Do you have this type of experience?
You know a lot of vocabulary but
just can't open your mouth and speak?
You take a lot of time to
learn a lot of words every day.
Write them down and repeat them.
Work hard but quickly. Forget them.
If you are struggling with the same situation
and want to know how we can deal
with it, keep watching this video.
Hello my friends.
Welcome to my channel.
If you are new here, my name is Zoe.
I'm a polyglot, I speak seven languages and
I'm doing a PhD in sociology in France.
Besides my native language, Chinese, I have
learned six other languages as adults.
You can find my videos speaking in
different languages on my channel
I always believe that it is never too late
to learn a language If you want to
I'm here to share with you
my experience, encourage and inspire you
in your language and learning journey.
This video is structured by
three common questions people ask me.
How many words do you learn per day?
How do you memorize words?
How do you take notes and repeat?
If you like this video and if you think it's
useful, don't forget to give me a like and share
with your friends and subscribe to my channel.
Let's get started.
Tip number one.
Don't count the numbers.
Digest of them! first and most importantly,
I want to say that learning a language depends
more on your mental skills than your intelligence.
You need to know how to manage your expectations,
know your abilities and limitations, and know
what is reasonable and visible in your situation.
This is the key to staying motivated
and not giving up easily.
So stop comparing yourself to others like how
This person studying to be fluent after six months.
The number doesn't really matter.
But ask yourself how useful that word is
how much this word is related to your daily life.
If you speak another foreign language, just
ask yourself if you use that word
frequently in that language when you speak.
Sometimes I see a word in Arabic or Turkish that
I don't even know how to say in English and French.
Of course, I'm not going to
spend my energy memorizing it.
I always prefer to say that if you use only
five words a day, but they are frequent and useful words, you
digest it and know how to use it during the conversation.
It's better than mechanically
repeating 100 words without understanding, those five words a
day may not seem like much, but that means 150
words a month and 900 words after six months.
With 900 frequency, you can
already hold a conversation.
For example, at the beginning of the learning process,
I'm always a bit in a hurry to learn that 1000 basis words to
be able to talk and practice with people.
I always classified them into different categories.
This is my list of Turkish frequent verbs.
As you can see, there are very useful verbs
like to like to help, to buy, to bring.
There are some examples as well.
This is my list of useful adjectives.
You can see new, enough,
Difficult, easy.
Let me share with you my story.
I was in Egypt, in Alexandria.
I wanted to learn Egyptian dialect.
At that time, I already knew strandard Arabic, but I wanted
to speak Egyptian dialect with people, in the Institute.
They have a textbook, but it's too slow for me.
I want those 1000 basic words to
be able to talk with people.
So I suggested to my teacher, I'm going to
write the conjugation of five verbs every day.
If we just learn the present and past tenses,
I'm going to write in those two tenses and
make sentences of those verbs in both tenses.
And then we will talk about my daily routine,
what I have done, and then we study the textbook.
It's very beneficial and effective.
I used this method to learn Syrian dialect by myself and
I continued to do it with my language partner
when I started learning Turkish in Persia.
If you ask me how many new words
I study every day, I will tell you it depends.
At that time I was only studying Arabic, so
I can do 50 words a day even more.
And now I have to work during the working day.
I can do like ten words a day or less.
If I don't have time, I would just review
the old works and the old flash cards.
The point is not the number, but make sure
you know how to use them and digest them.
Okay if you learn five words per day.
Next step, how to memorize words.
Tip number two, don't memorize them.
Use them.
There are a lot of videos and
books about memorizing things on YouTube.
Personally, I have watched and read a lot about
this topic because I want to learn vocabulary faster.
So I have tried different methods.
Some techniques like Spider webs, mind map,
mind palace, anything you can imagine.
But after that, I realized these techniques can help
me to learn words in a short time.
I can say that I can memorize 50
words in ten minutes and repeat them correctly.
But after one day I forget them all
or I still can't use them.
I still can't speak the language.
Learning a language is not about showing how many words
you can memorize, but how you can use them
naturally and correctly to communicate with people.
So it's important to change the logic.
Rather than trying to figure out how to
memorize the words, ask yourself how to use
these words as much as possible.
Just think about how children learn language.
Of course, according to cognitive scientists,
there is a window period that allows children
learn faster and easier language than adults.
Moreover, they are surrounded by
that language like immersion.
They hear it all the time at school, at home,
on the street, with friends, everywhere you may be thinking,
of course, I know the best way to learn
a language is to live in a country surrounded by locals.
But unfortunately, most of the language learners don't live
in the country where the language is spoken.
So how can you get the effect of immersion?
If you learn five words today in a book
or an application, anything, you have accomplished your task today,
you learn another five words tomorrow
you put it in your flashcard
and do spaced repetition and review.
This is a very good basic studying routine, but I don't
just put them in my flashcards and repeat them like
how to say"to go","red", "hospital" in Arabic, for example.
In the following days, I would use
these words as much as possible.
When I'm at home or walk in the street.
Every time I see something, I will try to make the
link between what I see and what I just learned.
I will even say it out loud
like, okay, this is "door" "window", okay.
For example, I'm in the street.
I say, oh this is the hospital
library, hairdresser, bookshop.
It's a very good way to review
I even replace the words in my own language.
For example, I don't know how to say
the whole sentence "I want to buy apples" in Arabic
because I just learned the word "apple" at the beginning.
For example, I would just say
"I want to buy some TUFAH "
But next time when I learn the verb "to buy"
I can say the sentence like
I want to buy apples.
Next next time, even add more
descriptions like color, location, price.
For example
Today, I want to buy some
red apples from the supermarket.
From this sentence, you can see there's
time, there's a verb, there's a color, there's
adjective, and there's a place. With the time,
You can say more things and
make longer and longer sentence.
This is really my favorite exercise and
I really want to share with you.
It's the best way to train your brain from
the beginning to get used to thinking in that language.
If you have an intermediate level, it's even better.
Just think in that language.
Speak to yourself in that language
and describe everything around you.
If there are words you don't know, check them directly
on Google and Reverso and save it in your list.
After learning the basic grammar and words,
try writing diary by using them.
I talked about this method in
another video because it's really effective.
If you have a language exchange partner or
native speaker friend, it will be even better.
What I did for my Turkish
I have a language exchange partner Hilal.
We met each other on Python
and we study together regularly.
Every day I would write the diary and send
it to her on WhatsApp she would just correct
me and send it back to me.
I will ask her to read my
diary and send me the voice note.
Normally it takes less than five minutes and I listen
to that voice notes over and over again and repeat.
There is another very effective exercise
which is inspired by the meditation.
Every day before you go to bed or
before you start your daily study routine,
put away your phone, give yourself five minutes asking
yourself what did I learn today?
Or what did I learn yesterday?
And try to review it in your brain.
This is the best way to activate your memory
and really embed the vocabulary in long term memory.
Another immersion exercise.
Listen to that language as much as possible
such as YouTube videos, TV, podcasts, radio, but
try to catch the verbs you just learned
and imitate the pronunciation and accent
To recap, all these exercises are based on active recall.
It's a way to understand how we
use the word in different situations instead
of just repeating and memorizing them.
The more we use our brain,
the better and longer we can remember that.
Tip number Three Don't get obsessed with
one way to take notes and review.
I want to say that there are many ways to do it.
Take notes in the notebook on a computer.
Use note taking applications, flash cards
each of them has advantages and disadvantages.
The first thing you have to
keep in mind is not to be exclusive.
You have to have a toolbox in language learning.
Before you take notes and reviews,
ask yourself what are the main resources
where you can learn different vocabulary?
For example, for me textbook or language lesson
website like articles, news, YouTube videos,
speaking exercise with language partner.
I use different tools to
take notes from different resources.
For vocabulary from a textbook for example,
I'm learning Turkish with this book.
Istanbul B1
If I started with a PDF book or
reading an article, I always copy the new
words or short sentences into an Excel.
Because I can copy the list and get the
translation from Google Translate, I will check them again
and put it in my anki cards.
If you watch my channel, you must know my favorite
add on to learn vocabulary when I watch YouTube videos.
The Reverso add-on
I really like the Reverso application.
It can translate and save new words directly
from YouTube or Netflix videos in one click.
Then I can review them in the application.
It's really great
To review, I use mostly Anki and Reverso to do spaced repetition.
What I like about Reverso is
that they have pronunciations and examples.
But the great thing about Anki is
that you can edit as you like.
As you can see, I rarelly write down notes.
The advantage is that I can save time
and put more effort on spaced repetition
The disadvantage is that you can't train your
writing skills if you have a pad.
There is a feature on Anki that I really like.
If you don't have a Pad, just write on your notebook.
There's no difference since I'm learning four languages
at the same time I have to work
and other things to do in my life.
It is really overwhelming for me to review
all flashcards every day so the first and
the second tip are the most important.
Don't just rely on the flashcards.
I'm actually reviewing flashcards but I have time when
I go out when I'm taking public transport when I travel
this is the best way to review
When I travel from France to Turkey the 2 hours
waiting at airport 3 hours of flight is the best
time to review my flashcards in Turkish and I can
switch to that language when I get off the plane.
If you watch this video to the end
I will give you one last tip.
Write down these three questions then the method you like
in this video and then try to add more methods
as you learn as I say don't be exclusive.
I try to give you all methods I use.
Everyone has different situations,
different learning styles.
Just try to find the most appropriate
method and build your own toolbox.
If you have any questions write in the comments
if you know better methods, share them with us.
See you soon friends. Bye.