3 Easy Ways to Improve Your English Vocabulary ALONE

So you've probably been through a situation

where you either needed to say a word, but you couldn't remember it

or that you had to speak in English, but you simply didn't know how to say

something, even though you know it perfectly in your own language.

I totally know how you feel.

When I was learning Hebrew, I found it so complicated because virtually

every word was completely different from the equivalent in English.

(I learn almost every day, but during 2 weeks I travelled)

I had to think so hard just to put together a sentence

because the vocabulary did not come naturally to me.

So to help you (and me!),

this lesson brings three expert's easy

and practical tips to improve your vocabulary.

Each of them has learned at least five foreign languages.

So trust me that they have a lot of experience learning a lot of words.

And if you are anything like me, when you learn a language,

you want to be able to understand it even when it is spoken fast.

You want to be understood by anyone and actually use that language

to connect with others, not just be stuck studying in the classroom.

Well, this is exactly what will help you to do here on RealLife English.

So don't wait to join our global community.

Subscribe so that you don't miss any of our new lessons.

So I thought about starting by asking you, Idahosa,

one of our learners recently shared that she wants to express herself

in English, the same that she does in her native language.

Now, I know this is true for many learners

that have been studying English for a very long time.

So what's something that they can do in order to build

those sets of vocabulary skills that they need?

So to give the example of the student,

not too long ago, he was in Mexico and he had some kind of,

you know, infestation of some kind of insect, whatever.

So he had to call the exterminator.

Right? So cool. So you're going to have an experience

when exterminator comes to your house.

What's going to happen?

What would you if it was America,

what kind of interaction would you have with them?

You'd explain to him this, right?

So we had a spreadsheet up and I had him talking in English

and he's like, Oh, I'd ask him this, and then I'm

putting in these vocabulary words and the respective columns of characters,

actions, settings like exterminator, you know, roach, whatever. Like all that kind of stuff.

And as he keeps talking you populate it.

And then it's like, cool. Which of these words do you know which ones you don't?

And then you go, Okay, I don't know this one so I was looking up.

All right, great. Now practice making, you know, practice,

you know, role-play and do that scene using these words.

So the idea is you think, what am I, either you think ahead of time

what am I going to need to accomplish what I think I need to accomplish?

But perhaps even better, is you going to actually live the experience?

And then you didn't have something, you know, I wish I had the word for Airbnb.

I wish I had the word for this. Right?

So coming off of the experience

and reflecting back on it, then you say, Okay, I needed these words.

So the key, the key idea here is relevance.

And it's like, what's relevant can only be relevant personally to you.

So one of the things I try to cultivate in people is to cultivate a sensibility of relevance.

Yeah, it's very, very active way of learning, for sure.

And going off this too, because I think it's really interesting

that you have these different categories that allow you to to practice role playing,

or to practice stringing sentences together,

which is it's again, like learning in chunks is much more effective

than just trying to memorize a list of vocabulary.

Now, do you agree that memorizing lists of words is not very effective?

Pause the video for a second

and share with us how you learn new words in English.

Now I want to hear from Gabe what he would advise learners to do

to actually remember information so that you can use those new words

that you learned when you have the opportunity to speak.

So there are programs, computer programs that will figure out

when you should review a thing before you forget it.

These are the spaced repetition programs that people use like Anki.

That part is a problem that has been solved pretty well.

And so we have sort of functional words.

We have words that change and then we have word order

and those three things.

those are the labels you can apply to every single language of all humanity.

Those are the only techniques we have.

And so if you have a way to store that in terms of like,

if there's a way to present that in a flashcards

such that you actually store that information in your head,

then you can take apart any language as long as you can understand

the gist of the story and then encode those into flashcards.

Let's say we take the word "by" as a pretty straightforward one.

So like this book is by Shakespeare, the word by doesn't look like anything,

but in the context of this book is by Shakespeare

or the play was by Shakespeare.

If I know the word play and I know the word book,

I can have a sentence like the book is _____ Shakespeare,

and I can have a picture of Shakespeare and have a picture of him writing the book, whatever I want.

I mean, there's a million pictures that could work for that thing.

It could just be people playing on stage. It could just be, I'm holding a book, lots of things.

But as long as I understood the gist of that sentence and then I chose the right picture

that helped me remember that experience of being like, Oh, "by."

That's the one you use to tell who wrote the thing.

Then tomorrow, when I see that flashcard and it says this book is _____ Shakespeare

and it shows a picture of someone holding a book,

then I can think, Oh yeah, that was that "by" thing.

That was the functional word that lets me tell who wrote the thing.

Same deal with word order. If I just have a flashcard that says, you know, Why is it

the book is by Shakespeare versus the book Shakespeare by?

And so I can have another sentence that says the book is Shakespeare,

and it says "by" - put this in the sentence in the right spot,

Same deal. I'm not relying on translations, I'm

not relying on anything except for the word order part.

And then similarly, with conjugations, you know, if I have a thing

like, you know, I would have done it and it says I _____ have done it.

And it asks, What's the dictionary form of this?

What's the original form? What is the form that this refers to?

And so would is the right answer of what it becomes. That's the right...

That's the vocabulary chunk.

That's that little fix piece in the exact same way that "by" was.

But the only thing special about word forms

is that there is the conjugated form that lands in that story.

And then there's some other form that lands in the dictionary.

You know, I'm going to the store.

Why is it I'm going, like the actual root form is to go?

And so I need to remember two bits of information instead of one.

I need to remember I am going to the store,

but I also need to remember that am going is a form of the word to go.

And so if I ask both of those questions, then that's how I store that information.

I ____, you know, I _______ to the store.

I have this picture of someone running to the store.

I remember because I had coded it myself, I picked the picture myself.

This is about something happening in the future.

Um, but now I'm asking a different question not just what

What's the fill in the blank, but what's the dictionary form there?

And I could think, Oh, to go.

That's enough to store all information on all languages.

It doesn't matter how complex the grammar is, as long as you can understand the story because,

you know, humans can only really mess with words in those three ways.

It allows you to store everything.

And so learning grammar is a matter of getting some exposure to stories.

There is benefit in you understanding the rules behind those stories. You know, I understand why

why is it I'm going is opposed to, you know, I'm gone.

You know, when do you use the ING form?

And so you understanding the rough rule and you say, OK,

I get the rule and I get how it applies to the story.

And now I'm going to learn it with one of these flashcards,

then that is enough for you to both retain the right word for the right context

and also retain the rule.

And when you've done both of those things, then you just move on to the next one.

It means that instead of having to do

grammar drills where you're going to do, I am going, I am walking, I am jumping

and just doing a thousand times, you got you do it twice

and then you move on to the next rule.

And twice is enough, honestly, once is often enough.

And so that's generally our approach towards grammar is expose someone to a

rule, give them three or four stories, allow them to choose a couple of stories

move them to the next rule.

You know, I have found that one of the best ways to solve this issue

of not remembering vocabulary is to use it as soon as possible after learning it.

So, for example, when I learn a new word or expression in Catalan,

I will try to fit it into a conversation that I have on that very same day .

Now I live in Barcelona, so it is easy for me to use my Catalan

every single day because it is the native language here.

But I know that a lot of you do not have the privilege of living in an English speaking country.

But guess what? one of the periods

when my Catalan improved the most was when I was living in Chile.

They're the only native language is Spanish.

So how did I do this?

Well, I followed a lot of the advice that you've heard so far.

I listen to the radio and music in Catalan.

I read books in Catalan, and I even use the website CouchSurfing to find Catalan speakers living

in Santiago, Chile, and made a few friends with whom I could practice regularly.

Any time I encountered a new word, I would note it down,

and once per day I would look up

the new vocabulary and expressions and add them to my Anki to practice.

I was so motivated because I did not want to lose contact with this language

just because I was not living in the country where it was spoken.

Now a lot of these things you can do easily with your English,

but if you are like most learners, then you are frustrated

because you do not have enough opportunities to speak English.

That is exactly why we developed the RealLife English app for you,

where you can practice your English speaking anytime,

anywhere at the touch of a button for free.

And in addition to this, you will improve your listening and learn tons of useful

vocabulary with interviews from experts and teachers like you are seeing today

with an interactive transcript and vocabulary definitions.

So give it a try. You can download it now, by clicking up here or down in the description below,

or simply search for RealLife English in the Apple App or Google Play store.

So I simply loved how both Idahosa and Gabriel mentioned stories

as a source for learning.

I know that Ollie is a big fan of them as well.

Can you explain how to make the most out of stories to learn the language?

The way that I like to apply the 80/20 rule

in language learning is to think, Ok, you can do all of these things.

You can read books, you can watch TV, you can speak, you can learn grammar.

But what is the one thing that's going to get you

most of your results and then just spend all of your time doing that.

So in my case, I don't really believe that learning lists of words is very helpful.

I don't believe that studying grammar is very helpful.

What I believe is that input should be

the thing that you spend most of your time on

because input is where you're going to actually learn the language

and have the opportunity to learn words and phrases, learn grammar.

And so that can be watching TV series like in your approach,

it can be reading books of stories, like in my approach.

But what I like to do when I'm learning a new language is to spend 80%

of my time on input and then just 20% of my time on other things.

There's always going to be a balance.

You need a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

That's inevitable.

But I think because of our education system, the way that we are taught in

schools, the balance is like this

in favor of traditional study and tests.

And like, that stuff isn't wrong.

That can be useful, but it shouldn't be 80% of what we do.

It should be maybe 20% of what we do.

And so I think in language learning in general, the balance is wrong.

We have the balance wrong and we need to reverse that balance

so we can spend a little bit of time learning grammar, whatever. But then most

of our time should be actually with input and immersion, which is how

we learn our mother tongue.

You know, if you think of how you learned English?

Ethan, you know, with it was by hearing English spoken by your family

all around you, by, you know, bedtime stories and things like that.

We learn, we learn our languages by being immersed in it.

And so that's the thing that we should borrow from native speakers.

Learning a language through a story is a very, very holistic experience.

It uses a whole brain.

And when you use your whole brain, you form connections,

and that's how memories are formed as well.

So stories give you the whole language altogether in one place.

And that's why they're so powerful.