Hey Bob,

You’re halfway through a sentence in the language you’re learning when a word simply vanishes.

Nothing fancy, either. Maybe the word hat or spoon.

You know you know it. You can almost see it.

But it's gone. You just can't remember the word.

It’s one of the more maddening moments in language learning.

And for many of us, it comes with a quiet worry attached.

“Is my memory going?”

As it turns out, it’s closer to the opposite.

Robert Bjork, a psychologist at UCLA, coined a term for this sort of struggle.

He calls it a “desirable difficulty.”

The effort of digging a word out is what tells your brain it’s worth keeping.

So when you finally get there, that word is more firmly lodged than if it had turned up straight away.

Annoying? Very. But it's super useful.

Which is why I’d gently suggest not reaching for your phone the second a word escapes you.

Give your brain a few seconds of honest rummaging first.

And if it still won’t come? Look it up, guilt-free. The rummaging was the useful part, and you’ve already done it.

So the next time a word goes missing mid-sentence, by all means be annoyed.

Just don’t be worried.

Chat soon,

Olly