Hey everybody Daniel Guaba back here with another new video. How's everybody doing?
So today we're gonna be talking about learning vocabulary. It's one thing
that we all really want to do, we want to learn as many new words as we can when
we're picking up a new language but like we mentioned in our last video, we don't want to
let ourselves get over well now one thing that can become overwhelming
is spending too much time trying to learn vocabulary. So what can we do?
Before we get into the tips for today I want to talk about memorization versus
remembering or at least how I think about them. So for me when I think about
memorizing vocabulary that would be something like using flashcards or
trying to see words on a list maybe read the word in a different language on one
side, the definition on the other side, basically trying to force your brain to
remember by repetition. Now remembering, I think of as having some kind of
connection to a word so that you can remember it in context and give it some
kind of special meaning, to you specifically. So let's get into that idea
a little bit more about, rote memorization versus making connections
When we learn something new usually our brain is gonna try to connect it to
something that we already know it's like if you think about words that you've
learned in your first language that are easier to understand when you read them
but might be a bit hard to come up with on your own. The reason that this happens
is because words are easier to remember or understand in context. Now, if you were
memorizing a word say off of a flashcard there wouldn't be any sentence going
with it so there wouldn't be any clues help you figure out what the word means in
case you get a little bit fuzzy. There are two ways that I like to try to make
context for the words that I'm trying to learn and I'm gonna show them to you
right now. Alright everybody so let's take a look at the word that we've got
here. Now this is a Spanish word and it is a su now if you didn't already know
what it meant I'll let you know it means blue. Now the first way that I like to
try to make myself remember words more easily is to look for words that I
already know inside of this new word. Now there's a trick to it you're going to
have to stretch some letters or sounds and you might have to delete some sounds
but the idea is not to get something perfect it's
just to give you something to remind you of what the new word means. I tell my
students to try to connect to the first word that comes to mind when they see a
new word in a different language and not to worry about whether those words
actually have any connection to what the definition is. So here's my example
when I see the word "Azul" I immediately think of "A zoo" like a place where you
have a lot of animals. For this word we'd have to take off the "L" that's ok
because remember we're just trying to have a way to hint us to getting back to
the definition of the word it doesn't have to be exactly the same. And then
what we can do here is now we have this idea of "A zoo" when we're thinking about
"Azul" and now we need to just connect the meaning of a place with a lot of
animals and the definition that we want to learn which is "blue." So how about this
"I went to the zoo and all the animals were blue" so if you can think in your
mind you have to really picture it and imagine: you went to the zoo you saw a
lion, you saw a giraffe, you some monkeys you saw whatever you wanted to see, but
they were blue, something that's really shocking. You know, you wouldn't expect to
go to the zoo and see blue animals, right? And this is another important part of
making hints for yourself is you want to make them outrageous or really stand out
in your memory so that when you come back it's easier to remember what your
hint really even was and then we could take it one step further and replace the
word that we want to know in a different language with the English word in our
sentence. So now we can say I went to the zoo and all the animals were Azul, and
we'll know that Azul means blue because we have our hint now you can go out
there and find what are called mnemonics to help you remember words. Now what are
mnemonics? Well a mnemonic is simply a memory device something like the
sentence we just created to help you remember the definition of a word. It may
be tempting to go out there and find mnemonics that are already pre-made but I
like to suggest to my students that they try to make their own mnemonics as hard
as it might be in the beginning. The reason for this is that if you spend
more time thinking about the word and really molding the sounds
putting it into a context yourself it's gonna be become that much more personal
to you and it'll be easier to remember than if someone else gives you a
mnemonic and tries to have you remember their way of remembering. Think about it
this way I think it's easier to remember a story
that you have told, because you've experienced, it rather than tell a story
that someone else has told you. All right everybody that's it for this video just
a quick tip on how to help you remember vocab words. So the key takeaway is use
mnemonics. Now you can use mnemonics whether it's changing sounds of words to
sound like words that you know maybe using rhymes or even using pictures
which I'm gonna try to do in another video so look for that soon. Another
reason that I like having my students used in mnemonics is because it's fun and
you get to play around with words and think outside the box
and I think language learning should really be a fun process
you shouldn't have to sit down and spend hours and hours just flashcarding
yourself to try to learn a few words. Now I'm not saying flash carding isn't a
good study tool. I actually do flashcard myself but what I like to do is I like
to write my mnemonic or even give a little context or maybe a sentence on
the opposite side of the definition on the flashcard just to beef them up a
little bit more and make them that much more useful. So I want to hear from you.
Have you ever used mnemonics before? Have you even heard of that word before?
What's a time that you were trying to learn or remember something and you were
able to use a trick to help you remember? Why don't you go ahead and tell me in
the comments below. Again, thanks for watching and I hope you found this video
fun and useful. I'll be coming up with another video really soon. The next one
is gonna be about instruction so I'll be teaching you a bit about a language that
I speak. If you want to have some input into what language I'll be going over
next time, go ahead and put that in the comments as well. Remember we have
choices of Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese, whichever one you guys would like to
hear. Remember to hit the subscribe button so that you get notified of the
next time I upload a video, and I hope to see you there.