Here's the Reason Why You FORGET Words Speaking English

Abhor blatant construe,

demoralize, abhor

blatant

construe, demoralize,

abhor blatant construe, demoralize.

So, Cassé, as I was saying,

I believe constructive feedback is really important.

I agree.

And what do you think of negative feedback that only focuses on criticism?

Oh, I think it's terrible.

That kind of negative feedback is so... de...

demor... de... demor...

Do you spend hours

or even days trying to memorize new words just to forget them all the time?

Well, if you've ever been in this situation, you are not alone.

It's extremely challenging trying to learn new words in English.

But here's the thing:

What if I told you that you're trying to learn new words the wrong way?

The reason why you struggle to learn new words is much deeper than it seems.

And that's why in today's lesson,

we're going to discuss all about the right way to learn new words.

So get ready, because this lesson will change the way

that you think about learning vocabulary forever.

But before we start, here at RealLife English, every week we make lessons just like this

that help you go from feeling like a lost, and insecure English learner

to being a confident and natural English speaker.

So if that sounds like what you want for your English,

then be sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell down below.

And that way you won't miss any of our new lessons like this one.

First, you need to understand how vocabulary acquisition works.

So there are two main stages that you need to go through

in order to learn new words.

Exposure and activation.

Exposure is basically about making sure that you are being exposed to new words

in English on a regular basis.

And how can you do this? Simple.

You can do this by watching movies or TV series,

listening to podcasts, reading blogs or books, talking to people,

taking an English course, taking private classes with a teacher.

And so on. There are several ways for you

to regularly have exposure to new English words.

Now, you might be thinking, Ethan, I already know about this.

That's obvious.

But now we get into the second stage of the process.

And this is what many people fail to do, right?

Activation to activation has to do with activating the new vocabulary

in your brain.

You do this by coming across a word multiple times

within a certain period of time.

So it's not enough for you

to learn a word once based on how our brain absorbs knowledge,

you need to see that word being used many times. Depending on the word,

you might need to see it again and again for a few days, a few weeks,

or even a few months.

When it comes to activating new vocabulary, there are a few different strategies

that you can try: Have a vocabulary notebook and review it constantly.

List can work, but I recommend that you work with short lists

Then you can review that list several times throughout the day.

Pasting post-its around the house with the words you're trying to learn,

also works for some people.

Now, of course, these strategies could work for you, especially

if you are a more visual learner like I am and you enjoy taking notes.

But if you don't see yourself doing any of these things, don't worry.

Here's another tip that I can give you.

So you should consume as much English content as possible daily

and only look up the meaning of the word that stand out to you.

Or that call your attention. Oh, and one more thing.

When you learn a new word, you need to consciously make an effort to use it.

For example, a few years ago, I studied for the C1 exam for Catalan

and there was an example sentence with a word that I didn't know yet, "Iluir".

I asked my teacher what it meant, and it's quite a common word,

and she was surprised that I didn't know it, as my speaking was already quite

advanced. Once I knew that this means "something that stands out or catches the eye",

I started noticing it all over the place, watching TV series, having conversations

with friends, reading.

So if you see a word like this that you don't know, but you feel that

you should, then certainly look it up or ask someone else the meaning.

Probably like me, you'll start noticing that word all over the place.

Pay attention to the context.

This makes it much easier to remember and understand the word on a deeper level.

As we've been discussing, it can be really frustrating when you learn a new word.

But then when it's time to speak, you completely forget it.

So one of the best solutions to

this is to use it as soon as possible, after you learn it.

So after you finish this lesson, jump on the RealLife App,

which is the only place

where you can speak English anytime, anywhere at the touch of a button

with other English speakers from all around the world.

Check out what one of our app users, Thura has to say about the app.

I've been using the RealLife app for more than three months

and it has been helping me a lot.

I've made a lot of friends

and I even created a local speaking club with people I found on the app.

So just like Thura, you can improve your English considerably with our app.

You can also have fascinating

conversations about your life, your passions and different cultures.

Or you could even teach someone else

about the vocabulary acquisition stages that we're discussing today.

So download it now for free by clicking up here or in the description down below.

Or you can just look for RealLife English in your favorite app store.

Still on activation,

aside from having regular contact with English and seeing words

multiple times, you can study vocabulary in a more deliberate way.

Here at RealLife English,

we're big proponents of deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice means studying with intention.

It's about setting aside time in your day to sit down

and actively study the language, not just consuming it passively. Deliberate

practice is the missing ingredient

if you feel stuck at intermediate level. Remember how I said

in the beginning that there are deeper things involved in learning new words?

It's not just about memorizing the definitions.

So here are three practical ways that you can study vocabulary

more deliberately

So, aside from checking the basic meaning or dictionary definition of a word,

it's also really important that you start to attune

to its connotation. Now, connotation is the feel of a word,

it's the vibe that it gives you and certain words,

although they can mean the same thing, can have different connotations.

So one word could have more of a positive connotation, or another word

could have more of a negative or not ideal connotation.

So let's take a look at some examples to help make this clear for you.

So the words slim, scrawny, or gaunt

all basically mean the same thing, which is skinny.

However, both scrawny and gaunt have negative connotations. Scrawny

means that someone is unpleasantly thin,

often with their bones showing, and gaunt has a similar meaning.

Someone who is skinny because maybe they're unhealthy or sick

and also has a bit more of a literary feel to it.

However, the word slim means someone that is thin and looks attractive

because of that quality.

Let's take a look at another example.

The words rugged and brute can both be used to describe certain men.

They both mean to look or seem not delicate.

Actually

strong. Now, which of these two words do you think has a positive connotation?

And which one has a negative connotation?

Right.

Brute has a negative connotation.

It means someone who is strong but also who can be rough or even violent.

A man with rugged looks is also someone who is rough and strong,

but in a way that makes him seem attractive.

Next, it's important to understand the grammatical form of the word.

Let's take interesting, for example, which is an adjective.

However, it can come both before or after the noun.

Let's look at some examples: so we can have an interesting book.

Or we can say the book is interesting,

but this doesn't always happen with adjectives.

The adjective main can not come after the noun.

So we would say the main point, not the point is man.

And the adjective asleep, on the other hand, can only come after the noun.

So we'd say the baby is asleep.

Not the asleep, baby.

Word formation is also very useful for vocabulary.

Now, word formation is basically taking a root word

and creating new words by using prefixes and suffixes.

Let's look at some examples.

We have the noun fortune, but we can change it in many ways.

We have fortunate, an adjective, fortunately, an adverb,

misfortune,

another noun, unfortunate, an opposite adjective,

or unfortunately, which is the opposite adverb.

Now breaking the words down

like that is a really great way to add tons of vocabulary to your base.

And in fact, that's why we created a whole lesson all about work formation.

So I highly recommend that you check that out after you finish this video

because it could help you to learn thousands of words in a really simple way.

So be sure to check that out down in the description below or by

clicking up here. Another important aspect has to do with collocations.

Now, collocations are words that tend to be found together,

and usually it's a group of two or three words.

So let's look at some examples.

Now, you know that the words fast and quick mean pretty much the same thing,

but we would never say, for example, quick food.

We say fast food, right?

If you say quick food,

people will understand you, but it might sound just a little bit strange.

On the other hand, we probably wouldn't say, I'm going to take a shower.

We would say, I'm going to take a quick shower.

And again, probably someone will understand

if you say, I'm going to take a shower.

But taking a quick shower sounds much more natural.

And this just goes to show that it's really important that you think of words

in chunks, not just learning individual words one by one, because this

so often happens that you will find them within a certain context.

So we have a whole lesson all about word chunks,

which I also highly recommend that you check out

and it's linked down in the description.

Something else you can do

is check out a really cool website called FreeCollocation.com.

Now, this is a collocation dictionary by simply typing in the word

that you want to learn.

You can find all sorts of other words that often collocate with it.

So it's very common in English for words to have multiple meanings.

And this is why it's so important

that you're in touch with English every single day,

because you might be watching something or listening to a podcast, for example,

and come across a word that you know, but not understand it in that context.

Because it's actually being used differently.

Let's look at an example.

So the word hit,

you probably know, means to punch or to physically assault someone.

But then what if you're watching TV series and you actually see it used like this:

So if we take the context into consideration here,

we can see that hit does not actually mean to punch someone.

Rather, it means that I want some more wine or pour me some more wine.

Now, it's really important that you learn words through the context

that you use different examples in when you're studying or if you're using

a spaced repetition software like Anki or Memrise,

and not just learning the words again individually.

You can always double check it with a dictionary like Cambridge Dictionary

or maybe if it's slang with Urban Dictionary

to get all of the possible meanings of a certain word.

Something else that can happen is pronunciation differences.

So English is such a diversely used language that many times

you'll find a different way of pronouncing the same word.

This can also happen

through different variations like British or American or another accent.

Great example is the words either and neither.

Now, in the United States, most people would say either.

However, in British English you would probably hear pronounce either.

And in Canadian English they actually mixed both by saying either.

And these variations don't only happen with pronunciation.

It can also be that we use different words depending

on the English that you're learning or the native that you're listening to.

So, for example, in the United States we would call this a truck,

but in the UK they would call this a lorry.

So as you've seen today,

so much more goes into learning vocabulary and simply memorizing new words.

So hopefully the different strategies and processes that we've gone over today

will help you a lot to remember words is next time that you are speaking

and that you can really apply them to your study.

And now I want to hear from you.

What's a word that you learned recently and what does it mean or maybe

in what context did you see it in?

Let us know

down in the comments below. And why don't you see

if you can learn some new words from other learners as well?

So in today's video,

you learned the

the two stages of vocabulary building, which first off, are exposure,

which mean to have as much contact with the language

as you possibly can, and activation, which is reviewing the words

that you learn multiple times and actually putting them to use

by speaking them as soon as you possibly can.

And we also looked at three practical ways that you can study or activate

vocabulary more deliberately, which include looking at the connotation,

understand the grammatical form of the word.

Words can have multiple meanings and pronunciation variations

And to expand your vocabulary.

Right now, I highly recommend that.

Next, you watch this lesson where you can learn 26 advanced words

that will help you sound more natural

in formal situations, including four that we encountered

at the beginning of this video. Check out a clip from that now.

So if it's your goal in English to be able to connect with anyone,

to talk about anything and to feel like a more independent user

of the language, then you're going to need more advance words.

That's why in today's lesson, we're going to look at 26 super

advance words for every letter of the alphabet that can help you

to feel more sophisticated and sound more confident when you speak.