Hello everyone!
Welcome to my channel.
I’m Grace.
Today we are going to talk about
how to Increase your Chinese vocabulary,
I will start with how to create opportunities to learn more new words,
and secondly, I’m going to share with you
how to memorize new vocabulary effectively.
And in the end, I will show you my vocabulary notebook
which I use to build my English vocab,
and I’ll tell you the way I note down new words
and the advantages of this method.
so remember to keep watching to the end.
Let’s get started!
So to increase your vocabulary,
the first step is to create the opportunities to gain new words.
I’m going to tell you some common ways to acquire new words,
and also I’ll show you a good method
to focus on the new words that you need.
The common ways include taking courses, reading books,
listening to podcasts, and watching TV shows, etc.
These activities are going to expose you to new content in this language.
You can find some new words that you want to learn from these sources
and write them down in your notebook
or type them into your phone to collect them.
And the good method I wanted to share with you guys is
doing language exchange,
even if you can’t find a native speaker in your area,
you can try to find one online.
During the language exchange,
you will find out that there are some words
you want to express but you haven’t learned them yet.
Then you can ask this question "Something 的中文怎麼說？"
to get the new word from the native speaker,
for example, if you have no idea how to say grandfather in Chinese
but you do know how to say father which is 爸爸,
then you can ask the person, saying: 爸爸的爸爸的中文怎麼說？
Which means "How do you say father’s father in Chinese?"
and then you will get a new word: 爺爺.
OK, these are the ways that you can get new vocabulary.
After you have the new words that you want to learn,
then the second step is to find a way to record these words
and review them.
I’ll give you two methods for your reference.
You can choose one which works for you
or you can create your own way.
The first approach is what I use,
I collect new words in a small notebook
and I have a daily routine to review them once before I go shower.
Besides, I’ll review several pages of vocabulary that I learned previously.
Reviewing is a very important part
because if you don’t let these new words show up in your mind repeatedly,
it’s very easy to lose them.
The second way is for people who like to learn by listening,
you can use your phone to record the new words you learned that day
and also make a daily routine to listen to them.
like this:
加油 加油
默契 默契
面子 面子
加油 加油
默契 默契
面子 面子
And don’t forget to review the words
you’ve just learned one or two days ago.
And to memorize new words better,
simply having these kinds of repetition is not enough.
You have to encode the new information into your mind.
In other words,
you have to categorize and organize the new words you learn
and connect them with the concepts and ideas you’ve already known
to help them stick into your mind.
To do so, I’m going to give you 3 effective ways to achieve that.
First is Memorizing the general meanings of the characters.
To increase your Chinese vocabulary,
this is a super important part,
because, in Chinese,
a syllable could correspond to many different meanings,
such as “zhì” has the meanings of intelligence, ambition or to treat someone‘s illness, etc.
However, written Chinese characters can separate these meanings.
In most cases, a Chinese character corresponds to a meaning
or you can say a group of similar meanings.
So after you learn the meanings of Chinese characters,
then you can make sense of the new words,
and memorize them more easily.
Take “zhì” as an example,
after knowing the character「智」has something to do with intelligence,
then when we learn the new words like「智力」（intelligence）and「智商」（IQ）,
then it’s much easier to remember these new words.
But just a reminder,
not all the characters only correspond to some similar meanings,
sometimes one character can accord with different separated meanings.
The second way to help you organize the new words into your mind is
by finding the patterns and rules of Chinese words.
This will help you acquire new words with less effort.
But first, I want to let you know that
you don’t have to force yourself to analyze every new word,
that is quite painful.
The thing is that after you know a certain amount of words,
you’ll gradually get a sense of it.
However, I have good news for you.
I summarized some of the rules
so that you can have a general understanding by watching this video.
after knowing these rules, you can try to use this knowledge
to help you memorize new vocabulary.
In Chinese, one character can be a word.
Especially in ancient Chinese, one-character words are the majority,
but nowadays there are more and more two-characters words.
However, the number of Chinese words
that consists of three or more characters is smaller in comparison to the previous two.
one-character words like 水、書、跑、美 etc.
two-character words can be formed by several ways,
for example, adding a prefix or a suffix to form a word,
such as “第一”（first, number one）、“第二”(second, number two)
or “孩子”(child)、“女子”(woman, female).
Another way is combining two characters
that have their own individual meanings into a word,
and usually, the meaning of that word is related to the meanings of the characters.
For example: “出眾” is “outstanding”
and the character “出” has the meaning of going out or coming out.
“眾” related to “crowd”.
So you can easily understand why “出眾” means “outstanding”.
This is a common way to create new words in Chinese,
so this is why the previous tip — Memorizing the general meanings of the characters
is so important for remembering new words.
In addition, a few two-character words have characters
that only have meaning when they used together.
Their individual characters have no meaning.
You have to memorize them as a unit.
For instance: “蜘蛛”(spider)、“葡萄”(grape).
OK, the third way to let new words stick into your mind is
by imagining you using this word.
Try to let this word be relevant to you,
connect it with your life.
For example, if I learn a new English word “intrigue”,
then I will think about what kind of scenario I could probably use this word,
Oh, like if someone asks me why I read so many books about linguistics,
then I could reply: “because I’m intrigued by this subject.”
Then this word somehow becomes relevant to me,
so I can remember it longer.
Next, I’m gonna show you my vocabulary book.
Here, you can see how I record my new vocabulary.
You might notice that I won’t write down the translation of the word.
at the beginning of learning a new word,
I’ll check the translation of that word,
and then write it down without the translation but with at least an example.
Because this can help me not rely on my first language,
and when I review the words, I can try to recall the meaning of them.
and most of the time,
the example sentences provide me enough clues to think of their meaning.
And in this case, I immerse myself entirely in this second language.
So for me, this is quite an effective way, you can try it!
OK, that’s all for today,
if you find this video helpful,
please give it a thumbs-up
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And if you want to learn some daily spoken mandarin
you can follow my Instagram and Facebook page.
Looking forward to seeing you there,
and I’ll see you next time, Bye!