Have you ever started singing a song and gotten stuck after the first few lines? Or maybe you can remember the first few digits of your credit card number but forget the rest?

Turns out these problems can be solved with “backchaining” – a memory-training technique that has many applications in life and language teaching!

What is Backchaining?

First, let’s talk about “chaining.” Say you want to train your dog, Pepper, to open the fridge and take out a can of beer.

You’ll want to break down this process into a series (or “chain”) of steps and have Pepper practice each step until he masters the entire sequence:

Train Pepper to go to the fridge when you point at the fridge.
Train Pepper to put his mouth on the fridge door and pull it open.
Train Pepper to take out a can of beer.

There are two ways you can train Pepper to master these behaviors. If you go in order (Step 1 → Step 2 → Step 3), that’s called “frontchaining.” If you do the reverse (Step 3 → Step 2 → Step 1), that’s “backchaining.”

If you choose to train Pepper using backchaining, you’d first reward him for taking out a beer. You’d repeat this until he masters this step. Next, you would encourage him to open the door himself, again reinforcing this step until he’s fully comfortable with it. Finally, you’d train him to go to the fridge when you point at it.

The best part is, once Pepper learns the first step, he already knows the rest of the sequence!

To sum up, backchaining is when you teach backwards, so that by the time you do the first step, the rest falls in place.

Backchaining for Pronunciation Practice

As you can probably guess, backchaining has many applications in language teaching. For instance, you can use backchaining to help students pronounce long, difficult words, such as “unnecessarily.” You would first read out the full word (“unnecessarily”), then build it up from the back like this:

By the time the student reaches the beginning of the word, the rest should “roll off their tongue”!

For other examples, check out this video in which a learner practices the words “unequivocally,” "specifically," and “ubiquitous” through backchaining. Or check out this video of someone who uses backchaining to practice saying pharmaceutical ingredients.

You can also apply backchaining to long phrases (“unnecessarily complicated”) and whole sentences (“This world is unnecessarily complicated”).

With frontchaining, your student focuses on getting to the end of the phrase or sentence. However, with backchaining, they can slowly practice linkage between words (e.g. "Thi-sworl-dis"), sentence stress ("This WORLD is..."), and other aspects of pronunciation that they would neglect when frontchaining!

📌 Takeaways

Of course, backchaining is not a fail-proof technique. There will be weak links in the chain: parts that the student struggles with and will need to work on before going back to the whole chain.

However, in general, it’s a great technique that can be applied to many situations, from vocabulary and reading exercises to business presentations.

Maybe you can think of ways to use it in your own life. I might use it to finally memorize my credit card number. Happy learning and teaching!