How to learn Spanish efficiently: A neuroscientific approach

The process of learning Spanish is mentally stimulating, but it can feel wildly inefficient—especially if you compare the painstaking process of committing new verb forms to memory with learning a language as a child. You might spend hours grappling with the difference between “por” and “para”, only to slip up and request “hielo por mi cafe” in your very next Spanish interaction.  

There’s no getting away from the fact that progress in language acquisition is nonlinear. Even for those with a well-structured study practice, mastering Spanish is a bachata-like shuffle between understanding, forgetting, practicing, and learning new concepts. 

However, there are strategies to hack your brain into learning languages more efficiently.  This article offers tips for getting more out of your study hours, by working with the natural tendencies of your brain. It draws heavily on the work of Barbara Oakley, a formidable expert in learning how to learn, and also on my personal experiences as a Spanish learner. Vamos.

The neuroscience of learning: a brief primer

To learn efficiently, it’s helpful to understand what learning is, physiologically speaking. 

It all starts with neurons, the “building blocks” of the brain. When you learn something new, electrical signals fire between neurons in a particular pattern—a new ‘neural pathway.’ When you’ve thought about a concept many times, it’s easy for the electrical signals to fire in this pattern, so the neural pathway is strong. That means it’s easy to repeat the thought. 

However, when you’re learning something for the first time, the electrical signals may not be strong enough to fire in the correct pattern. To learn something, you have to repeat the thought enough times to create a strong neural pathway.

According to Oakley’s course, the brain “learns” in two distinct states.

• Focus mode: the mode we’d recognise as concentration, when we’re closely engaging with difficult topics. You can only access focus mode when you already have knowledge of a concept, and the neural pathways associated with it are strong. 

• Diffuse mode: feels less like learning. It’s when many thoughts are wandering through your mind, and your brain is processing new information in the background, making new neural pathways. 

In order to learn something new, the brain needs to alternate between focus and diffuse modes. By Oakley’s principle: 

• Focus mode allows you to understand the problem at hand

• Diffuse mode—taking a mental break—allows your brain to work in the background and discover a solution 

• Switching back into focussed mode again allows you to apply the solution you found to the problem 

In other words, ‘efficient’ learning depends on periods of inefficiency—breaks. 

Great minds have long understood the problem-solving power of the ‘diffuse’ state. Oakley uses the example of Thomas Edison—who, when he struggled with tricky engineering problems, was in the habit of falling asleep holding ball bearings. He’d contemplate a problem (in focus mode) then allow himself to drift off (enter diffuse mode). When he fell asleep, he’d drop the ball bearings and awake—oftentimes, with the solution to his problem. 

The same principle can be applied to learning Spanish. You need to study a new concept—let’s say, the use cases of the subjunctive tense. Read over the rules and you won’t understand them at first, but that’s to be expected. Just hold the concept lightly in your mind, then take a break—go into diffuse mode. After some rest and some repetition, the neural pathways that correspond to the subjunctive tense will get strong enough for you to consider it in the focussed mode. In other words, it will “click”. 

8 Science-backed tips for learning Spanish efficiently 

With that primer in mind, here’s how to leverage cognitive psychology to get the most benefits for your time, whenever you study Spanish. 

1. Use spaced repetition to transfer new learnings to your long-term memory

Spaced repetition is a technique where you review material at intervals of increasing length, to improve your long-term information retention. It’s solidly grounded in neuroscience—you build new neural pathways, give them time to weaken, and then strengthen them again. Oakley likens this to building a brick wall—you have to wait for the mortar to dry on the bottom layer of bricks before building the wall too high. 

Flashcard apps are a great way to build spaced repetitions into your Spanish learning routine easily. For example, the Anki app allows you to study sets of information (for example, Spanish vocabulary) with spaced repetition. 

2. Try interleaving to retain more information 

Interleaving is the practice of switching between different topics and types of problems—a technical term for ‘mixing it up.’ In practice, that could mean starting your Spanish study with a few grammar drills and ending it with a listening exercise, instead of spending the entire block devoted to one particular skill.

Interleaving has been proven to strengthen your ability to retain information; one US study showed the technique improves students’ accuracy by 43%. It’s thought to encourage flexible and creative thinking, helping learners create links between different but related concepts.

3. Prioritize the language skill that matters most—speaking 

The acid test of whether or not you actually know Spanish is whether you can speak it in real life conversation. Almost without exception, speaking Spanish is the main skill learners want to master. It’s a fundamental principle that you should practice the thing you want to get good at—therefore, to learn the most efficiently, speaking practice is the skill you should prioritize. 

A co-author of Oakley’s, Olav Schewe, produced this charming documentary about his attempt to learn Spanish in a month. He devoted about 80% of his energies to speaking and listening practice during the challenge, and—to spoil the ending slightly—he didn’t regret it.

Unfortunately, speaking is the most logistically complicated skill to practice. If you’re looking for well-structured conversational classes in your area, check out the Berges Institute. 

4. Beat procrastination by starting with the hardest study tasks 

A significant chunk of Oakley’s course is about combatting procrastination, which she says “shares features with addiction.” Though everyone makes excuses to themselves sometimes, Oakley is convinced that learners benefit greatly from reigning in their procrastination habits.  

One common technique for overcoming procrastination is to tackle your most unappealing tasks first thing in the morning, when your willpower is the strongest. This is sometimes colorfully described as “eating your frogs first”. This builds momentum, since it makes the rest of the day feel more manageable. 

Pro tip: The Spanish language learning equivalent of this is to study grammatical structures first. You could, for example, use the Graf method, wherein you master the fundamental patterns and building blocks of a language, before you start learning sentences. 

The Graf Method, based on deductive reasoning, has been shown as more effective for teaching adults than the dominant, inductive method of language teaching in the West—where students produce sentences in their target language, and only later learn about the language’s structure. With Berges Institute, you can learn Spanish by the Graf method via online classes. 

5. Work in short, focussed sprints, or “pomodoros” 

The pomodoro technique is another strategy for reducing your procrastination habits. Invented by a software designer, Francesco Cirillo, it involves setting a 25-minute timer, and focussing intensely until its alarm goes off. When the focus period ends, you take a 5 minute break to do something else. 

A high-intensity workout for the brain, the pomodoro technique helps learners overcome procrastination, since it’s far easier to convince yourself to study for a mere 25 minutes than it is to start studying open-endedly. 

It also connects back to the idea of alternating between ‘focus’ and ‘diffuse’ modes of learning—the in-built break gives any concepts you study time to percolate into neural pathways.  

6. Stop doomscrolling to boost your capacity for concentration   

Now a tip from me, a Spanish learner, rather than a neuroscientist: block the smartphone app you’re most addicted to.

An ever-increasing body of research shows that smartphone addiction erodes our ability to focus, and even degrades the gray matter in our brains. We get used to the distraction of notifications and 5-second videos—and start to crave distractions. This significantly reduces the effectiveness of our study sessions, and makes the battle against procrastination that much harder.

Restricting Instagram has been the single most effective thing I’ve done to increase my ability to focus. After all, ‘checking your phone’ is something users do during quiet moments, when our brain would otherwise be in ‘diffuse mode’, creating new neural pathways. 

If you’re not ready to block the app you’re addicted to, I recommend ScreenZen, a free tool which makes you wait a dedicated amount of time (up to 15 seconds) before opening an app. 

7. Harness the memory-boosting power of sleep

Sometimes I wake up thinking about a Spanish word that I learned the day before. It’s like my brain has taken the opportunity to file the new knowledge, whilst my conscious mind is offline. 

Though it sounds a little cute, that is more or less what’s happening. During sleep, the brain rehearses some of the tougher parts of new information you’re trying to master, going over neural patterns. It’s learning in the background!

Therefore, even if you’re cramming Spanish to sit the DELE next month, choosing study over sleep is a bad idea. In fact, in this study, a group of participants were told to cram before a memory test, whilst the other group took a nap. Napping was found to be just as effective as last-minute revision. 

8. Experiment with memory techniques  

When it comes to rote memorization, there are various tricks and techniques you can use to absorb information faster. One example that’s been around since the time of the Ancient Greeks is the memory palace technique, where you imagine an interior in detail (your palace) and mentally place things you need to remember inside. 

Some people find the memory palace technique an efficient way to digest vocabulary. You might use it to cram the first 100 verbs. Let’s take the verb caber, which means to fit. You could imagine a bear squeezing itself into a cab, and place this in one corner of your memory palace. A surreal image, but undeniably memorable!

The results of efficient learning look different for everyone

There’s value in strategizing around how to learn Spanish efficiently, so you don’t waste your own time—but remember—there’s no shame in being a slow learner. One thing that makes Oakley’s work on learning how to learn so inspiring is that she struggled with maths for years before she became an engineering professor. She studied efficiently; her progress was steady but slow. 

Oakley compares slow and fast learners to hikers versus race car drivers. Sure, the race car driver will get to the top of a mountain first, but which one of those people is going to have a richer understanding of the mountain?

The takeaway is that you should forgive yourself if learning Spanish takes a long time. Many of us have had false starts, and stay at the intermediate stage for years before truly gaining command of the language. But as Oakley’s career trajectory shows, being a slow learner doesn’t make you less likely to become astonishingly, beautifully fluent.