The Theory Behind The Methods Used In Bermuda Word E-Books

Bermuda Word E-Books Show Visible Results Fast

As you can see from the number of words in every Bermuda Word e-book, the total goal of these e-books is quite ambitious. We're reading full stories here, not 200 word paragraphs in a text book or on a website. However, the fact that it is real stories written down by actual authors of the foreign language, makes those stories a lot more interesting than a tiny article about someones dog. And stories plucked from the language's cultural bagage have a lot more educational value. You're actually reading in the foreign language even when you're only a beginner.

The total number of new words per chapter may look daunting, but the way Bermuda Word e-books are set up makes for pretty relaxed learning. Any word you don't know is explained to you immediately when hovering over it, and complex sentences are explained on the final word. To learn hundreds of new words, you only have to re-read a chapter until you understand it, and practice those few words that won't occur anymore, or will occur too few times to stick in your memory. Because of the "extensive reading" that you do the organic structure of this foreign language grows in your brain in the same way as that of a native speaker. And word retention is enhanced and speeded up through the spaced repetition.

Extensive Reading Explained

Extensive Reading is simply reading a lot. To remember words you have to meet them x number of times. And there's thousands of (root/head) words in a language. So tens of thousands of words to read. If you would have to look up these words, as you have to with beginners texts, graded readers or even in a way with dual language books, you'll be busy for years.

Extensive reading is only possible when not having to look up words in a dictionary all the time, in other words, when you can stay immersed in the story instead of trying to decipher sentences. This does mean that you have to start with real simple texts and only slowly can move up to more difficult texts. So extensive reading becomes even more extensive.

Without extensive reading you'll never learn a language. Why? Because with practicing words as if they're a grocery list you'll not master the organic structure of a language. Because being able to communicate in a language will only give you a certain vocabulary. Because finishing some regular language course only has taught you a 1000 or max 2000 head words, where at least 5000 head words is advised to start reading by yourself.

However, you'll have to do a mighty lot of reading if you want to meet most low frequency (rare) words that a language offers enough times to remember them. This is where Bermuda Word software comes in, which we will talk about later. Read more about extensive reading on Wiki.

Spaced Repetition Explained

Spaced Repetition is simply repeated practice with an interval. Research shows an incremented interval will support memory retention best. In any case simply repeating every day or week is better for memory than cramming words in a night for the following day's exam. Those words will be forgotten soon.

In language learning spaced repetition is used mostly in flash card systems. Literally with a box full of cards, which you can make yourself, and where you place a card with a word of which you know the meaning in the back of the box. Or with software, like Anki, which does this work for you.

Still spaced repetition in itself does not form the organic structure of a language in your brain, you're just root learning words. Even if you use flash cards with sentences they're loose ends all stacked in your memory, and although still way better than just words, it's very boring in my humble opinion.

However if you want to learn a language one way or another is to repeat, repeat and repeat, and spaced repetition is very efficient in this regard. Here is a very good article about spaced repetition and the research that shows its positive effects.

Bermuda Word Combines Extensive Reading, Pop-Up Translation And Spaced Repetition

By combining these methods the disadvantages of each method are negated. Extensive reading will become more condensed as more complex texts can still be read while immersed in the story as words never have to be looked up, their meaning is immediately available via the pop-up translation, which has been manually added, so no missing or incorrect entries. Spaced repetition is integrated in the e-book so most of the repeating will be done in the e-book itself and the software will remind you when to repeat any lower frequency words. This makes the spaced repetition experience a lot more bearable and also efficient.

All this while you can see the percentage of unknown words go down, or taken the other way around, your reading comprehension is growing by the hour. And these are visible results of which you feel the impact because of your ability to read in the foreign language of your choice in a short time.