Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

The Keyword Method for Learning Words Quickly
A much more effective, and much more fun, method of learning vocabulary
is through associating very visual images with something that sounds like
the word you want to remember, also known as the keyword method.
You need to create an amusing, animated, and unforgettable image, or
even a short story, whenever you come across a new word or phrase you
want to remember in order to stick it to something in your mind. These
images or keywords are much easier to recall, both when attempting to
recognize a word and when producing a word yourself.
To show you how effective this is, I’ll jump straight into giving several
examples:
Gare
First, let’s look at the French word for “train station”: gare (pronounced
with an ah sound). When I saw this word for the first time, I tried to think
of a word similar to it in English. The closest word that came to me, which
at least starts with the gar sound, was “Garfield” (the popular comic strip
cat, who even has his own movie). This is a great word to use because
Garfield is a very visual and funny image, as he’s a fat, lazy, sarcastic
orange cat.
To be more visual with the English translation, rather than think of a
generic train station (very easy to forget!), make your image one from a
cartoon, a TV show, or a place you have fond memories of. When I was
learning French, I got nostalgic about my time in Valencia, Spain, and
visiting the city’s main train station to go on fun excursions to the
countryside. So I picked that train station, visualizing it clearly in my mind.
Now combine the two in the most ridiculous way possible. Garfield
couldn’t simply be sitting in the train station, as that image was far too
easily forgettable. I imagined the train station on a very busy day, and then
suddenly Garfield comes bursting through the doors with a suitcase, panting
(since he’s so out of shape), and people turn around and look at this strange
sight, but he has no time for them. He runs up to the timetable, sweating
like crazy while he looks for the train to Bologna—the city he is going to
for the world lasagna-eating championship. He gasps when he sees that his
train is about to leave. He dashes to the right platform, only to catch sight of

---

the train pulling out already. He runs after it, puffing frantically, throws his
suitcase in one of the back compartments, jumps in after it, and makes it
just in time.
This ridiculous story is one that is much harder to forget. The precise
details of it are not so important, except for the fact that it’s definitely
Garfield who is performing all the actions, and it’s definitely happening in a
train station. This means that later, when you see the word gare in some
random French text, you can go through the thought process: gare sounds
like “Garfield” . . . and Garfield was in the train station.
Conversely—and something much more useful than you’ll ever get
from rote memorization—when you need to say “train station” in French,
you imagine your favorite train station (Valencia’s, in my case), think of
what interesting thing happened there, and you suddenly can’t avoid seeing
that silly orange cat running through it. If Garfield is running through a train
station, then “train station” in French must be gare!
The recall process takes less than a second and barely slows down a
nicely flowing conversation. The memory of the word is easily accessible
and comes to you much more quickly than the digging you’d have to do
with rote memorization.
Mùbiāo
Now let’s take a look at a Chinese word. One that I needed often was
the word that meant “target” or “goal,” because I frequently discussed my
fluency goal in Chinese when asked why I was in Taiwan. Since I wasn’t
learning the writing system yet, all I needed to do was learn the sound of the
word, which is mùbiāo (falling tone on mù, and first tone, which doesn’t go
up or down but remains steady, on biāo).
So how do you learn this while incorporating the tone? Like anything
else, it just requires a bit of imagination. Think about it for a second
yourself: What would you come up with from mù (pronounced moo) and
then biāo (bee-ow)? I don’t know about you, but I thought of a cow, then a
bee, and then simply the ow (as in “ouch”) sound from pain.
Next, it’s a case of throwing ideas out there. It doesn’t matter how silly,
nonsensical, politically incorrect, sexual, or personal your story is, as long
as it stands out in your memory. This is the short story that I came up with
for this word:

---

I’m walking through a field with a bow and arrow in the early
evening as the sun is setting. I want to practice my shooting skills,
but I don’t see something challenging to aim at. Suddenly a cow falls
from the sky: “Mmmoooooo” (crash).
She stumbles to find her footing, and I see my opportunity.
Conveniently, a bull’s-eye of concentric red and white circles has
been pre-painted on her rear end, and I position myself by kneeling
a little so my bow is at the same height as the poor cow’s ass.
This is no ordinary bow and arrow, though. My arrow is made
entirely of bees. I pull it back and launch it to fly horizontally
through the air, and since I positioned myself correctly, it flies
straight into the target and goes up the cow’s bum! The poor animal
forgets herself and rather than moo, she can’t resist yelling a loud
“Ow!”
(No cows or bees were harmed in the making of this mnemonic.)
While it’s true this story takes a few minutes to write out, our brains
work much faster when verbalizing (or writing) isn’t necessary. All I need
from this story are the essentials: “target” is moo (falling tone) and bee-ow
(first tone, level—as in the story where the arrow is shot straight at the same
height as the target). Also, when you hear mùbiāo, you know it means
“target,” which is symmetrical, so I can both recognize it and produce it.
Some details are treated differently; for instance, the falling tone in
Chinese doesn’t actually sound like someone falling and is more like a stern
“No!” than a dramatic movie “Noooooo!” but when I was learning Chinese
I made a visual aspect of my mnemonics that incorporates these movements
so I could also remember the tones.
Even forgetting the tones (which I discuss in more detail in chapter 6),
can you see how with a language as distant from English as Mandarin there
is still hope, if you have a good imagination?