The Sing-song Approach to Learning a Foreign Language

In the field of human and personal growth, say accelerative learning, there are so many techniques on the
market, and people spend much money purchasing them; others dont even dare buying them - although they
sense that something must be done to improve his life - and get discouraged because they think the
technique wont work for him or wait until it works for someone else before taking the right steps. We seem
to forget that Providence moves most of the time when we definitely and individually commit ourselves in
putting the techniques we learn in practice. Let go of the opinions and use what works for you?
Weeks ago, Dr. W. Wenger suggested to our BrainMarathon group a technique called Sing-Song for
learning foreign languages.
Dr. Wenger: In talking about pole-bridging, I've often used as one example conversational sing-song. One
converses normally except that he sings what he says, operetta style like the Mighty Mouse cartoon. Now
I'm intuiting - don't have my formal reasons for it fully lined up yet - that if one were to do this for the
language he is trying to learn, he would learn it much faster and perhaps better. A beginner could sing-song
written dialogues such as are used in Suggestopedia. More advanced students could carry on sing-song
conversations direct.
Each should alternate or be followed by, conversations in the same material conducted in normal
conversational tones, more accurately reflecting the actual patterns of the language being learned. What I
have on my intuition thus far is that the sing-song would engage many more areas of the brain in the
learning. Also, the different scansion and other effects would act as so many different "handles" by means of
which to consciously hold onto the language content involved, compared with much fewer "hooks" or
handles or associations via conventional ways of learning that content. Note, this is not the same thing as
singing scored or formal music in a foreign language. Different mechanisms, different parts of the brain, and
a much narrower engagement.?
Being myself an avid language learner, I was the first to take the challenge and took it up to my Spanish. I
invested 8 entire days to test whether what Dr. Wenger intuited would work for me. Some reality:
Below you will see my different scores on my Spanish exercises, which included conversations and short
texts. The scores prior to the experiment:
11/20; 11/17; 8/16; 8/16; 14/14(!); 10/18; 13/20; 2.5/7. (Average: 60.6%)
During the experiment, using the Sing-Song-technique, and for new exercises, my scores were as followed:
16/18; 13/21; 17.5/19; 15/22; 18.5/20; 17/21; 16/18; 17/20!

(Average: 80.1%)

In terms of learning this is phenomenal! Sometimes I could hear my melodies (in Spanish!) coming back
into my head spontaneously at a time I wasn't even exercising! Note that the 13/21 (lowest score) was due to
the fact I sing-sang after I made my translations, whereas in the other cases I did it prior to the translations...
It works!!
Win Wenger at www.winwenger.com