need to know most of the vocabulary you hear) — the better and easier you can discern spoken language. In a relaxed state, just before falling asleep, your brain apparently is receptive to sounding of what you are hearing.
Maybe the key is that when your consciousness gives place to dreams, your brain gets a chance to hear aspects other than you are paying attention to when you are awake and it facilitates learning? This looks like a plausible explanation.
But the area is still vague and underexplored. However, scientists suggest that the transition into sleeping and temporary waking may have some effect on learning.
So if you are after an easy way to learn a language investing no time — better just forget it; it doesn’t work. Don’t waste your money on magic methods.
But if you are a motivated learner and do put efforts into the process, then some listening before sleeping most probably may have an auxilary positive effect:
- It will help you relax and go asleep faster (not necessary while in bed; say, flights may be another application)
- You will improve your listening comprehension
Just follow some basic safety rules:
- Don’t forget to set volume to a low level.
- Set your player to sleep itself in up to half an hour.
- If you are listening through ear buds, make sure that the hardware is not going to traumatize you.
Try it and see if it fits you.
After all, if Birds May Refine Their Songs While Sleeping, why cannot you too?
Comments
3 Responses to “Will listening while falling asleep help you learn a foreign language? Nope. But it still may be helpful.”
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fascinating stuff, i’ve tried listening to tapes before sleeping myself. interesting how your mind is more receptive to sound before sleep. great site you have here, keep up the great blogging!
-gale
Hello!!!
Are you a psychologist? If not, you should be! This is really interesting. However, our brains give off theta waves, which are the result of calm brain waves through the use of the encephalography. Those ads saying how you can learn a new language are wrong. I mean, its a marketing scam and plus, from an evolutionary point, we sleep to gain energy right? So, why would generations of sleeping allow us to learn things at the same time. After all, we don’t multitask with sleeping and something else. It’s impossible. Plus, my polls are closed because they just are. It has an end time. Sorry! I should make more though. Thanks for visiting. come back for more news
Hi folks!
Gale — thanks!
Andrew — yes, sort of. And I agree with you that while sleeping, there are little chances to learn languages or whatever. My point is that it may be helpful to listen to audio materials in process of falling asleep. Sure, will do.
Cheers,
Anna