Learning new words: a technique

One of the things students have more trouble with is how to remember the words: expressions, verbs, nouns, adjectives, articles, pronouns, adverbs, it's really too much!! There's literally millions of words, and the same words can even be different in Spain and South America. And one of the things is hard for them too is the lack of vocabulary.

Give me some relief, please.-

Firstly, nobody's a walking dictionary. In fact, the experts say an average Spanish speaker (from Spain) uses no more than 1000 words. Only more cultured and refined people get to use 5000. And many young people and teenagers only use 240 words! I'm not inventing anything, read it here.

What are the important words? Tell me.-

That's hard to answer straight. You know there are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, demostratives, possessives, etc.

I'm going to ask you to imagine again a situation (a stupid and absurd one). Some foreigners from a Spanish language school (beginners) went to a cafe at different times of the day. They all ordered with their obvious problems to communicate. Tell me who you think the waiter didn't understand when ordering and created the biggest confusion:

Martha: yo querer un café.
Jim: yo quiero el café con leche.
Li-Yang: mí quiere cáfe y leche.
Peter: me pone un taxi con leche.

... Obviously, in this case the most important word was café. You could even only say café if you only knew that word, and the context tells the rest, the waiter would get you.

You can make a mistake in the verb, saying the 2nd or 3rd person instead of the 1st, you can use a wrong preposition like y instead of café con leche, but the waiter will surely understand better than if you say taxi instead of café. He just doesn't have a clue what you're talking about. He might think a taxi is some kind of cocktail from your country, or some other kind of coffee named that way in a different city, etc. But he could never imagine what you're really ordering is coffee.

When I was in Ukraine (teaching Spanish and studying Russian) I used to confuse two words: hotel and hospital. They're different but their last three letters are the same, and It was hard for me to distinguish one from another sometimes. When my nephew was born, the secretary at the school asked me in Russian a few days later:

- Is your nephew at home yet?
- No, he's still at the hotel - I said.
- At the hotel? What hotel? - (surprised).
- Well, the biggest in Malaga.
- But why a hotel? - she insisted - Why not a hospital?

I created confusion, of course, but it was funny too :)

Mental recreation.-

This is the way I call this technique. I've been working with it, and it's given me excellent results. It's impossible to learn at once all the words we see and need to learn. We learn the ones which are relevant in our lives. That's the first filter of our mind, say the psychologists.

But the process of remembering a word or memorizing can be hard. How to see a word and get it sticked into your mind right away and never forget it again? It seems quite impossible.

I'll give you a technique to use though. Usually when students need to remember a word to use it later, they repeat it a lot of times, and many of them repeat the words aloud. For some, it sticks there, but when you do something else, after several minutes or hours it's gone.

New words need to follow a path. Usually what people do is take them from the book (or the sound) straight to their mouth, by repeating them, skipping one important step. Sometimes you can read it many times and sooner or later it seems to be gone.

However, isn't it true there are moments in your life you remember perfectly? From many years ago and they're still on your mind and they'll probably be there forever and as fresh as they were then? Why? Because in some way, they represent something in your life, they make sense in your life, even though apparently there's no connection.

Our memory is emotional.-

This is very important to keep in mind. Human being's memory is emotional. We don't have a cold 500 gb computer in our mind that remembers everything. We select our memory, we associate things to emotions, whether they're good or bad, to some smell you liked, etc. If you liked a pizza at a pizzeria very much, you'll probably remember the name of that pizza and the pizzeria too the next time. Or, at least you'll put more effort in remembering it, because it was so tasty.

Words are sounds and letters, but they represent a meaning, situations and emotions. If you see the word hotel in a book with an image next to it, that image is not representative for you, it doesn't mean anything to you. It's just a drawing.

You might have had some experience in hotels, and something happened there: you spent one night at a nice hotel, you remember the one from The Shining, the novel by Stephen King, or maybe you just can't forget the face of an angel of that receptionist who was working there then, you have something for sure on your mind associated to the word hotel.

What I'm going to tell you is to associate that anything you have on your mind connected to the word, hotel in this case (a memory, a nice girl or guy you saw there, a nice view from your room, or something bad too, something preferably emotional) and you're going to stay quiet, NOT repeating aloud. You're going to attach the word hotel to your own concept or experience of hotel in your life. You're going to close your eyes for 15 seconds. You're going to see the word hotel written on your mind with the pertinent connection in your life and you'll keep repeating it for 15-20 seconds. You'll remember the word much better. And whenever your hear it, associate it to that feeling, memory, etc.

Homework.-

Homework is not only filling gaps and conjugating verbs or writing compositions. Remembering words and keeping them alive is also homework. You devote 20-30 minutes of your time (or less) to do the exercises for tomorrow, but what about the words? They need homework too. Think about it. You feel more confident talking when you know the vocabulary, and if you fail using an article, the form of a verb, it's not that important in most cases. Devote time to learn vocabulary this way. It'll help you.

Tell your story.-

Please, if any of you who read this blog has a story related to a misunderstanding with words, here in Spain or in South America, I invite you to post it here and I'll add comments, feedbacks, etc.


To be continued...