How to learn English words: simple and modern techniques. How to remember English words forever: spaced repetition method

When learning a foreign language, it is very important to constantly replenish your vocabulary - to memorize new and new words in English. However, not everyone is able to do this successfully. We offer you seven tips to help you remember new words in English more effectively.

Create associative networks

Our brains take what we read and transform it into images, ideas and feelings, and then form connections between the new information and what we already know. This is how memorization occurs - the new is united with the old.

Imagine a tree. Isn’t it easier to see a large spreading tree with many branches and leaves than a small tree with a few branches? The same is true for the brain. When you connect a new word or concept with something you already know, it is easier for your brain to find it and remember it at the right time.

How to do it? Very simple. Draw a network of concepts. Take what you want to remember (a word, an idea, a sentence) and write it in the center of the paper. Then draw lines from it in all directions, like a spider's web.

At the end of each line, write down any English words or even draw pictures that come to mind when you think of the word written in the center. It doesn't matter what the associations are, just write down everything you come up with.

It only takes a couple of minutes and now all the words or concepts will be interconnected in your brain. If you see or hear one of them, it will be easier for you to remember the others.

To make this work even better, pronounce how this or that word in English is connected to others. The more often you do this, the more connections are formed. And the more connections, the easier it is for your brain to “see” the word you want to remember.

Remember phrases (word combinations)

Memorizing a word is important, but English, like any other language, is not just a set of concepts, it is a tool that people use to communicate and express their thoughts. Find examples of how this or that word is used in the text.

Write down not only the word itself, but also the neighboring ones. For example, if you need to remember the English word “arrogant,” you could write “the tall, arrogant man.”

This will help you remember that "arrogant" is an adjective used to describe people. Then try writing three complete sentences to practice using it.

Use pictures

Draw little pictures to remember the meaning of a word. Don't know how to draw? It's not scary, it's even better. Our brain receives so much monotonous information that a strange picture is a kind of surprise, and we always remember surprises.

Our brain reads visual information better. Draw a funny picture to illustrate the meaning of a word and you will remember it much faster.

Make up stories

English learners often complain that there are too many new words and it is difficult to remember them. There is one trick you can use to learn words quickly. Compose any story, even a ridiculous one, that uses all the words in English. Imagine it in detail.

We remember stories easily, especially strange ones, if we can recreate them in our imagination. Feel free to combine words in funny and awkward ways. Let's say you need to remember the following 20 English words:

shoes, piano, tree, pencil, bird, bus, books, driver, dog, pizza, flower, door, TV set, spoons, chair, jump, dance, throw, computer, stone

(shoes, piano, tree, pencil, bird, bus, books, driver, dog, pizza, flower, door, TV, spoons, chair, jump, dance, throw, computer, stone)

You can make up this incredible story from them:

There is a piano wearing shoes and sitting in a tree. The tree is strange because someone has stuck a giant pencil through it. On the pencil a bird is sitting and watching a bus full of people reading books. Even the driver is reading a book which is bad because he isn’t paying attention to driving. So, he hits a dog that is eating a pizza in the middle of the road and kills it. The driver digs a hole and buries the dog in it and then puts a flower on it. He notices that there is a door in the dog’s grave and opens it. Inside he can see a TV set with 2 spoons for antennas on top of it. No-one is watching the TV set because they are all watching the chair. Why? - Because the chair is jumping and dancing and throwing stones at the computer.

A piano sits on a tree with shoes on. The tree looks strange because someone pierced it with a huge pencil. A bird sits on a pencil and looks at a bus full of people reading books. Even the driver is reading a book, which is bad because he is not paying attention to the road. So he hits and kills a dog that was eating pizza in the middle of the road. The driver digs a hole and buries the dog, and then places a flower on top. He notices that there is a door in the dog's grave and opens it. Inside he sees a TV with two spoons on top that act as antennas. Nobody watches TV because everyone is looking at the chair. Why? Because the chair jumps, dances and throws stones at the computer.

Give it a try. You will surprise yourself!

Remember opposites

Memorize words with opposite meanings (antonyms) and words with similar meanings (synonyms) in pairs. For example, memorize the pairs angry/happy and angry/cross at the same time. We remember similar and opposite things faster because the brain creates connections between them.

Parse the word according to its composition

Use roots, prefixes and suffixes to guess what a word means.

For example: even if you don't know the word "microbiology", you can guess what it means. First, take a look at the prefix "micro". Micro means something very small. You may know that the "-logy" part means science, the study of something.

So, we can already say that we are talking about learning something small. You may also remember that "bio" means life, living things. Thus, we can come to the conclusion that “microbiology” is the science of microscopic living organisms.

If you make a list of common prefixes (un-, dis-, con-, micro-, etc.) and suffixes (-able, -ly, -ent, -tion, -ive, etc.) and remember what they mean, you will be able to guess the meaning of new words in English.

The main thing is time

Psychologists who study memory processes say there is a good way to remember things quickly and for a long time. Use a new word as soon as you learn it. Then use it after 10 minutes. Then an hour later. Then the next day. Then a week later.

After this, you are unlikely to have to make an effort to remember it - the new vocabulary will remain with you forever.

66720

In contact with

Luca Lampariello

Italian polyglot. Knows 11 languages, including German, Russian, Polish, and Northern Chinese. Lampariello has become a well-known figure in the language learning community. Currently lives in Rome.

Association retrieval is the process by which new information is associated with existing knowledge.

One piece of information can have thousands of associations with memories, emotions, experiences and individual facts. This process occurs naturally in the brain, but we can take conscious control of it.

To do this, let’s return to the above-mentioned words: “gene”, “cell”, “synapse”, “skeleton”... If we remember them separately, we will soon forget everything. But if we learn these words in the context of a sentence, it will be much easier for us to put them together in our minds. Think about it for 10 seconds and try to connect these four words.

You might end up with something similar: “Genes influence the development of elements as diverse as the skeleton, brain synapses, and even individual cells.” All four words are now united by a common context - like pieces in a puzzle.

Approach these exercises progressively. First, try combining groups of words that share a specific topic like physics or politics. Then try to build more complex associations between unrelated words. With practice you will get better and better.

3. Repetition

More than a hundred years ago, the German physicist Ebbinghaus came to the conclusion that we forget information according to a certain pattern, which he called the “forgetting curve.” We remember perfectly everything we recently learned. But this same information disappears from memory in a matter of days.

Ebbinghaus discovered a mechanism to combat this phenomenon.

If new information is repeated at precise intervals, it will become increasingly difficult to forget. After a few spaced repetitions, it will become embedded in long-term memory and will likely stay in your head forever.

You need to regularly repeat old information while working on new information.

4. Recording

The ancient Romans said: “Words fly away, but what is written remains.” That is, in order to remember information, you need to record it in a permanent format. When you learn new words, write them down or type them on your keyboard so you can save them and come back to them later.

When you come across a new useful word or phrase while talking, watching a movie or reading a book, write it down on your smartphone or laptop. This way, you can repeat what you wrote down at any opportunity.

5. Application

Use what you learn in meaningful conversations. This is the essence of the last of the basic methods for effective word learning.

University of Montreal researchers Victor Boucher and Alexis Lafleur discovered Honor Whiteman. Repeating words loud to another person increases memory recall. that using words in conversation is more effective in terms of memorization than saying them out loud to yourself.

In other words, the more you communicate with other people, the better your linguistic memory works and the faster your language proficiency grows. Therefore, always use the learned material in real conversations. This method will greatly improve your skills and give you experience using new and long-learned words.

Let's say you read an article on a topic that interests you. You can choose unfamiliar words from it and use them later in a short conversation with a language partner. You can mark and learn keywords, and then use them to retell the content of the article. See how well you understand the material after the conversation.

Guys, we put our soul into the site. Thank you for that
that you are discovering this beauty. Thanks for the inspiration and goosebumps.
Join us on Facebook And In contact with

Learning a language is impossible without memorizing new words. But besides banal and boring cramming, there are many simple, and most importantly, effective ways to learn unfamiliar words.

First you need to figure out exactly how you best perceive information. There is a small but very important checklist for this. If you are an auditory learner, then the “read a notebook” method will work much worse for you than the “listen to a list of words for a text” method. And you may not even think about it and look at this stupid notebook for a long time and persistently, until the bitter end and the feeling of your own worthlessness and not understand why nothing is remembered!

Traditional methods

1. Yartsev method (visuals)

Let's take a notebook. We write down the word - translation - in 2-3 columns. We give synonyms\antonyms\examples next to each other. We read lists from time to time, just read, don’t cram anything.

I don’t know how it works, but, for example, I didn’t cram German, but just read the notebook from time to time. The teacher did not give dictations and never checked us against lists. And I still, many years later, remember a bunch of words.

It turns out that you don’t strain yourself, you don’t try to cram 100 words into yourself in 30 minutes, you just systematically refresh the material from time to time. But you should immediately warn that these words should appear in textbooks, articles, i.e. you must, in addition to reading the notebook, somehow activate them.

1. Card method

The second popular method. We take and cut up a bunch of cards or buy square blocks of note paper. On one side we write the word, on the other - the translation. For advanced users we provide examples. We pass the cards around, putting aside those that we know well. From time to time we repeat what we have covered in order to refresh ourselves. The downside is that if there are a lot of words and little time, you will spend a lot of time creating the cards themselves.

For fun, you can put them in piles of 10 in different places in the apartment, stumble upon them from time to time and repeat. Auditory learners should definitely add speaking out loud to this method. Cards are great for children; this can be turned into an interesting game.

1. Prescription method

Classics of the genre. You take a word and write it out many, many times. Works great for Chinese characters. Minus - green melancholy. But the method has been tested for centuries.

1. Half Page Method

This is one of my favorite ways. You bend the sheet in half, write the word on one edge, and the translation on the other side. You can quickly check yourself. For me, as a visual learner, it works well, because... I easily remember in which part of the sheet a given word was written down. The downside is that you get used to a certain word order.

1. Interior Designer Method

If you are learning some specific vocabulary that surrounds you, you can make unique “labels” everywhere - stick stickers with the names of objects. You can also stick the most disgusting words on the monitor that you don’t want to remember. The advantage of this method is that it's fun. The downside is that the brain may begin to ignore all these pieces of paper, and then they will hang somewhere for a long time.

Optimization methods

1. Method of grouping by grammatical features

If you have a large list of words, the worst thing you can do with it is to learn it haphazardly. It can and should be processed and grouped. For example, first you write down verbs, and you do not write them out in a row, but group them by type of ending, or you write down masculine nouns, then feminine and separately exceptions that do not fall into these lists.

Thus, because Most of our words are not exceptions; you begin to see the logic of the language and remember words in conjunction with similar ones.

1. Method of grouping by meaning

You write down and remember the word and its synonym/antonym at once. This is true for both beginners and intermediates. Now that you have learned the word “good”, find out right away what “bad” will be. And if you also remember “excellent, so-so, disgusting,” then you will greatly enrich your vocabulary.

1. Method of studying cognates words

We take words, group them around a root, for example, “deed/do/done,” and learn several parts of speech with the same root at once.

1. Etymological method

Works well for those who have learned several languages. When you study multiple languages ​​within the same language branch, you begin to see similar roots. This actually comes with experience, and there is no need to learn a huge number of words again. At a certain point, you just know enough. And if I understand that this word doesn’t tell me anything categorically, I go into the etymological dictionary and find out where it came from. While I do this, I remember it.

1. Chains of words

You take a list of words that you need to learn and make up a story (even a crazy one) from them. So you will learn not 30 words, but 5 sentences of 6 words each. If you approach this matter creatively, you can have a fun and useful time.

Methods for those who do not like old-fashioned methods

1. Spaced Repetition

A technique of retention in memory, which consists in repeating learned educational material at certain, constantly increasing intervals. In fact, you install the application on your phone, and the program will automatically show you words in the specified order and with the desired frequency. You can use ready-made word lists or create your own.

Pros: thoroughly etched in memory.

Cons: it takes a lot of time. If you've already memorized a word, it will still pop up from time to time in some programs.

In Memrise you can choose ready-made lists of words or create your own. If a word is absolutely not memorized, you can use special funny pictures that users create using mnemonic techniques, or upload your own. Memrise also recently added a new option - you can not only hear the voice of a word, but watch a video of how people pronounce these words.

A service for working on written speech for those who have already mastered the basics of language practice. The user writes a text in the language being studied, after which a native speaker of the corresponding language checks what has been written and makes his own corrections.

"Magic" methods

Various marketers and language gurus love to use magical methods to lure people. Usually the essence of the methods lies in “secret techniques of the special services,” which, objectively speaking, are described in a lot of literature. And they ask for ludicrous amounts of money for this.

1. Mnemonics

Mnemonics is one of the most popular methods, the essence of which is to come up with funny and absurd associations for a word that you can’t remember. You take a word and come up with some kind of associative image, which should be very vivid. But in this image there must be a “key” to the memorized word.

Example: “grief” (“grief”) - woe to the wounded tiger, vultures are circling over him.

For auditory learners

Rule #1 for you: Always say out loud what you are learning. If you use flashcards, recite them. If you are reading a list, read it out loud. Listen to the words, this is the fastest way for you to remember them! Naturally, you will have to write them down, but things will go faster than if you read and write silently.

1. Listening to words

You can play audio recordings of word lists and repeat after the announcer. Usually, good textbooks provide a well-read list of words for the lesson. You can also listen to high-quality podcasts that provide detailed analysis of dialogues.

1. Repeat multiple times

A method similar to writing words in a row is quite tedious and boring, but effective - repeat it out loud several times. There is an opinion that you can consider a word learned if you have used it in context 5 times. So try to give 5 different examples of how this word is used. Naturally, out loud. You can reinforce this by writing it down.

Methods for those who absolutely do not want to work with lists

1. Reading (a lot of reading)

If the level is high enough and there is no urgent need to urgently expand your vocabulary, the easiest way is to read a lot. You can mark new words and even write them down (this works best, but not everyone likes to do this). By reading, you learn to understand the meaning from the context, you are “saturated” with words, they themselves become your passive stock. But reading usually doesn’t really help translate them into an asset, i.e., in order to progress in the language, you need to do something else in addition to reading.

1. Learn what is really necessary

In one of my textbooks, the word “hoe” appeared in the vocabulary before the words “short and long” appeared. Don't learn "hoes" and all that unnecessary crap until you've learned some really relevant and pressing vocabulary.

How to determine relevance? There are many manuals and lists from the “1000 most common words” series. First we learn frequency, then “hoes”, not before. If you have not yet learned to count and do not know pronouns, it is too early for you to learn colors, no matter how much you would like to.

1. Get creative with the process

If everything infuriates you, words don’t come into your head and you want to quickly close these lists, experiment. Some people get help from drawings, some people walk around the apartment and recite out loud, some people talk to their cat. If you are interested in something, do not be lazy to look into the dictionary. Study what is close to you. Don't get hung up on methods that don't work.

The human brain is designed in such a way that it is much easier for him to remember something familiar or associated with something already familiar. Otherwise, any foreign word will be perceived as some kind of “abracadabra”, which, of course, can be remembered, but this is much more difficult to do. To facilitate the process of memorizing foreign words, we use some techniques to make the words of a foreign language more familiar and “make friends” with them.

Find similarities

Every language has a number of words that resemble words in its native language. The closer the languages ​​are, the higher the percentage of such words will naturally be, which will make it easier to learn foreign vocabulary. Similar words can be divided into several groups.

Words of the original language. Thus, for languages ​​that are based on the so-called Indo-European proto-language (and this includes English, German, French, and other languages ​​of Eastern and Western Europe), it is quite easy to find words that are similar in sound and have a common or very similar meaning. As a rule, this is the name of family members (cf. Russian “brother” and English “brother” - words identical in meaning; Russian “uncle” and English “daddy” (dad) - words different in meaning, but denoting close male relatives) . Such words also include designations of natural phenomena (Russian “snow” - English “snow”), human actions (Russian “beat” - English “beat”), and other words that have ancient primordial roots.

Words borrowed from Russian. Of course, in German and French such words are found most often. But, remembering these words, you need to be careful, because... the meanings of a Russian and a foreign word can either partially coincide (English “character” is translated into Russian not only as “character”, but also as “character”), or not coincide at all (English “original” - Russian “initial”). Although in the latter case the logic of borrowing such words is clearly visible, it is easy to find associations that allow you to remember the correct meaning of a foreign term.

Actually international words. As a rule, these are scientific terms, as well as designations of instruments, professions, etc., which were borrowed from Greek by both Russian and, for example, other European languages. The words “philosophy” and “television” are understandable without translation.

Come up with associations

If a foreign word does not resemble Russian in any way, the memory can be “deceived” in order to learn it faster and better. To do this, you need to find your own, bright and witty associations that will be inextricably linked for you with this word and will help you quickly recall it in your memory if necessary.

This method, for example, is actively used by A. Dragunkin, known for his method of quickly learning a foreign language. So, to remember the English “he” (he) and “she” (she), Dragunkin uses the following cheerful association: “He is Frail, and she is GORGEOUS.”

Just memorize

And finally, there is no escape from simple mechanical learning of foreign words. To speed up this process, words must be repeated as often as possible at the stage of their primary assimilation.

The following technique helps many: on a card there are several words with transcription. A person carries a card with him throughout the day, periodically looking at it and pronouncing new words for himself. As a rule, after 20-30 repetitions, words are firmly entered into the passive vocabulary. But in order to introduce new lexical units into the active vocabulary, it is necessary to use them as often as possible in speech.

Which we are studying, we have known for a long time, but to expand our vocabulary and memorize a large number of foreign words are problematic for us. Because of this, the speech, although correct, is meager. What to do?

In this article we will tell you how to quickly and easily memorize foreign words to expand your vocabulary and make it richer.

Foreign words

Set goals

The first step to learning a new language is setting goals. Many people treat this point superficially, but it is the main one in this matter. By working on it, you can ultimately determine whether you have truly achieved everything you wanted. When you are faced with the desire or need to learn a new language, many questions, problems and small details come to mind: too many words, they are difficult to learn, the learning methods are different.

When you set a goal for yourself, work out what you want to achieve in the end, you focus on narrower areas. Research shows that people who work to set goals are more likely to succeed than those who simply start teaching without knowing what they want to achieve. Use the following tips to successfully set a goal and achieve it:

Focus on a specific outcome. Work out the details and determine what exactly you want to learn, not how much time you want to spend on it. For example, tell yourself: “This week I want to learn 30 English words related to shopping.”

Set short-term goals. Of course, having a serious goal is good, but if it is too broad and requires a huge investment of time, it will not be enough to motivate you to work every day. Break your big goal into smaller ones, and successfully complete small weekly or monthly tasks.

Challenge yourself. Goals are always achieved much faster if they force you to make an effort. The main thing is that you do not feel burdened or pressured. This method can work if you set yourself one goal, but with different possible outcomes. For example, say: “I will learn 30-50 English words this week.” The smallest number allows you to start working with the knowledge that the goal is not that difficult to achieve. The largest number will force you to make an effort to show your best best result.

Write down your goals. This obvious method really works because keeping your paper organized allows you to focus on what you're writing fully. In fact, you can use some other means for this: notes on your phone, notes on the refrigerator, a marker on the wall, or your finger on the mirror.

Read also: 5 most unusual languages ​​people speak

The most common foreign words

Make a schedule

Have you ever wondered how musicians memorize so many songs and remember them for a long time? It's all about daily practice, because for this they rehearse over and over again. This process takes time, but is rewarded later.

When learning new words, you may think that it takes too much time and that what you already know is enough for you. However, you will be able to speak beautifully, correctly and interestingly only when you enrich your vocabulary. In fact, it doesn't take much time. Just make a schedule and you will see it.

If you are a person who prefers to get up early, study words for half an hour - in the morning. Teach them while you choose clothes, wash and dress, while you make tea. In addition, you can treat yourself to small prizes for a job well done - allow yourself a new thing or a trip to a restaurant, for example, after a week of working with new words. Remember that this will only work if you actually learn the words every day.

Group words by topic

Many people, when expanding their vocabulary, make one common mistake - they start learning all the words in a row. To make it easier to remember foreign words, you should not study everything by simply remembering and translating them. Create a list of words grouped by topic or category. For example, write down all the words for colors, food, animals, verbs of motion, and others.

This method allows you to divide the entire huge vocabulary into small parts that are much easier to learn. In addition, associations with a topic will help you remember both the words themselves and the area in which they are used. Small lists of words will motivate you to study them, because you will not feel overwhelmed or pressured, but the result will not be long in coming.

Look for opportunities

“Learn a word” and “memorize” are completely different concepts. A person who truly learns new words always knows how and in what situation they need to be applied, otherwise all efforts become meaningless. Otherwise, they are simply erased from memory, and you have to start over.

In order for the learned word to firmly settle in your memory, use it as often as possible. If the word is rare or unusual, find out when it is appropriate to use it. If the word is completely ordinary and the situation allows it, start a topic that would require the use of learned words. For example, if you are currently studying a list of animals that live in the forest, interest your interlocutor and tell him some surprising facts about wildlife.

How to memorize foreign words

Video and audio

If you really want to enrich your vocabulary, but notice that you have poor visual memory, and you are tired of constantly repeating words out loud, use various educational videos and audio recordings with the pronunciation of words. This will help you relax, go about your business, while listening to someone repeat words that are new to you.

You can turn them on as background to your daily activities and listen while getting ready for work or taking a bath. This way, you will not only remember words, but also know how to pronounce them correctly - this is a very important point in expanding your vocabulary and when communicating with native speakers.

Own words

In order to understand which words are most often used in everyday life, and which ones are practically not used anymore, highlight the most popular ones in your speech and the speech of your loved ones. If you notice that you often use a certain word, or it often appears in the speech of your friends, write it down.

Over time, you will collect a list of words that you can translate and learn, because the words that you are given to study in old books and textbooks are not always used in everyday life. They are important for overall development, but you should first find out how often and in what situations native speakers use them - otherwise you may end up in an awkward position or simply not being understood.

Synonyms and antonyms

As in the Russian language, many foreign words have synonyms and antonyms. This point will help you enrich your vocabulary and make your speech richer and more beautiful, because using the same word in a sentence several times in a row will not add beauty to it.

If you find a word that you use often, try to find a replacement for it. Learn a few synonyms - you will know what it means, and the associations will do their job. You won't have to spend a long time searching and remembering the area in which this word is used, because synonyms have the same meaning.