Can You Learn a Language in Your Sleep? Learn the Language of Your Dreams
Maria Claudia Alvarado
Published on August 31, 2024
Every language learner’s dream is to wake up fluent in their target language. But, can you learn a language in your sleep? Believe it or not, the idea of learning a new language while you’re sleeping is not so far-fetched. In this article, we’ll look at if it’s possible and why sleep is important for learning languages.
Is It Possible to Learn a Language in Your Sleep?
Sleep plays an important role in language learning, but you can’t put on headphones, play your Spanish lessons while you’re sleeping, and wake up a fluent Spanish speaker.
There’s a lot that goes into learning a new language. Whlie you can develop some skills while you sleep, you also need to practice speaking, active listening, reading, and writing to become fluent. These are skills that you need to be awake to develop.
However, scientific studies have shown that a good night’s sleep will help you retain new vocabulary and sounds better. And, there’s proof that your brain can pick up information from your environment while you’re sleeping. Your brain does this using your senses and can detect when there are changes in your environment (especially new sounds!).
So the short answer is that you can’t become fluent in a language just by practicing in your sleep, but sleep is incredibly beneficial to the language-learning process.
Why Sleep is Important to Learn a Language
Sleep and memory are closely related. While you’re sleeping, your brain strengthens the connections that allow you to form and recall memories. Every time you learn a new word, your brain forms a connection between the new input and what you previously learned. This includes words, phrases, and sounds.
Even if what you’re learning is completely foreign to you, you’ll have an easier time recalling it after taking a nap. What’s great about this is that these connections will make remembering the new language easier both in the short and the long run. This process is called memory consolidation.
But, this isn’t something the brain can achieve with a nap of ten minutes or less. In order for this to work, you need to be in a deep state of sleep. While a quick nap is always welcome, sleeping enough hours is necessary if you want to boost your memory. For example, someone who sleeps eight hours a day will remember new Chinese vocabulary better than someone who only rested for two hours, even if they spent the same amount of time studying during the day.
Ways Sleep Can Help You Learn a Language
While consistent study during waking hours is necessary for steady progress, there are certain ways that sufficient rest helps us in the process. Below, we’ll give you some tips to help you make the best of studying a language and sleeping:
Make Sure to Rest Well
Not getting enough rest makes life more difficult in general, but it can be especially harmful to your brain. When you’re in a deep sleep, your brain is repairing and strengthening the information you absorbed during the day. But, if you’re only sleeping the equivalent of a nap each day, you’ll have trouble focusing on the new information or might have trouble recalling what you learned. So, make sure to rest well!
Make Time for a Quick Study Session Before Bed
Going to sleep when the information is fresh in your brain is one of the best ways to ensure you remember all the important bits of a language. Even if you only have time for a quick, 15-minute review, studying your target language before bed will have a positive impact on your studies. If you’re looking for a resource that allows you to take quick lessons before ending your day, language apps have brief study sessions to help you review essential vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Immerse in the Language While You’re Sleeping
Your brain never stops absorbing information and you can take advantage of the time you spend sleeping by listening to your target language while you rest. For example, you can try listening to audio lessons in your sleep to reinforce what you previously learned. This way, you’re likely to recall words and phrases faster than by simply studying during the day.
Practice When You Wake Up
Testing your knowledge once you wake up is a great strategy to activate what your brain processed while you were sleeping. But you don’t need to take a full language test as soon as you wake up. Instead, you can watch YouTube videos or podcasts in your target language to discover how many words and phrases you can easily recognize. Plus, it’s a more pleasant way to wake up than reaching for your phone and checking social media first thing in the morning.
Final Thoughts
While learning a language in your sleep isn’t as easy as we would like it to be, it’s still a useful language-learning hack. Being able to recall information better saves you time in the long run, which is time you can spend making more progress in your language journey. To see how long it will take you to learn a language, check out our fluency calculator below.
1 Comment
Fatima says:
What is the process