The Secret To Remembering New VOCABULARY | 8 Tips for English Learners

What's up guys?

I'm Ethan your RealLife English fluency coach

and in today's lesson i'm going to give you eight

different vocabulary learning recommendations that helped me a lot

in learning six different languages and also when I was teaching

that my students found not only effective but also a lot of fun

but before we get into the first tip I want to let you know that if you're new

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All right so this is the number one thing that you need to start doing if

you're not doing it already now a spaced repetition system or SRS

basically is technology that works along the same way that your memory does

so basically when you learn a new word in order for you to engrave it in your

memory you need to be reminded about it right

away within a minute but as time passes kind of the

increments that you need to be reminded about this word in order to remember it

get larger and larger so for example how a spaced repetition system will work

along with the science of memory is that if you add a new word that you

just learned to it it's going to remind you about it in

like one minute but then after that as long as you remembered it correctly

then it'll wait a little bit longer to wait 10 minutes and then it'll wait a

day and then three days and then an entire week before showing it to you

again and in this way you can really get to

the point where you never forget new words and expressions

that you learn.

So I've used a lot of different SRS apps over the years both

personally and with my students and so I'll recommend you a couple that

you can try out and find which one works best for you.

So the first two are really simple they just work

with that basic kind of technology and science that I told you about

and you can add images to them and sounds but

really you're just going to kind of add your vocabulary expressions there and

study them every day so the first one is probably one of the

most famous ones out there also is called Anki and actually on my Iphone

nowadays i use one called Flashcards deluxe

now these two are very similar in functionalities

but the reason I use flashcard deluxe on Iphone is because it is much cheaper

Anki has an app for Iphone but it's very expensive

although it is free on Android.

All right but maybe you want something a little

bit more complex so if that's the case then you could try

Memrise and Quizlet now these in addition to kind of that

basic functionality that works with your memory

also include things like quizzes and different little games

that help to not only increase your memorization but they also make it more

fun now the really great thing about this is

that you can download these apps on your phone and just use them anytime

anywhere so for me I really love to do this anytime that I have a few minutes

that I'm waiting for someone or you know if i'm at the doctor's

office or at the bank or anywhere else where I have a couple minutes I would

just pop out my phone and I will start studying that new

vocabulary that I have or the old vocabulary that I have to review a

little bit and this is really great way to make

productive use of your time and you'll just be remembering

vocabulary like never before.

Now if you only follow this first

recommendation you are going to see a huge transformation in your ability to

remember new vocabulary and expressions but actually it's really

important that we talk about what exactly are the words and

expressions that you should be filling your SRS app with.

So i've met a lot of English learners who think that they have to know

everything they learn a lot of advanced really obscure vocabulary

because they think that it'll make their english sound like it's at a higher

level but really natives do not speak like

this they don't really use these kind of words

Now obviously that's an exaggeration but seriously I've met so many English

learners out there who try to use really complex vocabulary

that natives never use or they just try to use expressions and

idioms in every single sentence and it can make them sound really

unnatural and if you actually start paying attention to the way that you

speak in your own native language you probably don't do this either so why

would you do it in English?

Now it depends what study you look at

but English only has about 3,000 words that natives use in 95%

of their speaking and this is a really tiny number when you consider that

english has hundreds of thousands of words and this is really true in any language.

So the good news here is that unless you

want to study English literature you really do not need to have a huge

vocabulary base.

Now this doesn't mean that you shouldn't

consistently be learning vocabulary and expressions

even if you're an advanced English learner but it does mean

that maybe the amount of vocabulary that you need to be fluent

isn't as much as you think

and actually we did a lesson on 5 Myths About English Fluency

and if you haven't seen that yet then I

really highly recommend that you watch it next

but the point here is is that your English will not sound more fluent by

using more complex vocabulary and in fact if you're not using this

kind of vocabulary tactfully it could actually make you sound less

fluent because it's obvious that you're trying too hard

and furthermore most English is used between non-natives

for example when you're in a business setting usually a meeting could be

in English between someone from the United States

and someone from Germany and someone from Brazil and someone from Japan

and if you're traveling this is also the case so if you're using really complex

vocabulary then other English learners like

yourself probably won't really understand you

and really the goal is to be able to communicate and to be understood

But you're probably still asking yourself "what are the 3,000 words that I

actually need to learn in order to be fluent in English?"

now of course you could just go onto Google and type in the most common words

in English and you could get a list that will have

a lot of words that people use every day speaking in English

and that might be useful for you but really a lot of these words you probably

already know the most essential ones anyway and a lot

of what you're going to have to learn is going to be personal to you so for

example you could think about what are the things that you usually

spend your time doing every day what kind of hobbies do you have

so I could give you an example actually using myself right now I'm actually

taking classes for singing in Spanish and so a lot of the vocabulary that I

have to learn has to do with singing but this would be really

useless probably for most Spanish learners

and another thing that you probably need to think about is your work

so do you work in a business setting maybe you need to learn more business

English or maybe you work in science and you

need scientific vocabulary or you work in law

or so on so basically the point here is that I want you to change your mindset

about vocabulary learning so it doesn't have to do with just

memorizing tons of words each and every one of our lives are different

and our vocabulary base needs to reflect those differences

and the uniqueness of our life.

Now just a disclaimer before I move on I am

mostly talking about active vocabulary up to this point now

active vocabulary is a vocabulary that you can actually think of

and use passive vocabulary on the other hand

is the vocabulary that you'll understand but you can't necessarily recall it when

you're in conversation or writing and our passive vocabulary is

always much larger than our active vocabulary

this is true whether you're a native or whether you're a learner.

All right so now let's talk more about the best way to increase your active and passive

vocabulary in English so it is super important that you are

constantly doing things that you enjoy

in English because you will naturally expose yourself to the vocabulary that

you need now watching tv series is one great way

to do this with shows like Friends for example you get

exposed to everyday situations so you learn the vocabulary that you

need in daily life now podcasts are another really great

way to exercise both your active and passive vocabulary

a great place to start is with our own RealLife English podcast

and you can also sign up for power learning week now in this free

three-part mini course you will actually learn the vocabulary that natives use in

everyday life and this will help you so much to understand

and speak better so you can learn more and sign up by clicking up here or down

description below.

As I mentioned before it's useful to

reflect on what you work in and then you can listen to a TV series

or podcast that will help you to get the vocabulary related to that that you need

so for example if you're a lawyer you could watch a show like Suits

if you work in technology you could watch Silicon Valley

and if you want to learn more things like this that will help you to improve

your communication then for sure check out this lesson

where I talk about things that you can do every day to improve your English

And in addition to the space repetition systems we talked about in the beginning

you should definitely start keeping a word journal as well

now this could actually be physically paper that you keep in your pocket

or you could actually use any sort of notepad app on your phone

that you'll have access to wherever you are so anytime you read something or you

watch something or you listen to something then you find

a new word you can note it down in your word journal before you actually

add it to the app that you're using for spaced repetition.

Reading is actually probably the best way to expand your vocabulary

so if you're reading a book or a newspaper or anything else what I

actually recommend is not looking up everything in the

moment but actually highlight things and then later go add them to your word

journal and finally to a space repetition system so you'll never forget

them now the more that you do this the more

that you will be able to understand new vocabulary through the context

without even looking it up in a dictionary it will naturally be added to

your passive and even your active vocabulary.

Now this recommendation is short but it's also probably one of the hardest to

do now you need to avoid just memorizing a

translation from your native language and this will also help you to cultivate

actually starting to think in English now if you don't do this then you're

always going to be having to think first in your language how you say that word

and then translating it in your head to

English and this will really slow your speaking.

Now when you encounter a new word in

English don't just head over to Google translate

actually look it up in an English-speaking dictionary and

when you add it to your word journal or SRS then be sure to also put the

definition in English don't use your language at all if you

can avoid it and this will help you to break the bad habit

of translating first in your mind and it will help you to start cultivating the

good habit of thinking in English.

So have you ever really thought about

what kind of learner you are?

So I'm going to go through some

different types and I want you to actually use this time to reflect

on which type of learner you believe you are and it can be really helpful to

think of past experiences in learning where you have learned in a

really effective way and basically use that to try to

determine this.

So first of all maybe you have a

photographic memory and as soon as you see a word you

remember it but I'm guessing if that's the case you probably would not need to

watch this video so the next one is if you're

like me you're a visual learner this means that you have to actually see

things to remember them now for me I noticed i remember things a

lot by where I was when I learned it or what exactly i was doing so for

example I can remember something that I heard in a podcast

by what activity that I was doing and where I was at so maybe I was running

and I was in a specific location and I'll actually remember about that

information along with the information that I learned

now maybe it's not always effective to put yourself in some location that you

really remember so you can do other things for example

with your spaced repetition system to a certain flashcard you could

actually add an illustration maybe one that you drew

or a picture of something so just to give you an example of how I've done

this in the past one word that I learned in Catalan was

em xifla and this means that you're crazy about something, that you

absolutely love something so I actually learned this because

someone was telling me that a certain sandwich shop here in Barcelona

is something that they're crazy about so I actually used the logo

of that sandwich shop on my flash card for

that term em xifla and it helped me a ton to remember that and to add it to my

active vocabulary.

So next maybe you're an aural learner

this means that you use your ears to remember

things so maybe you actually need to hear a word in order to remember it

and if this is the case for you then it's really important that you add sound

to your space repetition system now this could just be a sound that actually

reminds you of the word or it could be the pronunciation the

word itself and of course if this is the case for you

then anytime you learn a new word it's really important that you for example go

to google and type in the word plus pronunciation

and if you do this then it will actually bring up an audio file of the

pronunciation of the word you could also use a website like

forvo.com where you'll find natives pronouncing different words

and something else you might find super effective if this is the case for you

is to learn English with music.

So finally we have kinesthetic learners

now this is actually the rarest type and this means

that you learn with movement so it might help you in your learning and thinking

if you're standing up or even moving around and for

kinesthetic learners tactile activities can be really effective too

so you might actually want to find something physical that represents the

word that you're learning and actually even touch it and play

around with it with your hands.

Alright so for this next tip we're going

to use associations so first of all you could visualize

something in your head and maybe this wouldn't even necessarily

have anything to do with the word it's just something that helps you to

remember it in a really visual way now if you are a visual learner then

it's going to be very helpful so just to give you an example

you could for example be learning the word "buzz" which is the feeling that you

get right after you drink a coffee and you

might actually remember that the word buzz is also the sound that a bee makes so

that z sound we also call buzz so maybe to help

yourself remember this in a really silly way

you could imagine a bee drinking a coffee now something else that you could

try is actually drawing a picture yourself

not just looking up one online this will actually help to make

it more fun and relaxing while you're actively learning

vocabulary and while it's not good to just

translate words into English it can be very effective to think of a word in

your own language that sounds like the word

that you're learning in English so just to give you an example say that

you are a Spanish speaker learning English

and you want to learn the word to run actually the infinitive verb

to run and you might actually think well in Spanish that sounds a lot like the

dessert that we have at christmas which is

called turon so now every time you try to think of the word to run

you're just going to think about the dessert or maybe again if you're very

visual you might actually think about someone running and eating some turrón.

And that actually brings us to our next tip so as soon as possible after you

learn a new word or expression you should actually be writing it or

speaking it so in the next conversation that you get

into see if there's some way that you can sneak in that new expression

or that new word that you just learned but maybe you have no one to speak to

so what you can do in that case is you can create actual example sentences

you can do this by writing them down in your journal you can do this

by actually thinking of some sentence and recording it and listening back and

correcting your mistakes or just think about them in your head if you don't

have a pen or a recorder handy now I actually had a

student a few years back who had a really long

commute to work and he would actually take advantage of

this time by speaking to himself in the car

about various subjects and this was a great way to sneak in some vocabulary

practice of words that he had recently learned so

something that you could actually try is

thinking up a story with five words

that you learned in English yesterday

so expanding your active vocabulary is

really challenging and I think that the recommendations I

gave you today will help you a lot on your journey to reach English fluency

to be able to have the words that you need

but when you forget a word don't let it get you stressed out

what you should do in these instances instead of just going blank

or trying to translate from your own language is trying to find a different

way that you can describe it because this is really the essence of

fluency it's not that you have every single word for every situation or

that you can speak exactly like a native.

Natives in fact forget words too, fluency

is about that you're able to flow with the language so

when you forget a word you are able to say it in a different way

you're able to explain what you want to say so that the conversation doesn't get

interrupted, so if you start practicing doing this

you're going to just notice a huge transformation in your ability to be

fluent in English, you will feel more confident

because you'll know that you'll always have some way to describe what you want

to say and if you don't you can just laugh it

off and you can know that you have to look up that word when you get home.

And as I've told you in this video you can lower the bar you don't need to know

every single word as I mentioned before

there's only about 3 000 that you'll need to be confident

and fluent in your daily conversations so really what's essential here

is that you actually develop a habit that you're learning at least a few

words every day and that you are using them

whenever possible.

So I hope you found this video very

useful I would love to hear if you have any other tips out there for English

learners like you write them down in the comments below so

we can all learn together and now it's time to go beyond the classroom and

live your english, aww yeah!

What's up everyone?

I'm Andrea your RealLife English fluency coach

and today we have a great lesson for you to help you become more confident

when speaking in English.