diff --git a/word_language_model/model.py b/word_language_model/model.py
index 8023ac430f..1b972abb91 100644
--- a/word_language_model/model.py
+++ b/word_language_model/model.py
@@ -104,22 +104,16 @@ def forward(self, x):
         x = x + self.pe[:x.size(0), :]
         return self.dropout(x)
 
-class TransformerModel(nn.Module):
+class TransformerModel(nn.Transformer):
     """Container module with an encoder, a recurrent or transformer module, and a decoder."""
 
     def __init__(self, ntoken, ninp, nhead, nhid, nlayers, dropout=0.5):
-        super(TransformerModel, self).__init__()
-        try:
-            from torch.nn import TransformerEncoder, TransformerEncoderLayer
-        except BaseException as e:
-            raise ImportError('TransformerEncoder module does not exist in PyTorch 1.1 or '
-                              'lower.') from e
+        super(TransformerModel, self).__init__(d_model=ninp, nhead=nhead, dim_feedforward=nhid, num_encoder_layers=nlayers)
         self.model_type = 'Transformer'
         self.src_mask = None
         self.pos_encoder = PositionalEncoding(ninp, dropout)
-        encoder_layers = TransformerEncoderLayer(ninp, nhead, nhid, dropout)
-        self.transformer_encoder = TransformerEncoder(encoder_layers, nlayers)
-        self.encoder = nn.Embedding(ntoken, ninp)
+
+        self.input_emb = nn.Embedding(ntoken, ninp)
         self.ninp = ninp
         self.decoder = nn.Linear(ninp, ntoken)
 
@@ -132,7 +126,7 @@ def _generate_square_subsequent_mask(self, sz):
 
     def init_weights(self):
         initrange = 0.1
-        nn.init.uniform_(self.encoder.weight, -initrange, initrange)
+        nn.init.uniform_(self.input_emb.weight, -initrange, initrange)
         nn.init.zeros_(self.decoder.bias)
         nn.init.uniform_(self.decoder.weight, -initrange, initrange)
 
@@ -145,8 +139,8 @@ def forward(self, src, has_mask=True):
         else:
             self.src_mask = None
 
-        src = self.encoder(src) * math.sqrt(self.ninp)
+        src = self.input_emb(src) * math.sqrt(self.ninp)
         src = self.pos_encoder(src)
-        output = self.transformer_encoder(src, self.src_mask)
+        output = self.encoder(src, mask=self.src_mask)
         output = self.decoder(output)
         return F.log_softmax(output, dim=-1)