What if remembering was a choice?
What if you could save thousands of new words in your brain like you save words in your computer?
With 96% success…
And only 30-40 minutes of practice a day…
Many students of English around the world are using this new method.
Here’s the story of how it started.
In 1982, Piotr Wozniak was a 20 year-old student at Poland’s Poznan University.
He was studying molecular biology.
He was smart and loved to learn.
But he felt he was drowning in information.
He was also disappointed at how slow he learned new material.
And he was shocked at how quickly he forgot the information after the exam.
On top of this, he needed to learn thousands of English words.
Then, like now, the world of science speaks English.
And he refused to accept the broken, half-learned English he saw his classmates speaking.
But when he calculated the time it would take him to master all the words he wanted to learn…
He discovered he would need 26 years!
There had to be a faster way!
He already knew about active review and repetition.
(And if you’ve been reading my emails, you know about them, too.)
But he saw there was still one big, unanswered question…
WHEN is the best time to review new words?
After one day… two days… three…?
No one had answered this question yet.
And he felt the answer would end the problem of forgetting.
So he quit biology and studied memory full time.
He began doing experiments on his own memory.
Then on his classmates and his professors.
Finally, after years of gathering data, he came up with this mathematical algorithm:
I(1):=1
I(2):=6
for n>2 I(n):=I(n-1)*EF
The first year he used it he learned 10,255 pieces of information.
And 92% went into his long-term memory! (later, he improved it to 96%)
Years later, Arthur Chu used this same algorithm to prepare for and win the intellectual American quiz show Jeopardy!… a record eleven times!
American opera singer Gabriel Wyner used this same algorithm to quickly learn Italian, French and German for the stage.
And this is the same algorithm used by two-time Swedish memory champion Jonas von Essen.
But before Piotr could share his discovery with the world, he needed a computer.
In 1985, his method was all on paper.
A computer would simplify the method and make it useable for the average person.
But in 1980s communist Poland, that was a big challenge for a poor student.
Plus, the army wanted him to quit university!
So how did he avoid the army, get a computer, and what is the best time to review new words…?
I’ll tell you.
But this email is already long.
So it will have to wait until tomorrow.