A question I get asked all the time is "Luca how can you memorize so many words
across so many languages?" And my simple answer is: "I build a word spider web", and
in this video, I'm going to give you the tools to create it, to maintain it, and to
make it stronger. If I say the word "game" what is the very first thing that comes
to your mind? Probably something associated with
"play" - playing games - but the reality is that "game" has many other meanings.
For example, you can say "I was hunting game", meaning "I was hunting wild animals" or
"Are you game?" - like "are you down?, do you want to do something?". So this goes to
show that many words have multiple meanings and functions according to
their context and what gives them meaning? Context, that is, surrounding words.
So, whenever you find a word that you don't know in a foreign language, always make
sure that you either take the sentence in which that word is embedded and you
copy it somewhere on your notebook, for example, or you create your own sentence
in which you embed that word. A very common mistake is for example to take
all these words that you don't know from a text and simply put it on a list. But
isolated words are not as strong as words in context, embedded in sentences.
Always remember that as a first rule.
A simple yet very effective way to memorize and learn new words is to
listen while reading. Think about it for a second: you can for example read a text
as a beginner material or you can have podcasts with scripts or movies with
subtitles. The most important thing is that you listen while reading or reading
while listening. If you just listen to the language without subtitles or a
script, you will not see the written word, you will probably not understand if you
don't have a good level. On the other hand, if you just read a text, you will
not see and hear how the language is spoken, so you will miss out on the
spoken language. The easiest solution? Read while listening as much as you can.
When you read a text in a foreign language there's a very high chance that you're
going to stumble upon a lot of words that you don't know. A very common
reaction is to try to strike and underline and look up every single word
that appears on the text. I don't think that this is an efficient way to deal
with it. A much more efficient way is to focus just on the words that are
RELEVANT for you. Let me give you an example: if you're an engineer, words such
as "tile" or "pillar" will probably be much more interesting and relevant to you
than if you were a doctor for example, and for a doctor some other words might
be more interesting, and anyway, the brain discards a lot of words that it deems
not important. So just focus on ONE THIRD of the unknown words that you find in
the text because the brain will remember those words if they're relevant for you.
Heart, elephant and sand. If you think about it, these simple words have a
constellation of elements around them. For example you can say "(see) pink elephants"
or "the elephant in the room", "to draw a line in the sand", "at the heart of the matter"
"golden heart", and so on and so forth.
This goes to show that the brain creates big networks of associated elements and this
is how you can use your brain in order to start learning new words. Every new
piece of information you can link it to old pieces of information, so always make
sure that you look at words from this perspective and think "how can I
associate this new piece of information to the other pieces of information?" in
the network that I have talked about. And this is the "word spiderweb" I was talking
about at the beginning of this video.
Some languages have notoriously long words. Let's take the German word
"Freundschaftsbezeigung" which means "display of friendship" but if you think about it, the
first reaction is to get scared by he length of this word, but then when
looking closely, you will realize that this word is made of "Freundschaft" -
- friendship - and "Bezeigung" - or "Bezeigungen" - display, displays of".
This makes the word easier to retain, easier to pronounce, and easier to
remember. So get into the habit of looking at words as made of smaller
parts. If you learn how these smaller parts make longer words, things will get
much easier in terms of everything.
Romans used to say "Repetita juvant", which means "repeating helps" and that's
true, and that's what we do at college university, at school: we tend to repeat
things over and over, but repeating things in the very same way in which we
had been exposed to the very first time is not actually a very efficient way of
dealing with texts. Let me give you a metaphor: imagine that you have to
conquer a castle - that is, conquering the language - if you always attack it through
the main door, the defendants will realize your tactics and your strategy
and it will be easier to defend the castle. If, instead, you attack the castle
from multiple angles, you are more likely to win the battle. To give you a very
concrete example, if you listen while reading the text the very first time that
you got exposed to it, three or four days down the line, do things differently
maybe just listen to the text, or just read it, or listen to it in the target
language while reading it in your own native language.
Whatever is different is relevant and it makes a big difference in the way our
brain retains information because we're adding VARIETY to it. Novelty and
repetition is a fantastic combination to retain words, texts, and whatever you want.
"Verba volant sed scripta manent", "spoken words fly while written words stay"
another wise quote from the wise Romans. Why is this so relevant 2,000 years ago
as it is now? It's because words that are spoken, they just fly around the air and you
need a system in place to catch them. So always make sure that you have a device,
a note-taking device - be it your mobile phone or your notebook - to catch these
words and these sentences on the fly. You can do it everywhere. You can do it while
you're sitting and you're trying to learn the language, and you can do it
while you're talking to your friends in a bar, you can do it even while walking
and you come up with a word that you want to know the meaning of in a
foreign language. Whatever it is, just make sure that you have a notebook that
you can fit in your pocket and you can carry it with you at all
times. And another tip is when you mark words or sentences, always make sure that
you mark the PLACE and the TIME where this happened, because it's going to give
you a very clear reference in time and space for your episodic memory. It makes
a huge difference if you get into the habit of doing this every single day.
This video contains a lot of information and I've condensed it for the sake of
brevity and clarity. If you want to know more, you can click on the link in the
description box below and you will be able to read a very extensive article
about this very same topic. So here you have it. These are the seven tools to
create and strengthen your "word spider web". All you need to do now is to
get out there and catch as many "word flies" as possible.