How to Unlock
Your Amazing Memory,
Gain Confidence, and Achieve Success!

As you are learning a foreign language it is helpful to be able to recall common words or phrases. Because foreign words are unfamiliar and abstract you need a way to give them meaning before they can be associated to something you already know. The substitute word system is ideal for this purpose.

You begin by visualizing the word with its English meaning and then use substitute words to form an association. For example:

The Spanish word for boat is barco. You could visualize a boat with a dog standing on the bow barking with lots of O’s coming out of its mouth.

The French word for house is maison. You might picture a man building a brick house. He is a mason.

The German word for window is fenster. Imagine a window being attacked by a fencer in full costume.

The Italian word for hat is cappello. For this you could visualize a person wearing a baseball cap made of Jell-O. Imagine it being colorful and jiggling. Cap and Jell-O will trigger the memory.

It can be challenging to find substitute words but once you create a vivid mental picture it will be much easier to relate the foreign word to its English meaning and vice versa.