How to Powerfully Remember New Vocabulary

Most language learners, that’s not correct, virtually all learners I have come across attempt to remember vocabulary by drawing up vocabulary lists…usually translations in their mother tongue next to each word. Then most students come up to me and say my memory is so poor, I can’t seem to remember the words. There is an excellent reason for that and that is because they are using the wrong method.
Imagine trying to hammer a nail into a piece of wood using your hand alone. Surely after not too long you would be saying you can’t do it! The secret is the tool or method. Use the wrong one, like a hand, a spoon or virtually anything and you will get nowhere fast. The secret is the right tool.

Don’t get me wrong it is not your fault that you are using the wrong tool. If you look in most language learning books, exercises, language classes you will find that it is even recommended that you should learn your vocabulary using lists. In fact, why not work at memorizing 10, 20 words a day in that way!

Most students persist with this method and may even memorise them, but then how do you get memorized lists of words into your WORKING vocabulary. That is not often talked about…just assumed that once you memorise them, bingo, you will be able to use them. Well, for the vast majority of people that is far from the truth!

Of course, there are those students that this works for but I suspect very few. And the few that it works for they are doing something else, possibly unconsciously, to enable this to happen. I will not pursue right here what they might be doing…but by all means if you are one of them and you are aware of what you do, I would be pleased to have some input.

So what is a good method? To understand that, we need to have a fundamental understanding how our brain works. I will not be talking here about the neurons, the synapses etc. Instead I will be reflecting here on commonsense understandings we have based on experiences. You will find that there is a lot of research to substantiate what I am writing about here.

In life, we do not usually set out to remember things but we do. When we walk down the street and see a butcher in a shopping area close to our house, if we are interested in cooking or we have been asked to buy some meat, we will put that into our memory. We make no real effort to memorise, but we do put it into our memory. How? By linking it to our needs, what is important to us, or what might be important to us. I am sure that there are many people who would walk past the same butcher and not even notice it. Why? Because it has no value or interest to them at that point in time.

Here is a very important key, that is overlooked . Memory works best when we are dealing with things that are important to us, there and then. The second thing to note is that there were links made to our life, to what was already in our brain. From all the research we know that memory works best when the new item is hooked in to what we already know. The more the hooks, the better it is going to be remembered . So the more the hooks, or the links, the more likely that we are going to recall the item… and the more personal and immediate are the links, the more chance we are going to remember it.
So let’s give you an example. For arguments sake you want learn the meaning of “bottle” for example. Note I didn’t say memorise. Well, lets say you came across it in a picture dictionary, or an article and you looked it up in your dictionary… for now, let’s say a bilingual one.

You see the word or the picture of bottle and you will immediately know the meaning, but how will you retain the meaning of that word…or how will you avoid forgetting it…or how will you put it into your working memory.

The trick is to put it into your life, into sentences in the language you are learning. If you use your mother tongue, you will be asking your brain to do gymnastics of the kind that are difficult. Remembering words in two languages at the time you are speaking one is difficult.. and this is because different languages occupy different part s of the brain..so when you speak one…stay in that.
Ideally write 3 sentences, each of which are personal … the more emotion, or memories they evoke in themselves the better they will be.

# My new shampoo comes in a blue bottle.
# I dropped a bottle of milk yesterday and my sister got angry with me.
# that bottle of perfume that my wife just bought has a gorgeous scent.
#The bottle is on the table is not a good one… as it has on the surface no personal element, does not appear to evoke anything and in fact is a dreadfully flat sentence.

This process might seem cumbersome at first (and it is for a time!) but once you get the hang of it, you will learn to do it so fast that you will be hardly aware that you are doing it.
Another reason why this works well is that you have mobilized your brain to get the new language involved in your life. AND you have been forced to make sentences…hence you have made linguistic contexts for the new words. Can you see now why it is much more likely that once you have done this, you will never forget the word in question…or if you do, it will only be temporary. And because you have placed it into a linguistic context, you have also strengthened the language you are learning at the same time. Now isn’t that a bonus.

There are clearly other issues in remembering vocabulary but this technique I have just shown you will transform your mnemonic skills. That is of course if you utilize the technique and persist with it.
Andrew Weiler
andrew@strategiesinlanguagelearning.com
http://www.strategiesinlanguagelearning.com