How to Learn Vocabulary and Not Forget It

- How do you learn vocabulary and not forget it?

Let me show you.

(upbeat bright music)

Hello there, my friend.

This is Keith from the Keith Speaking Academy.

So listen, how do you learn vocabulary?

Maybe you just memorise lots of new words,

maybe you repeat and recite words,

maybe you expose yourself by listening

and reading to lots of English.

All of that is really good, but it's not enough.

And actually learning vocabulary,

there is a very simple way to do it,

and that is discover, practise, and review.

That's all you need.

Great.

What? Oh, you want more?

Okay, so this discover, practise, and review

is it's actually not a line.

It's more of a circle, right?

Discover, practise, and review.

Some people think language learning

and vocabulary learning is a line that you go along

and you get better.

In fact, some people think it's a bit like shopping.

You know, in a coursebook you have a unit on food,

a unit on sports, a unit on clothes.

So some people think, well, that's a bit like shopping.

So they go to the food shop and they buy different items,

the vocabulary, put it in the bag.

They go to the sport shop, buy some shoes, some clothes,

different items in the bag.

They go to the clothes shop and buy the items

and put them in the bag and think, great.

I've gone to all these shops or units in my book,

and I've got lots of vocabulary.

Great, but the vocabulary is in your bag, not in your head.

That is the problem, and it's because vocabulary

is not just a line where you collect all the words.

The vocabulary that you learn,

this circle of discover, practise, and review

for each word or vocabulary

is actually means you've got lots of these little circles.

Developing as you're learning.

They're getting bigger, they're bouncing, they're changing,

sometimes they're crashing, sometimes they're overlapping.

This discover, practise, and review.

So listen, let me explain to you these three points

and how they can help you learn vocabulary effectively

so you don't forget it.

Okay, discover.

This is discovering new words.

Okay, so maybe you find or discover a new word

in a story you're reading, in a video you're watching,

or a podcast you're listening to.

And then you may guess the meaning,

or go to a dictionary and check.

So you'll see maybe more examples of the word,

and you discover its personality.

What do I mean by personality?

I mean, first of all, is it a noun, a verb,

an adverb, an adjective?

What does it sound like, the pronunciation?

Which friends does it have?

So in the example, you'll see a collocation,

at least one collocation.

The words that go together with this word.

So you're discovering all of these aspects of the word.

What does this mean for you?

It means it's really important

to learn vocabulary in context

so you can get this information, especially collocations,

and you know better how to use the word.

Secondly, it's important you know how to use a dictionary

because sometimes you can't guess the meaning,

and you have to check, and the dictionary can help you get

the phonetic script and other examples.

I think learning vocabulary is a bit like

being a detective, right?

When you come across a new word,

you have to think, is it important?

Is it worth finding out more?

If the word, you know, you can guess the meaning,

it's not very common, you can just let it go.

But if you see a word you don't know

but it keeps coming up again and again

and you don't know the word, then it's time to investigate.

Get your Sherlock Holmes hat on

and investigate the word, right?

Find out the meaning, the pronunciation,

all the things that I've mentioned.

As a minimum, I would say if a word is important,

make sure you know one meaning.

There will be many, but just get the main one

you need for the moment.

The word form, noun, verb, adjective, adverb,

the pronunciation, and one collocation.

And that's enough.

Over time, do you remember those little circles?

They will grow and you'll learn more

about the word over time.

Don't rush it.

Language learning is a marathon, right?

Not a sprint.

Let's take an example, right?

And I'll show you through the dictionary what we might do.

Imagine I've been reading a book and this sentence came up.

Jane thought the jumper was too expensive

so she decided to shop around.

Okay, I can guess more or less the meaning,

and I know the word shop as a noun.

But here I can see it's a verb.

So I just go into the Cambridge dictionary to check.

Now I say the Cambridge dictionary.

You can use Collins, Merriam-Webster,

they're all good, right?

The Oxford Learner's Dictionary is good.

Shop comes up as a noun.

I knew that, but it's also a verb, right?

To buy things in shops.

And interesting, the examples,

I like to shop at secondhand shops.

I'm shopping for food.

Okay, so I'm learning a bit more.

I'll make a note shop for, that's good to know.

But I want shop around, so that's a phrasal verb, right?

So I can just actually search for

'cause most dictionaries have phrasal verbs as an entry.

Shop around, to compare the price and quality

of the same or similar object in different shops.

So it's comparing the prices.

Great, got it. Okay.

I've got the pronunciation, which I can paste and copy.

I can even listen to it here.

It's great.

So now I'm building up all this information

like a criminal record on this word, right?

That's it.

The discover process.

The second step, practise.

And this is where you try to use the words, right?

I mean, it's all well and good having all these new words

in your book and your bag, but you need to practise them

to learn them more deeply.

Now you can practise through writing, through speaking,

through just repeating words, or better still,

all of the above, all of those, right?

Now this there's a very simple technique that I show

in my course, my online course,

which is Speaking Success System,

which is where you change different parts of a sentence.

So let's take an example, right?

For example, I am shopping around for a new jumper.

Okay, now I'm gonna ask you to repeat that

but to change the noun, okay?

To a new noun.

I'll show you a picture and then you change the word,

change the noun.

I'm shopping around for a new jumper.

Change new jumper to this.

I'm shopping around for a new phone.

Great. Now change to this.

I'm shopping around for a new car.

Excellent, now change the tense to the past tense.

I was shopping around for a new car.

Or it could be, I shopped around.

I shopped around for a new car, right?

Change to the future.

I will shop around for a new car.

Or, I'm going to shop around for a new car.

Could even say I will be shopping around

for a new car next week.

Okay, finally, you could change the person.

Instead of saying I like to shop around, what about she?

She likes to shop around, okay?

So through this kind of changing different words,

vocabulary, and different tenses,

you're practising and practising

and building your flexibility.

And then finally, you could just make up

little stories or make up your own sentences

which are true for you, right?

Something that is true for you.

I actually hate shopping around,

but my wife always shops around when we go to buy something.

It's absolutely true.

Saying things that are true for you

make the language more personal and deeper.

Your learning is deeper.

So what does this mean for you?

Practise, practise, practise.

That's what it means for you. (chuckles)

If you're on your own, you can practise like this repeating.

If you're, I dunno, with other people,

or have friends you can practise with in conversation,

you can do it.

Or just writing as well, or all of the above.

Let's move on.

Okay, part three is review, and this basically means

getting some kind of feedback

so you deepen your understanding of the word.

There are maybe two main ways to get feedback

on your practise of the word

and your understanding of the word.

One is the classic, a teacher or another student

corrects you when you make a mistake, right?

You say, oh, 'she shop around for new clothes',

and the teacher says, no, no, no, 'she SHOPS around'.

Oh right, got it, right.

So that's one way of getting feedback.

You can get feedback from a teacher.

Actually, you can also get feedback from real life.

I think this is quite funny

talking about the classroom is not real life.

Real life is out in the world.

No, but in the classroom I'm still alive.

Yes, but it's not real life.

But when you're out in the real world, okay,

the other real world.

I know many of you are living in English speaking countries

and when you're out practising language,

you say something and the reaction

of the other person, the native English speaker

makes you think, oh, something's not right,

and you often learn from that experience, right?

For example, shop around, maybe you go to a shop,

you speak to the shop assistant,

and you say something like, well, I like this jumper.

It's nice, but I'm going to shop around

your prices with other shops.

And the shop assistant goes, "What?

What do you mean shop around our prices?

You can't shop around our prices."

And you think, "Oh, something's not right."

And you discover maybe you go and check

or you ask and they tell you

that you can't shop around prices.

You shop around for something, but shop around

already means comparing price.

So you can't say shop around your prices.

Okay, so that situation gives you feedback.

The other way to get feedback

is when you expose yourself to English,

and you're listening to stuff,

watching videos, and reading,

and you see the word again and again in different contexts.

And each time you see the word in a new context,

it reinforces your learning and deepens your understanding

of how to use it, especially if you're

actively noticing that, right?

Making an effort to notice, ooh, shop around.

I learned that last week and here it is again.

And just notice how it's used.

Also, the fact that if you can learn vocabulary

not only in reading but in listening and watching,

the different medium, help you deepen your understanding.

So that's it, it's the review is basically

getting the feedback.

What does this mean for you?

I think it means that you must, as well as practise,

is you must expose yourself

to the language as much as possible

so that you can see it in different,

see the the word in different contexts

and different situations, and deepen your learning.

If you can get a teacher to give you feedback,

that could be useful.

Teacher correction is not always the best way

because as teachers know,

students often don't listen to correction.

They just carry on.

So correcting only works if the student is ready, right?

But there are other ways to get the feedback

and reviewing and exposing yourself to the language

is a great way to do it.

Great. So there it is.

Discover, practise, and review.

This cycle when you're learning vocabulary,

it's going on and on and I think being aware of that

and trying to do this is really useful.

I guess one of the key messages

is that when learning vocabulary, to not forget it,

try and see or hear vocabulary

in as many different ways as possible, different contexts,

and try and use it in lots of different ways as well.

This methodology, if you like, is a simplified version

of the methodology I use in my online course.

IELTS Speaking Success Get A Band 7+ GOLD

The methodology is the 'Speaking Success System',

and it's a way that I use to help students learn vocabulary

so they don't forget it.

What they do is that they discover the language

through the model answers in the course.

They're then practising chunks

like changing different parts of the sentence

with recorded videos, and I'm giving them prompts

and the answer as well.

They can practise in Breakout Rooms

so that's real-time Breakout Rooms

online with other students in very small groups,

and they can review the language with quizzes,

we have mini stories to help see the language

in different contexts.

All of that to help you learn vocabulary

so that you don't forget it.

Do remember it takes time, right?

It's not a line that you accumulate, it's not shopping.

It's building up all these little circles over time

with patience and practise.

So be patient, be curious, notice things,

and remember to be a detective.

You have to decide if it's worth investigating a word,

and then how best to investigate the word

so you can learn about it in a deep way.

Nice.

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And if you like this, then I think you should watch

the next video coming up, which will show you

how to think in English.

Oh, and by the way, if you want a summary of this

with some extra examples so you can start practising

and developing this habit

to help you learn vocabulary and not forget it,

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Take care my friend.

Bye-bye.

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