A Montpellier tutor who has spent two decades helping students overcome learning difficulties says people are often held back not by a lack of motivation, but by the way they are taught.
Jérôme Casanova, 42, has developed an approach to learning based on training the brain through repeated quizzes and self-testing, a method he says can help people remember information "accurately and automatically" over the long term.
Jérôme Casanova shares his memory quiz method on the Make Instant Links Quick (Milquiz) websiteJérôme Casanova
His free website, Make Instant Links Quiz (milquiz.org), is the first step towards a broader ambition: creating a Wikipedia-style learning platform where every subject can be mastered through questions and answers.
For those who fear they are too old to learn French, one of the strongest endorsements of the method comes from his own family.
"My mother is 65 and currently uses the method to learn English and Spanish," said Mr Casanova.
"She writes vocabulary lists, hides the answers and regularly tests herself. She says it helps her remember words that previously slipped away from her.
"Age is not the main barrier. Although the brain changes over time, I believe teaching methods matter more," he added.
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Originally from Lille, Mr Casanova grew up mainly in the Paris region and has lived in Montpellier since 2011. After enrolling at engineering school in Paris, he discovered that tutoring gave him a greater sense of purpose.
He has now worked with more than 200 students through private tuition company Acadomia.
"Seeing my very first student's face light up with understanding and excitement was a revelation. I instantly knew that this was what I wanted to do," he said.
Identify the right questions, hide the answers and repeat the process
Years of one-to-one teaching convinced him that many traditional learning techniques are ineffective because they rely too heavily on rereading notes and recognising information rather than actively recalling it.
"Students reread lessons, but because they are simply repeating what they have just seen, they often rely on short-term memory," he said.
Instead, he argues that learners should repeatedly attempt to retrieve answers before checking whether they are correct.
Improving memory connections is key for effective language learningJérôme Casanova
"We already know how to memorise some things perfectly," he said. "A French speaker knows thousands of words and hundreds of grammar rules and uses them effortlessly. Yet the same person may struggle to remember English vocabulary learned at school."
The difference, he believes, lies in how those memories are formed.
"When children learn their mother tongue, the world constantly presents them with ideas, objects and situations, and they have to find the words that match them. The answer is not handed to them immediately. They have to retrieve it, and that repeated effort strengthens the connection."
The principle became clear to him while learning Chinese. After spending hundreds of hours reading and repeating phrases, he found he made little progress until he forced himself to translate from French into Chinese without immediately looking at the answers.
"I started retaining information over the long term," he said.
"Eventually, I could build my own sentences based on my own ideas."
He is now seeking developers to help expand Milquiz and hopes more people will embrace what he sees as a simple principle: identify the right questions, hide the answers and repeat the process until recall becomes effortless.
