How to Learn a Language While Sleeping
I wrote another article on this subject the other day concerning the question “is it possible to learn a language while sleeping?” and it got me thinking that some people are probably going to want to know the best way of going about this effectively. So, in this post I am going to discuss how to actually go about learning Japanese in your sleep.
Admittedly the way I do it is really simple and there isn’t too much to it, but if you don’t really know anything about passive listening then I would definitely keep reading to find out more. Most of what I talk about in this post can be applied to passive listening while asleep and passive listening while awake.
点けっ放しにしろ！
What ever content you use you will want to make sure that you are listening to it all through the night to give your brain as many chances as possible to pick up new words and phrases. To make sure this happens, check that your device is fully charged/charging. I use an old iPod touch solely for sleep listening so that I don’t run my main listening device out of juice for the following day.
You should also make sure that whatever app you are using to playback your audio has a loop feature so that if you listen to all your content, it will go back to the beginning and start playing them all again. I’ve woken up numerous times without any Japanese in my ears due to having the wrong setting setup on an app or my battery running out. This might not seem like a big deal but the time lost can add up. Every second counts.
Find Some Good Content to Listen to
This is the most important step. My biggest recommendation has got to be audio books, podcasts or the news, and when I say audio books I mean books that are non-fiction. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been woken up to someone screaming in say, キリノセカイ, or when the narrator gets really excited in Harry Potter. Fiction is perfectly fine though, providing you find something where the narrator just reads the book out-loud and doesn’t add anymore to it.
When I first started learning Japanese, I really only had access to audio from some anime that I owned so I had to make do with that, but it was a nightmare as I really struggled to get to sleep listening to battle noises and people shouting クソッタレ！ぶっ潰してやる！I would stay well clear of action based anime, dramas and films.
Beginner audio CD’s with simple phrases like “Hello.”, “How are you?”, and “The weather is good today.” aren’t going to do you any good either. This stuff is just too simple and a waste of time, especially if it has any English in there as well. You want to be soaking your brain in Japanese so that you can get used to the language. That’s not to say go for super difficult audio books, but don’t waste your time on stuff that is way too easy. Find content that’s in-between.
Of course, if you are at a higher level then aim for harder materials but for anyone else, just aim for content that isn’t annoying and that won’t wake you up. Providing it’s not too easy, the difficulty really doesn’t matter. This is why I suggest using audio books, podcasts and the news. A good place to look is on Amazon’s audible which you can get for free for a month, and then just cancel if you don’t want it anymore. But the other big place to look is LibriVox, which is an awesome resource by the way. All the audio books on the site are free public domain and are read by volunteers from all around the world in all sorts of languages. It’s incredible! So yeah, go check that out to see if there’s anything good for the language you are learning.
Something else that I thought could be really good recently is ASMR, specifically ASMR videos that include constant talking. Putting aside the concept of ASMR, these videos are often very soothing (although sometimes very strange), and the content is literally designed to get you to go to sleep, so it’s perfect and it’s FREE! Win win! If you are learning Japanese then I would recommend the following Japanese ASMR YouTubers:
hatomugi ASMR
Reirei
黒ごま-ASMR-
あゆみみみみみみみ
Sure, ASMR videos have a tendency to be a bit “wacko” but if it helps get you to sleep, and you learn some Japanese on the side, then it’s all good stuff in my books.
Note: There seems to be a lot of foreigners studying Japanese that make ASMR videos in Japanese. These include people from Korea and Taiwan so please check that what you are listening to is from a native speaker. If you aren’t careful, you could accidentally pick up bad Japanese. Check with a native if you are unsure 🙂
I don’t do selfies… Anyway, I’d totally recommend these CozyPhones which you can get on Amazon. They’re cheap, super comfortable and perfect for sleep listening.
If you are looking for something with a bit more “umph” so that you can clearly hear the Japanese that you are listening to then MattVSJapan recommends the Bose QuietComfort 35.
Sleep Over Listening
I just want to make this known, but sleep is really important. Not only is sleep deficiency super bad for your health, but getting a good nights sleep can keep you on your game. If you aren’t getting good consistent sleep, then this will have an effect on how well your brain is able to pick up on new words and vocabulary.
According to the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, “People who are sleep deficient are less productive at work and school. They take longer to finish tasks, have a slower reaction time, and make more mistakes. After several nights of losing sleep—even a loss of just 1–2 hours per night—your ability to function suffers as if you haven’t slept at all for a day or two.”
It’s really important that you realize this and that you focus on getting high quality sleep. SleepFoundation.org recommend that you stick to a consistent sleep schedule where you go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day. This is to help regulate your body clock, thus giving you much higher quality sleep throughout the night.
Personally I love to use the Sleep as Android app which detects which phases of sleep you are in. It will wake you up during a light sleep cycle instead of a deep sleep cycle to prevent you feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck when you get out of bed.
If you are on iPhone then I would recommend Sleep Cycle alarm clock.
By now you probably realize how important I think sleep is. I honestly think that good sleep = a good mind. Getting great sleep will increase the chances of your brain picking up new words and patterns when passively listening to a language, especially when you are passively listening in your sleep!
One of the other points I also wanted to make here was that I would value a good nights rest, over passive sleep listening. Yes, I believe that passive sleep listening probably has a some form of an effect on acquiring language, and so do the researchers, but it’s not nearly enough to warrant getting bad sleep.
So if you really can’t stand having audio constantly playing in your ears, while trying to get to sleep, then just don’t bother. It’s not the end of the world. Get better sleep and use passive listening throughout your day instead, you will get much better results, and be a happier person, than if you where to put your sleep schedule at risk just because you want effortless passive language acquisition.
Getting a comfortable pair of earphones can also make the world of difference when sleeping. Luckily there are some “sleep phones” on Amazon which will prevent that feeling of being stabbed in the ear when you turn over on your pillow. They are definitely worth the money.
Keep Listening After You Wake Up
Don’t just rip your earphones out the moment you wake up! Keep them in, because this is prime time to get even more language into that brain of yours. If you can, listen to as much as you can throughout the day too. This is where the real progress kicks in as your brain is definitely picking up words and patterns throughout your day. This was one of my main tactics for learning Japanese in 18 months. I spent well over 20 hours a day with, at the very least, 1 earphone in listening to Japanese content aimed at native speakers. And now I can understand Japanese, so something obviously worked.
Passive listening is easy to do, you just have to let the people around you know what you are doing so that they don’t think you are rude for ignoring them :p If you live in Japan then I would recommend this pair of earphones on Amazon that allows you to hear your surroundings while still being able to hear your audio. That way you can still work and do passive listening without the worry of annoying your coworkers for not listening to them. There’s also these earphones if you live in the US.
If you have any other suggestions for content that you like to listen to in your sleep or for any tactics that you may have then let me know them in the comments below! 😀
Click here for more information on learning Japanese
マット
By Matthew Hawkins2018/01/28Follow me on TwitterHere are some of my favorite tools and sites for learning Japanese
Thank you for reading this blog post, which I hope you found useful for learning Japanese. Here are some of the most useful websites that I’ve found for finding Japanese content to use for immersion as well as some really useful learning tools to help you through your Japanese studies. Some of these are affiliate links which just means that if you decide to use these sites by clicking the following links, then I will earn a commission. But honestly speaking, these are the sites that I use and recommend language learners, even my friends, to use anyway.
Anki Tools: To get started, I really like Migaku for Anki. By itself, Anki is already a super useful tool for language learners but Migaku allows for integration with websites like YouTube and Netflix, allowing it’s users to create flashcards from the shows and videos that they are watching, as they are watching them. If you use my link you can get an extra month for free.
Speaking Practice: For this I absolutely love iTalki. There are thousands of Japanese teachers on the platform that are available at all times of the day to have conversations with you, in Japanese. Some teachers take a more traditional approach while others are just there to chat, these are the ones I would recommend if you are looking to improve your conversational Japanese. Lessons start from just $5 and there’s no long term commitment, I highly recommend them.
Immersion: I’ve used a lot of different earphones / headphones over the years but by far the one that has come out on top is the NENRENT S570. This is a singular in-ear earphone that matches your skin tone to keep it discrete, meaning you can listen to the language you are learning while at work, or school. For a full list of tools and gadgets I recommend for maximizing your immersion time, check out this blog post.
Thank you!! I totally missed that in the AJATT table of contents…
Oh, thank you! That does answer the exact question I asked…!
Hey! First of all, congratulations on your progress and great work here and on youtube, I hope to reach your level one day as well. I have a question. How exactly did you go about reading during beginner/intermediate phases of learning Japanese? Did you look up every word? Some of the words? Or did you just read without using the dictionary whatsoever? Reading seems to be a crucial part of AJATT, but Khatzumoto’s articles on reading are quite vague. Intensive and extensive reading methods seem to lead to very different results in the long run, and I’m not sure how to read for the best results. What method did you use? Thanks
You are right, Khatz didn’t go into it too much and I feel like one of the reasons he got so good so quickly was because he read a lot, probably a lot more than I have, but he didn’t talk about it that much so it’s hard to tell. I do agree with the information he does have on reading though in the respect that you should treat it much like listening, i.e. do as much of it as you can, don’t worry about not understanding it, and only learn sentences/look up words that stick out to you/that you want to learn. My personal experience changed as I went through the process and the beginning stages were very much, read, read, read without understanding practically anything. At this stage I focused more on reading than looking up words, otherwise I would be constantly looking up words and not reading. To me, this stage was about linking kanji meanings with kanji readings by using texts with furigana or audio. I still used the dictionary when I kept seeing words that I thought I had already seen before, as I knew these where important, and would check them in jisho.org. As I progressed and I began to understand more than I didn’t, I started to really look up a lot of words. until I got to a point where I looked up nearly every new word I came across (by this time though it wasn’t that many so it didn’t bother me). I didn’t use any one of extensive or intensive reading, I guess I used a combination of the two as I saw fit. I just read and if I wanted to know a word because it bugged me then I would check it, or add it to anki to learn later, but if on that particular day I didn’t feel like looking up words then I would just read for the fun of it. I think that’s what’s the important thing, do what you want to do/feel is right. If you force yourself to lookup every word under the sun then you risk dying of boredom but if you read without looking up any words then progress is going to be a bit slower.
Yup. I’m going to suck it up and just read and so be it if I don’t quite get it. I haven’t read as much as I should’ve.
Hi, I saw your post on Reddit a few weeks ago, and have been enamored with yours / AJATT’s style of learning since then! It’s mostly really helped me realize that I’ve been going way too easy on myself in all aspects of learning. And I’ve seen significant improvements already, so thank you!
I’ve been meaning to ask you what your opinion is on why immersion worked so well for you / Khatzumoto / others, but yet it doesn’t work a lick on some people who are living in Japan and aren’t fluent even after years? My apologies if you have addressed this elsewhere btw. Is it solely bc they must still be looking at a certain amount of content in their target language? Or is it because you’re targeting something else during immersion that they aren’t?
That’s brilliant! I’m glad it’s going well for you 🙂
I never really thought about it before but my bet would probably be on how “active” their immersion is, so basically how much active listening, reading and studying they do. I feel like the more you try to actively pay attention to the language, to notice patterns or meanings of words etc, the more you become able to understand and therefore the more you can get from your immersion environment. If you can picture it like a snowball falling from a mountain getting bigger and bigger the further it falls, it’s kind of like that. The more you know, the more you can notice and therefore the more you can learn.
I can’t speak for everyone of those people but my guess would be that they aren’t paying active attention to the language or aren’t spending enough time with the language. They could be in Japan but be in an English immersion environment, much the same as I am currently in England but in a Japanese immersion environment.
There may be some other reason that I am unaware of but I am pretty sure it’s to do with how much one tries to understand the language that makes the process faster than just passively listening to it. Reading and the SRS are also huge factors that seem to speed up the process too. Lots of reading is a great way to expand ones vocabulary greatly and a brilliant way to notice more words and patterns, and the SRS is an amazing tool to help remember everything and improve your output.
Thanks so much for responding with such a thoughtful answer! It makes a lot of sense. I’ll also start thinking more about how actively I’m paying attention to my immersion.