Tips for Learning Vocabulary
Easy Ways to Help you Remember any Foreign Languge Words and Phrases
Sometimes learning vocabulary can be an uphill slog. Create the conditions for success with these simple but effective techniques and watch your word power increase!
Speaking a foreign language is one of the most rewarding things you can ever do. However, absorbing the huge amount of vocabulary necessary to learning any language can be time-consuming and discouraging. Here are some ideas that will set up the conditions for success in what can be a pretty dull and arduous task. Make things as easy as possible for yourself!
The Importance of Context
It is important to learn vocabulary in context, as your brain will retain groups of words more easily than isolated phrases that are scattered unevenly in your memory. For example, learn all your food vocabulary together.
Little and Often
…is the key to increasing your stock of words and phrases. This is the same basic principle behind getting fit – a muscle wastes away unless it is regularly exercised, and so it is with the brain’s capacity to learn a language. Remember, you acquired your mother tongue through constant absorption and practise over a number of years. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your Italian (or Swedish, or Arabic) vocabulary.
Firstly, decide how much time you have to learn vocabulary – twenty minutes a day? Ten minutes three times a week? Be realistic about this; don’t set yourself an over-ambitious target that leaves you doomed to failure. Next, find a time to do your vocabulary learning/revision, a time that you will be able to stick to. There is no point making an appointment with your vocabulary book when your favourite television programme is on – you are already fighting a losing battle.
Support your schedule with a timetable that is visible (on the fridge for example), and shows the days and times for revision. Each time you complete one of your sessions, tick it off on your schedule. Even better, create a progress chart to record your hard-earned successes.
Goals and Rewards
Because language learning is a long-term project, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of progress you are making. All too often we ‘plateau’, convinced that we are getting nowhere. This is why it is always a good idea to set up short-term goals and rewards. Here are some suggested targets:
- Stick 100% to your learning schedule for three days
- Spell seven new words without error by Thursday
- Say what your name is, where you live and what your job is in the target language by the day after tomorrow.
As for rewards, it is important that they are meaningful to you: a chocolate bar, a face mask, ten mindless minutes on Ebay or skateboarding– whatever it takes to motivate yourself. It may be necessary to 'hold to ransom' pleasures that you take for granted (no bubble bath tonight until that pesky Spanish is done) – decide if such draconian measures will work for you, or merely make you rebel!
Rewards can be used tactically – double them on days when you just feel that you cannot be bothered. In the early stages of setting up a regular learning schedule it is a good idea to reward yourself everyday just for sticking to the programme. You will then find that, just as an athlete can run for a bus more easily than a couch potato, so it gets easier to absorb more and more words and phrases. Your motivation increases and just keeping to the schedule is more likely to be rewarding in itself.
Read the related article at languagestudy.suite101.com/article.cfm/easy_ways_to_learn_vocabulary
