Remember Vocabulary Fast TOP 10 TIPS
Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Do you have trouble remembering all the wonderful
vocabulary words that you’re learning?
You’re not alone.
Let’s talk about it.
If you’ve been learning English for longer
than, say, five minutes, you probably have
run across some new words.
In fact, the phrasal verb I just used, “run
across,” might be new for you.
How can you remember it?
How can you retain that information, so that
when you’re having a conversation, you can
actually use it?
Well, I have some good news.
Today we’re gonna talk about 10 different
things that you can do to remember, retain
and use the vocabulary words that you’re learning.
Before we talk about these 10 tips for remembering
vocabulary words, we need to talk about the
three steps that happen every time that you
run across a new word.
They are: Recognizing, understanding, and
using.
The first one, recognizing, means that when
you see a new word or you hear a new word,
you think, “Oh, I think I’ve heard that before.
I’ve heard the word ‘run across’ before.”
The word that I just used.
“I’ve heard that before, but I don’t really
remember what it means exactly.”
This is recognizing it.
You’ve seen it before, but you don’t remember
exactly what it means.
Then, the second step is understanding.
Maybe after this video, you will understand
what the word “run across” means, but you
won’t be able to use it yourself.
This means that when you read it in a book
or you watch a TV show and you hear them say
“run across,” you’ll think, “Oh yeah, I heard
Vanessa use this.
I know what it means.”
But when you’re having a conversation with
an English speaker, it just leaves your mind
and you forget about this word completely,
because you’re not at the third and final
step, which is using it yourself.
I wanna let you know that there is a big gap
between understanding a word and using it
yourself.
You need to understand and run across this
word a lot.
You need to run across 20, 30, 40 times.
You need to read it in books.
You need to hear it on TV shows.
You need to hear me say it.
You need to run across a word, the word you’re
trying to remember, a lot of times for you
to be able to spontaneously use it in a conversation.
And that’s the final step, is using it.
So I wanna let you know that when you learn
a new word, you’re not gonna use it directly.
You’re not gonna be able to just blurt it
out and say it immediately.
Instead, you’re gonna have to go through each
of those steps.
Recognizing it: “Oh yeah, I know this word,
but I don’t really remember what it means.”
Then understanding it, and then actually using
it yourself.
So be patient with yourself when you learn
a new word.
Realize that you’re going through those three
steps, and that eventually you will get to
using it, but you need to have a lot of English
input.
You need to really run across those new words
so many times that you can actually make it
to the “using it” step.
All right, let’s get on with the 10 tips to
help you remember and eventually use new vocabulary
expressions.
My first tip is to look it up on YouTube.
What you’re looking for here is, you’re trying
to find some insight, some new perspective,
maybe a story that will stick with you.
Let’s say that you hear the expression “odd
job,” and you think, “Well, I know what ‘odd’
is, kind of weird and strange.
And I know what a job is.
Does this mean a weird or strange job?
I don’t know.
I wanna use it correctly.”
So you search on YouTube, “odd job.”
You’re hoping to hear this word repeated a
lot so that you can make it from recognizing
to understanding to using, and you come across
or you run across the video that Dan and I
made about vocabulary, including the word
“odd job.”
You listen to that a couple times.
You hear Dan’s stories about his odd jobs.
You hear my stories about the odd jobs that
I had, and you realize, “Oh, it’s not actually
a weird job.
It’s just a kind of side job.
Babysitting, walking dogs, washing windows.
Some kind of side job.
Now I understand it.”
So you need to repeat it a lot in order to
actually use it, but looking it up on YouTube
is a great first tip.
You’re gonna hear it correctly.
You’ll hear a native speaker pronounce it,
and maybe you’ll hear a little story that
will help it to stick in your mind.
My second tip is for people who learn well
visually.
For me, when I hear a new word in another
language, it’s really difficult for me to
remember it only by listening.
I really like to see the words, that I can
visualize it, and it just helps it to stick
in my mind better.
So I recommend when you hear a new word, when
you see a new word, write it down in a notebook.
But don’t write only the word.
Write at least one phrase or better yet, write
a full sentence and maybe write some of your
own sentences.
Let’s say that you wanna use the word that
I just used, “at least.”
Well, you could look it up on YouTube and
find my lesson about it, or you could write
your own sentences about it.
This is gonna help you to create language,
use it yourself, but also it’s reinforcing
visually what the word looks like, to help
you remember it.
Connected to number two is number three, which
is to write a comment using the new expression
that you just learned.
You’re here on YouTube, so I imagine that
you watch other lessons about vocabulary and
grammar on YouTube.
Use it immediately.
Write a comment using that expression.
You’re using the word.
You’re seeing it visually.
You’re interacting with other people, so it’s
more of a real life situation than just using
a notebook.
You’re hoping that other people will actually
be able to understand your sentence, and maybe
if you’re lucky, you’ll even get some feedback
about it.
Tip number four will help you with some muscle
memory.
It is to read out loud the sentence that you
wrote in your notebook, the sentence that
you wrote in the YouTube comments, or even
a sentence that someone else wrote.
This is helping you to use your own muscles,
and also helping you to get over the fear
of hearing your own voice using English.
I know for me, when I first started speaking
some Korean when I lived in Korea, it was
so weird to hear my voice using these words
that I had just learned, so I needed to get
over it.
I needed to just do it and use these words
out loud.
So even though you might not be spontaneously
creating sentences, you’re just reading them,
it’s gonna be repetition and it’s gonna help
you to slowly step by step be able to use
it spontaneously.
Tip number five uses muscle memory and is
also great for visual and kinesthetic learners.
It is to draw a picture of a new expression
when you learn it.
So let’s imagine that you hear the word “rain
check.”
“Can we take a rain check?”
And you think, “Rain check?
I know what rain is.
I know what a check is.
What’s a rain check?”
So you look it up on YouTube.
You write a comment about it.
You read it out loud, and then you think,
“Well, I wanna take it to the next level.”
So you open your notebook again and you draw
a picture of a rain check, so that you can
really ingrain this in your memory.
If you’re curious, a “rain check” means you’re
just gonna delay something because something
came up.
Something happened and you have to delay your
event, so you might say, “Hey, we need to
take a rain check.
We need to do it tomorrow instead of today.”
So now in your notebook, you can draw a picture
of a rain check.
You could either draw a literal picture of
a rain check: a check with a rain on it, or
you can draw a picture depicting this.
This is great if you enjoy drawing, of course,
and if you enjoy learning visually and also
by using your body, moving your body and drawing,
it’s gonna help ingrain these words in your
mind.
Tips number six and seven go together.
The first one, number six, is to learn maximum
five new expressions per week.
This might not seem like too many expressions,
but after a couple weeks, it’s gonna build
and build and build, and if you try to learn
20, 30, 40 expressions per week, it’s just
gonna feel overwhelming and your brain’s actually
not gonna be able to remember them enough
to use them.
So tip number seven is to go back and review
past expressions using apps like Anki.
Anki is an excellent app and you can write
kind of like, digital flash cards.
You can write the expressions.
I recommend writing full phrases or sentences
using those expressions, and it will use a
spaced repetition system, SRS, so that over
the next couple days, it will show you those
words again and you can try to guess correctly
what they mean, the sentences that they fit
in, but it will also help you to review past
words.
So you’re gonna see those past words that
you learned at certain intervals: every three
days, every five days, every week.
This will help you to remember it because
repetition is key.
My number eight tip to help you remember new
vocabulary words is something that’s great
to do while you’re driving to work or while
you’re sitting on the train.
You’re just kind of having this empty free
time.
It is to name things around you.
This is really helpful for learning daily
vocabulary, and you’d be surprised.
Even if you have an advanced level of English,
there are probably plenty of things around
you that you don’t know what they mean.
And a good thing you can do is when you see
something that you’re not sure what it is,
maybe you see this.
It’s a pillow, and you think, “Oh, I heard
the word for that a long time ago but I forget.
Oh, I haven’t used it in a long time.”
So you look it up.
Maybe you write it in your notebook in your
native language, or you draw a picture of
it so that you can go back later and look
it up in the dictionary.
“What is that?”
And you see, “Oh, it’s a pillow.”
Great.
Now you have an association with this thing
in your house, and that links to the next
tip.
The next tip is to make associations with
new vocabulary and other words in English,
or possibly even words in your own language.
This could be things that sound similar.
So for example, this is a pillow.
This includes the word “pill.”
Pill, a pill is something that you take like
medicine if you’re sick.
So you could think, “Oh, this pillow is filled
with pills.
It’s not filled with cotton or cloth.
It’s filled with pills.”
This is gonna create an association between
these two words, and instead of learning just
one vocabulary word, you’ve learned two, and
now you’re helping yourself to understand
and remember it so that eventually you can
use it.
My final tip, tip number 10, is to quiz yourself.
This is not a sponsored video, but I recommend
using Quizlet.
Quizlet is a cool app.
It’s a website.
You can create your own flash cards, kind
of like Anki.
But the cool thing is that you can also use
other people’s flash card systems, their digital
decks of flash cards.
So you can go on the app Quizlet, and you
can type in “advanced English vocabulary,”
and you’ll find tons of quizzes that include
advanced English vocabulary that other people
made.
But you can also make these yourself.
So let’s imagine that at the end of this video,
you realized, “Wow, Vanessa used quite a few
words that I’ve never heard before or I just
don’t use myself.
I’m going to go on the Quizlet app.
I’m gonna write in those words, and I’m going
to quiz myself.”
I’m gonna write a list of all of the useful
vocabulary expressions that I used in this
video.
I’m gonna write them in the description, so
if you’d like to use those and quiz yourself
with either Quizlet or Anki, or you’d like
to make some pictures in a notebook or write
your own sentences, you’re gonna be able to
see those words, which is one, repetition.
But if you use them yourself in all of these
different ways, it’s gonna help you to use
them eventually yourself spontaneously in
conversation.
I hope that these 10 tips to help you remember
English vocabulary were useful to you.
Use some of them.
Use them in the comments.
Write your own sentences.
Read them out loud.
Draw some pictures.
Name things around you.
Try to really repeat these words as much as
possible because you want to move from recognizing
the words to understanding them, to using
them yourself.
Let me know in the comments, do you have any
other tips to help you remember vocabulary
words?
Let us know.
Let’s learn from each other.
Thanks so much for learning with me, and I’ll
see you again next Friday for a new lesson
here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free ebook,
5 Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker.
You’ll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
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for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.