I’m learning German for a trip this spring. Last week, I found out about the book, Fluent Forever [affiliate link] by Gabriel Wyner, which I really love. He also has an app with the same name—it’s fine, but very buggy. It’s hard to recommend the app, but I am convinced his process is going to work for me, and the app is better than trying to his process without it. I bought it after trying it out—despite the bugs. If you read the book, and want to do the process, then you should consider the app.

One reason Wyner’s process resonates with me is because it is centered on Spaced Repetition flash cards, which I already use for other things. I use Anki for spaced repetition practice, but his process isn’t easy to implement in Anki.

Wyner recommends building very custom flashcards that don’t use translation. So, I wouldn’t put an English word on one side and the German translation on the other. Instead, he recommends using an image in place of an English word. He wants you to associate the new language with an image so that you map the word directly to a concept, and don’t have to mentally translate through your native language. Since, I am thinking about how to Apply Program Language Learning Techniques to Learn a Foreign Language, and I never translate between programming languages, this makes sense to me.

Each card in his system is personal to you. He doesn’t supply pre-made cards—he wants you to build them. Building them is part of the process. For example, when I made the card “Großmutter,” I spent at least 10 minutes looking at pictures of my grandmother before I found the perfect one. To represent a concept, sometimes I need to combine several images. That time helps cement the concept before I have even tested my memory with the card. Also, I know what I mean by the image—this would be hard to do with someone else’s images.

The Fluent Forever app helps you build cards, implements a spaced-repetition algorithm, speaks the words (to teach pronunciation), and has many other helpful features. Like I said, if you want to learn this way, the app is better than trying to replicate it with Anki or paper (although the book does show you how to do it). It’s also cheaper than the popular language learning apps. The book, though, is worth a read if you want to learn a language.