In the 1960s, Ladybird Books published a series of study cards in history, science, and English.

Three decades later as a young homeschooled boy I was given the task of copying some of those Ladybird history cards by hand.

These days rote learning and copying get a bad rap, but I actually have fond memories of copying those cards.

And you know the funny thing?

Over two decades later, I can still remember the stories of Boudica and others that I copied.

Why?

Well, it turns out that writing things by hand actually engages your long-term memory far better than any other approach, including reciting.

(You can read about some of the research on this here, if you’re interested.)

This explains why school teachers used to make their students do lines – there’s something about it that forces the idea into your brain.

Years later I read about a language learner who made use of this research to learn vocabulary simply by copying the words and their translations over and over, without trying to memorise them.

And he ended up being fluent in like 5 languages or something.

Robert Louis Stevenson used to hand copy the authors he admired.

So did Jack London, Benjamin Franklin, Hunter S. Thompson, and many others.

Clearly, there’s a lot of power in handcopying.

So a while back, I thought – why not apply this to language learning?

As you probably know, my whole approach is focussed on reading and never trying to remember or trying to learn.

So I decided to try a different approach, and copy out whole stories, phrase by phrase, with the translation.

I tried it with Latin.

No grammar, no exercises, nothing except reading by copying.

The result?

In just a few short weeks, I found whole phrases and ideas of the language were stuck in my mind, and I understood them instantly whenever I saw them.

And the coolest part was those same phrases also came to mind when I wanted to express my ideas in Latin.

This week I want to show you how smart, simple, and immediately result-producing it is to learn – nay, master – Latin by hand copying in just 25 minutes a day.

You don’t have to have studied ANY Latin at all.

And you can pretty much do it with completely free resources available online if you want to.

If you’ve been looking for a way to build a daily habit that gives you real fluency, you won’t want to miss this week’s emails.

I’ll dive in tomorrow with some examples of how this method works.

Talk then!

Alexander