“To speak another language means to own a second soul”
Charlemagne
The importance of knowing a foreign language in modern world difficult to overestimate. In order to travel, you must know the language of the country you are going to, or at least English. There are many foreign language resources on the Internet, the key to which is knowledge of the language. Increasingly, when hiring, knowledge of one or even several foreign languages is required. And its study contributes to the formation of new neural connections in the brain.
The main difficulty in mastering a language is words. This article is designed to make this process much more interesting and easier.
If you are not yet familiar with the basic principles of mnemonics,...
Method phonetic associations
This method is based on the consonance of words of a foreign language and a native one. In order to remember a word, you must choose one that sounds similar to yours. native language.
For example: pillow [ˈpɪloʊ] translated from English is pillow. In pronunciation this word is very similar to Russian word"saw". We imagine how a saw cuts a pillow from above, feathers begin to fall out, etc. (don't forget about the brightness of the image). Or the English word hang - to hang. It reminds me of the word "khan". We imagine how the khan hangs on the horizontal bar.
What to do with the word elephant? It’s difficult to find a consonant word for it. But you can divide it into parts and pick it up some words For example " Ele ktronika" (the one where the wolf catches eggs) and " forfeit ik". We imagine how an elephant with its trunk holds an “Electronics”, half wrapped in a candy wrapper.
Let's consider a more complex example: suggest - to suggest. We imagine how Stalin holds a large open jar with jam, a piece of cheese sticking out of it, and Joseph Vissarionovich actively offers buy this. We read the images in order (from top to bottom): sy R, je m, St alin. The result was something very reminiscent of suggest. We immediately remember the translation - to offer.
Important! When repeating words, be sure to pronounce them correct pronunciation words. Although you do not remember it exactly, but only approximately, you will still remember it with periodic repetition. You can repeat it as follows: first read the word in foreign language, remember the phonetic association and name the translation, and after some time you will no longer need to imagine Stalin selling jam every time, you will be able to name the translation straightaway. If you want to communicate verbally, and not just be able to read and write, then this is the effect you need to achieve. It's not that difficult. With regular reading, automaticity can come even without much effort on your part. But some words will not appear in the text so often, so they will have to be repeated separately (allow time for this in your schedule).
Word formation
Study the word formation of the chosen language. How can you turn a familiar word into the opposite meaning (happy, unhappy), how can you turn a noun into an adjective or adverb (success, successful, successfully, respectively). Pay attention to words with two roots (snowball – snow+ball – snowball or snowball). Be sure to understand formative prefixes and suffixes - this will make the process of learning the language much easier.
As you noticed, to memorize words it is not at all necessary to highlight supporting images. But if you wish, you can do this: create a memory palace with several corridors (one per part of speech) and place images in it. Then you will have a complete dictionary of the language you are learning in your head.
Bonus: remembering new words in your native language
A process similar to memorizing foreign words: we create a phonetic association, find an image for semantic meaning words and connect.
For example: an epigone is a follower of some artistic, scientific, etc. movement, devoid of creative originality and mechanically repeating someone else’s ideas. Phonetic associations: ep olets, Yoke ry N Ikolaev. We imagine Igor Nikolaev sitting at the table and copying something from one piece of paper to another. He has huge epaulets on his shoulders. Ready.
Now you don’t have to spend hours cramming a couple of dozen words. The speed at which your lexicon, will grow up, and the desire to learn the language will increase, because quick success in learning is very motivating. Don’t put it off for too long: learn 10-20 foreign words right now.
You teach and learn these words, but there’s no use! After a couple of days everything is forgotten.
Use scientific approach to remembering! We present to you three scientifically based techniques that will allow you to quickly and permanently memorize foreign words.
HOW MANY WORDS DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?
First, let's figure out how many words you need to learn in order to begin to understand most foreign speech, and even express your thoughts yourself. A five-year-old child living in an English-speaking country uses 4,000 - 5,000 words, and a university graduate uses about 20,000 words. However, a person studying English language, as a foreigner, has a vocabulary of only 5,000 words, despite several years of study.
But there is also good news : A vocabulary of 2,000 words is enough to understand 80% of foreign speech. TO this conclusion The researchers came to this conclusion based on an analysis of the Brown Corpus. A linguistic corpus is a collection of texts on various topics.
Interestingly, after you have learned 2,000 words, increasing your vocabulary for each subsequent 1,000 words allows you to increase the amount of text you understand by only 3-4%.
HOW TO QUICKLY REMEMBER A WORD?
The first question that interests everyone is how to quickly memorize foreign words?
Scientists have concluded that information is remembered faster when It has emotional coloring . Accordingly, it is a good idea to study words through games, riddles, and films. If you liked the song, don’t be lazy to look at the translation of the unclear words. These words will forever be associated with the song you liked, which means they will leave an emotional mark in your memory.
A great technique is mnemonics. Create colorful associations - this will allow you to remember even hard-to-pronounce words. Example of use: the word weather is similar to the Russian word wind, we build a wind-weather pair in our heads, and forever remember that weather is translated weather. There are special reference books in which you can find various mnemonic techniques for memorizing English words. However, it is better to come up with such associations yourself, since our associations and emotions are strictly individual.
HOW TO NOT FORGET A WORD SO QUICKLY?
So, you have learned a couple hundred words, but after a week about ten of them remain in your memory. What is the problem? This is explained by the existence of short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory mechanisms allow you to retain information for 15-30 minutes, then, noticing that this information does not find use, the brain gets rid of it as something unnecessary. How can we make it clear to the brain that we really need these words? The answer is repetition. It’s like with Pavlov’s dog: the light comes on and saliva comes out. However, it is released only after 5-10 repetitions of the food + light chain. If you stop feeding food when the light is turned on, the association of the light bulb with food will be destroyed in the dog’s brain, and saliva will stop secreting.
So how many times does a word need to be repeated for it to move consistently from short-term to long-term memory?
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus developed the Forgetting Curve, which measures the amount of information lost over time in the absence of repetition. Within the first 20 minutes after learning the words, we will already remember 60%, and within 1 hour we will lose more than 50% of the information. Then, over time, more and more information will be erased, and by day 3, only 20% of the information will remain in memory. Thus, if you miss at least one day in the repetition - forgotten words you won't get it back.
The conclusion is obvious: no repetition. Use words in speech, come up with stories using new words, play cards on your smartphone for at least a couple of minutes a day - all this will help you retain the words you have learned. Otherwise, the time spent on their initial study will simply be wasted.
We suggest using the following repetition schedule:
- 10-15 minutes after learning the words;
- After 50-60 minutes;
- The next day;
- After 1 day;
- In 2 days.
After this most of information will stick for life.
HOW TO EXPRESS THOUGHTS FASTER?
I really want foreign words to pour out of my mouth without requiring excessive brain strain and several minutes to formulate a phrase. There is an opportunity to speed up the formation of foreign speech - this is the development of muscle memory. By muscles here we mean the muscles of our articulatory apparatus. These muscles, like the muscles in the legs when riding a bicycle or the muscles in the fingers of a pianist, have a memory that allows them to perform automated movements almost unconsciously.
In order for muscle memory to form, it is important to pronounce them out loud when learning words, making movements with your tongue and lips. It is also useful to simultaneously imagine an image of the subject being studied. Over time, you will no longer think about what word to say - your muscles will do it automatically.
Thus, the correct organization of the brain’s work in the formation of short-term, long-term and muscle memory will allow you to quickly and permanently replenish your vocabulary.
Good luck with your studies!
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Learning a language is impossible without memorizing new words. But besides banal and boring cramming, there are many simple, and most importantly - effective ways learn unfamiliar words.
First you need to figure out exactly how you best perceive information. There is a small but very important checklist for this. If you are an auditory learner, then the “read a notebook” method will work much worse for you than the “listen to a list of words for a text” method. And you may not even think about it and look at this stupid notebook for a long time and persistently, until the bitter end and the feeling of your own worthlessness and not understand why nothing is remembered!
Traditional methods
- Yartsev method (visuals)
Let's take a notebook. We write down the word - translation - in 2-3 columns. We give synonyms\antonyms\examples next to each other. We read lists from time to time, just read, don’t cram anything.
I don’t know how it works, but, for example, I didn’t cram German, but just read the notebook from time to time. The teacher did not give dictations and never checked us against lists. And I still, many years later, remember a bunch of words.
It turns out that you don’t strain yourself, you don’t try to cram 100 words into yourself in 30 minutes, you just systematically refresh the material from time to time. But you should immediately warn that these words should appear in textbooks, articles, i.e. you must, in addition to reading the notebook, somehow activate them.
- Card method
The second popular method. We take and cut up a bunch of cards or buy square blocks of note paper. On one side we write the word, on the other - the translation. For advanced users we provide examples. We pass the cards around, putting aside those that we know well. From time to time we repeat what we have covered in order to refresh ourselves. The downside is that if there are a lot of words and little time, you will spend a lot of time creating the cards themselves.
For fun, you can put them in piles of 10 in different places in the apartment, stumble upon them from time to time and repeat. Auditory learners should definitely add speaking out loud to this method. Cards are great for children; this can be turned into an interesting game.
- Prescription method
Classics of the genre. You take a word and write it out many, many times. Works great for Chinese characters. Minus - green melancholy. But the method has been tested for centuries.
- Half Page Method
This is one of my favorite ways. You bend the sheet in half, write a word on one edge, with reverse side- translation. You can quickly check yourself. For me, as a visual learner, it works well, because... I easily remember in which part of the sheet it was written given word. The downside is that you get used to a certain word order.
- Interior Designer Method
If you are learning some specific vocabulary that surrounds you, you can make unique “labels” everywhere - stick stickers with the names of objects. You can also stick the most disgusting words on the monitor that you don’t want to remember. The advantage of this method is that it's fun. The downside is that the brain may begin to ignore all these pieces of paper, and then they will hang somewhere for a long time.
Optimization methods
- Method of grouping by grammatical features
If you have a large list of words, the worst thing you can do with it is to learn it haphazardly. It can and should be processed and grouped. For example, first you write down verbs, and you do not write them out in a row, but group them by type of ending, or write out nouns male, then female and separately exceptions that do not fall into these lists.
Thus, because Most of our words are not exceptions; you begin to see the logic of the language and remember words in conjunction with similar ones.
- Method of grouping by meaning
You write down and remember the word and its synonym/antonym at once. This is true for both beginners and intermediates. Now that you have learned the word “good”, find out right away what “bad” will be. And if you also remember “excellent, so-so, disgusting,” then you will greatly enrich your vocabulary.
- Method of studying cognates words
We take words, group them around a root, for example, “deed/do/done,” and learn several parts of speech with the same root at once.
- Etymological method
Works well for those who have learned several languages. When you study multiple languages within the same language branch, you begin to see similar roots. This actually comes with experience, and there is no need to learn it again great amount words At a certain point, you just know enough. And if I understand that this word doesn’t tell me anything categorically, I go into the etymological dictionary and find out where it came from. While I do this, I remember it.
- Chains of words
You take a list of words that you need to learn and make up a story (even a crazy one) from them. So you will learn not 30 words, but 5 sentences of 6 words each. If you approach this matter creatively, you can have a fun and useful time.
Methods for those who do not like old-fashioned methods
- Spaced Repetition
A technique of retention in memory, which consists in repeating what has been learned. educational material at certain, ever-increasing intervals. In fact, you install the application on your phone, and the program will automatically show you words in the specified order and with the desired frequency. You can use like ready-made lists words, and create your own.
Pros: thoroughly etched in memory.
Cons: it takes a lot of time. If you've already memorized a word, it will still pop up from time to time in some programs.
In Memrise you can choose ready-made lists of words or create your own. If a word is absolutely not memorized, you can use special funny pictures that users create using mnemonic techniques, or upload your own. Memrise also recently added a new option - you can not only hear the voice of a word, but watch a video of how people pronounce these words.
A service for working on written speech for those who have already mastered the basics of language practice. The user writes a text in the language being studied, after which a native speaker of the corresponding language checks what has been written and makes his own corrections.
"Magic" methods
Various marketers and language gurus love to use magical methods to lure people. Usually the essence of the methods lies in “secret techniques of the special services,” which, objectively speaking, are described in a lot of literature. And they ask for ludicrous amounts of money for this.
- Mnemonics
Mnemonics is one of the most popular methods, the essence of which is to come up with funny and absurd associations for a word that you can’t remember. You take a word and come up with some kind of associative image, which should be very vivid. But in this image there must be a “key” to the memorized word.
Example: “grief” (“grief”) - woe to the wounded tiger, vultures are circling over him.
For auditory learners
Rule #1 for you: Always say out loud what you are learning. If you use flashcards, recite them. If you are reading a list, read it out loud. Listen to the words, for you this is the most quick way remember them! Naturally, you will have to write them down, but things will go faster than if you read and write silently.
- Listening to words
You can play audio recordings of word lists and repeat after the announcer. Usually, good textbooks provide a well-read list of words for the lesson. You can also listen to high-quality podcasts that provide detailed analysis of dialogues.
- Repeat multiple times
A method similar to writing words in a row is quite tedious and boring, but effective - repeat it out loud several times. There is an opinion that you can consider a word learned if you have used it in context 5 times. So try to give 5 different examples use of this word. Naturally, out loud. You can reinforce this by writing it down.
Methods for those who absolutely do not want to work with lists
- Reading (a lot of reading)
If the level is high enough and there is no urgent need to urgently expand your vocabulary, the easiest way is to read a lot. You can mark new words and even write them down (this works best, but not everyone likes to do this). By reading, you learn to understand the meaning from the context, you are “saturated” with words, they themselves become yours passive stock. But reading usually doesn’t really help translate them into an asset, i.e., in order to progress in the language, you need to do something else in addition to reading.
- Learn what is really necessary
In one of my textbooks, the word “hoe” appeared in the vocabulary before the words “short and long” appeared. Don't learn "hoes" and all that unnecessary crap until you've learned some really relevant and pressing vocabulary.
How to determine relevance? There are many manuals and lists from the “1000 most common words” series. First we learn frequency, then “hoes”, not before. If you have not yet learned to count and do not know pronouns, it is too early for you to learn colors, no matter how much you would like to.
- Get creative with the process
If everything infuriates you, words don’t come into your head and you want to quickly close these lists, experiment. Some people get help from drawings, some people walk around the apartment and recite out loud, some people talk to their cat. If you are interested in something, do not be lazy to look into the dictionary. Study what is close to you. Don't get hung up on methods that don't work.
Which we are studying, we have known for a long time, but to expand our vocabulary and memorize a large number of foreign words are problematic for us. Because of this, the speech, although correct, is meager. What to do?
In this article we will tell you how to quickly and easily memorize foreign words to expand your vocabulary and make it richer.
Foreign words
Set goals
The first step to learning a new language is setting goals. Many people treat this point superficially, but it is the main one in this matter. By working on it, you can ultimately determine whether you have truly achieved everything you wanted. When you are faced with the desire or need to learn new language, many questions, problems and small details come to mind: too many words, difficult to learn, learning methods are different.
When you set a goal for yourself, work out what you want to achieve in the end, you focus on narrower areas. Research shows that people who work to set goals are more likely to succeed than those who simply start teaching without knowing what they want to achieve. Use the following tips to successfully set a goal and achieve it:
Focus on a specific outcome. Work out the details and determine what exactly you want to learn, not how much time you want to spend on it. For example, tell yourself: “This week I want to learn 30 English words related to shopping.”
Set short-term goals. Of course, having a serious goal is good, but if it is too broad and requires a huge investment of time, it will not be enough to motivate you to work every day. Break your big goal into smaller ones, and successfully complete small weekly or monthly tasks.
Challenge yourself. Goals are always achieved much faster if they force you to make an effort. The main thing is that you do not feel burdened or pressured. This method can work if you set one goal for yourself, but with different possible results. For example, say: “I will learn 30-50 English words this week.” The smallest number allows you to start working with the knowledge that the goal is not that difficult to achieve. The most big number will force you to make an effort to show the best result.
Write down your goals. This obvious method really works because keeping your paper organized allows you to focus on what you're writing fully. In fact, you can use some other means for this: notes on your phone, notes on the refrigerator, a marker on the wall, or your finger on the mirror.
Read also: 5 most unusual languages people speak
The most common foreign words
Make a schedule
Have you ever wondered how musicians memorize so many songs and remember them? for a long time? It's all about daily practice, because for this they rehearse over and over again. This process takes time, but is rewarded later.
When learning new words, you may think that it takes too much time and that what you already know is enough for you. However, you will be able to speak beautifully, correctly and interestingly only when you enrich your vocabulary. In fact, it doesn't take much time. Just make a schedule and you will see it.
If you are a person who prefers to get up early, study words for half an hour - in the morning. Teach them while you choose clothes, wash and dress, while you make tea. Plus, you can treat yourself to small prizes for a job well done - allow yourself new thing or going to a restaurant, for example, after a week of working with new words. Remember that this will only work if you actually learn the words every day.
Group words by topic
Many people, when expanding their vocabulary, make one common mistake - they start learning all the words in a row. To make it easier to remember foreign words, you should not study everything by simply remembering and translating them. Create a list of words grouped by topic or category. For example, write down all the words for colors, food, animals, verbs of motion, and others.
This method allows you to divide the entire huge vocabulary into small parts that are much easier to learn. In addition, associations with a topic will help you remember both the words themselves and the area in which they are used. Small lists of words will motivate you to study them, because you will not feel overwhelmed or pressured, but the result will not be long in coming.
Look for opportunities
“Learn a word” and “memorize” are completely different concepts. A person who truly learns new words always knows how and in what situation they need to be applied, otherwise all efforts become meaningless. Otherwise, they are simply erased from memory, and you have to start over.
In order for the learned word to firmly settle in your memory, use it as often as possible. If the word is rare or unusual, find out when it is appropriate to use it. If the word is completely ordinary and the situation allows it, start a topic that would require the use of learned words. For example, if you are on this moment study the list of animals that live in the forest, interest your interlocutor and tell him a few amazing facts about wild nature.
How to memorize foreign words
Video and audio
If you really want to enrich your vocabulary, but notice that you have poor visual memory, and you are tired of constantly repeating words out loud, use various educational videos and audio recordings with the pronunciation of words. This will help you relax, go about your business, while listening to someone repeat words that are new to you.
You can turn them on as background to your daily activities and listen while getting ready for work or taking a bath. This way, you will not only remember words, but also know how to pronounce them correctly - this is a very important point in expanding your vocabulary and when communicating with native speakers.
Own words
In order to understand which words are most often used in Everyday life, and which ones are practically no longer used, highlight the most popular ones in your speech and the speech of your loved ones. If you notice that you often use a certain word, or it often appears in the speech of your friends, write it down.
Over time, you will collect a list of words that you can translate and learn, because the words that you are given to study in old books and textbooks are not always used in everyday life. They have important For general development, however, you should first find out how often and in what situations native speakers use them - otherwise you may find yourself in an awkward position or simply not be understood.
Synonyms and antonyms
As in the Russian language, many foreign words have synonyms and antonyms. This point will help you enrich your vocabulary and make your speech richer and more beautiful, because using the same word in a sentence several times in a row will not add beauty to it.
If you find a word that you use often, try to find a replacement for it. Learn a few synonyms - you will know what it means, and the associations will do their job. You won't have to spend a long time searching and remembering the area in which this word is used, because synonyms have the same meaning.
When learning a foreign language, almost every person has a question about how to memorize foreign words quickly. Currently, there are many methods and techniques that will help expand foreign vocabulary easily and quickly, without resorting to tedious cramming, which is often not useful.
Method of interaction of sensations
This method It works most effectively when used in combination with other methods and techniques for memorizing words.
The method of interaction of sensations shows how to better remember foreign words through sensory perception. It is based not on simple mechanical memorization of a word or phrase, but on their presentation and comparison with any sensations. This approach helps you use the words you’ve learned more confidently. colloquial speech and don’t waste extra time just remembering them. With just the mention of a person, object, action or phenomenon, previously used sensory associations will automatically remind the brain of the necessary word.
An example is the English word cup, translated into Russian as “cup”. When using the method of interaction of sensations, you should not just memorize the “word - translation” pair, but also imagine the cup itself, the manipulations that can be performed with it, as well as the sensations that can be associated with it.
The method of interaction of sensations can be combined with mnemonics, based on searching for consonances in the native language and incorporating sound associations and translation into a common, easily memorized phrase. The English word cup is very similar to the Russian "cap". Based on a consonant association and translation, it is easy to create a phrase like: “Water drips from the tap into the mug: drip-drip-drip.” This combination of techniques perfectly shows how to memorize foreign words quickly and effectively. Mnemonics helps to transfer a word into long-term memory, and the method of interaction of sensations helps to consolidate it in memory and remind the brain of it when necessary to use it.
Cards and stickers method
Based on repeating 10-20 words throughout the day. Small rectangles are cut from thick paper or cardboard. Words in a foreign language are written on one side, and Russian translation on the other. Words are looked up at any free moment: at breakfast, lunch or dinner, in transport, at work, etc. You can view both foreign words and their translation in Russian. The main thing is when viewing, try to remember the translation of the word or its original sound and spelling in a foreign language.
Lessons with cards can be made more effective if carried out in several stages:
- Familiarization with new words. Pronunciation, search for associations, initial memorization.
- Memorizing new foreign words. Restoring the translation into Russian in memory, constantly shuffling the cards until all the words are learned.
- A stage similar to the previous one, but in reverse order - working with words in Russian.
- Consolidation of learned words. Repeat words as quickly as possible using a stopwatch. Target this stage- recognition of words without translation.
Original version The card method is to use stickers. With their help, you can learn the names of surrounding objects and the actions that can be performed with them. For example, you can stick the English “door” on the door, and “push” on its handle on the side from which the door needs to be pushed, and “pull” on the side from which the door is pulled.
Another option for working with stickers is to stick them in those places where the student can most often see them. This could be a place near the computer (including the screen), a mirror in the bathroom, kitchen shelves, etc. Any foreign words can be written on stickers. The main condition is that the stickers should often catch your eye.
The use of stickers clearly shows how to memorize words of a foreign language using visual information.
Associations
This is a very interesting and simple way of learning that is suitable even for kids. Methods of lexical or phonetic associations talk about how to memorize foreign words using Russian words consonant with them. At the same time, the foreign word and the Russian word consonant with it must be connected in meaning. If such a semantic connection is not clearly visible, you should come up with it yourself.
For example, the English word palm translated into Russian means “palm” and is consonant with the Russian “palm”. To remember the meaning of the word palm by association, you should think of the leaves of a palm tree as looking like human palms with outstretched fingers.
Don't think that there are exceptions to association methods. For one foreign word it is quite easy to find similar-sounding words in Russian, while another is completely inconsonant with anything. However, for any foreign word you can choose either a consonant variant, or divide it into its component parts and look for a similar phrase in the Russian language.
Or split one compound word into two simple ones already known to the language learner, and by combining their translations to form a single association. For example, the English word butterfly (butterfly) is easily divided into butter (butter) and fly (fly, fly). Thus, butterfly is easily remembered through associations such as “fly on butter” or “butter flies.”
Association methods are described in many works of professional linguists and are widely used in practice language schools. Some of the most interesting works and effective methods were proposed by Igor Yuryevich Matyugin, the developer of a special technique that develops attention and memory. To make it easier to understand how to memorize foreign words, I.Yu. Matyugin presented to the world a book containing 2,500 English words with vivid and interesting associations.
Yartsev method
It is best suited for those who perceive information more easily visually. This method will not tell you how to memorize hundreds of foreign words a day, but it will definitely help to significantly expand your vocabulary, consolidating it in long-term memory.
The essence of Yartsev’s method lies in the specific writing of words. A regular notebook sheet is divided into 3 columns. In the first the word is written, in the second - its translation. The third column is for synonyms and antonyms, as well as examples of word combinations and phrases in which the word being studied will be present.
The nice thing about using this technique is that there is no cramming. The written words should be re-read from time to time, thus gradually consolidating them in memory. But reading alone will not be enough. Words, in addition to lists, should also appear in articles, films, etc. Thus, they need to be activated in memory.
Grouping Methods
This technique helps you figure out how to quickly memorize foreign words. Combining them into groups can occur:
- Within the meaning of.
- According to grammatical features.
In the case of grouping by meaning, words that are synonyms or antonyms are collected together. The purpose of this grouping is to maximize the enrichment of vocabulary. An example would be the following group of words translated into any foreign language:
good, wonderful, wonderful, great, bad, unimportant, etc.
There can be a lot of options for grouping words based on grammatical features. When composing groups, you can rely on words with the same root, nouns of the same gender, verbs with a certain ending, etc. This grouping helps not only to expand your vocabulary, but also to improve your understanding of the basics of language grammar.
Mnemonic associations
Mnemonics takes a creative approach to the question of how to remember foreign words and put them into long-term memory. According to this method, for each foreign word it is necessary to come up with a consonant Russian word that will be associated with the foreign original. Then the sound association and translation are combined into a phrase or story that needs to be remembered. The repetition algorithm looks like this:
- Foreign word.
- Consonant association in Russian.
- Phrase or story.
- Translation.
As part of the methodology, the algorithm for each word is spoken 4 times a day for two days. The result is the exclusion of the “association” and “story, phrase” stages from the algorithm and the movement of the “foreign word - translation” pair to the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory.
Initially, the story gets into it, but the translation lingers in quick memory for only 30 minutes. In the future, at one glance at a word, a sound association will pop up in memory, a phrase will be remembered with it, and then a translation will be extracted from the phrase. The algorithm will also work in the opposite direction: the translation helps the brain remember the phrase, and from it or the story a sound analogy is extracted that reminds of the original foreign word. Thus, the mnemonic association technique shows how to effectively memorize foreign words, leaving them in memory for a long time.
An example is the English word puddle, translated into Russian meaning “puddle”. The sound association for him would be the Russian “fell”, and a suitable phrase would be: “Nikita fell into a puddle many times.” The word repetition algorithm will look like this:
- Puddle (original foreign word).
- Fell (sound association).
- Nikita fell into a puddle many times (a phrase or story containing a consonant association and translation).
- Puddle (translation).
Using the method of mnemonic associations, in order to easily remember foreign words, it is not necessary to come up with consonances and examples of phrases yourself. Currently, there are a large number of information resources that offer ready-made algorithms for memorizing foreign words and phrases.
Spaced Repetition
The spaced repetition method also suggests learning foreign words using flashcards. Its main difference from the card method is that it suggests how to memorize foreign words. The spaced repetition method requires that the words on the cards be reviewed and spoken at specific intervals. Thanks to this repetition algorithm, the foreign words being studied will be consolidated in the long-term memory department of the brain. But without the absence of repetition, the brain will “remove” unnecessary (in its opinion) information.
The spaced repetition method is not always useful or appropriate. For example, when studying frequently used words (days of the week, frequent actions, etc.), which are constantly heard and regularly used in speech, repetition of words will become natural process- they will often appear in conversations, when reading and watching videos.
Listening
This method will ideal option for those who like to listen to music or any information. It is based on listening to foreign words, which must be pronounced correctly, as well as repeating them. The materials can be either special educational audio recordings or a variety of videos with a detailed analysis of words, phrases and sentences.
Reading
When deciding how to memorize foreign words, books, articles, and other printed materials in the target language can be of great help. Learning words while reading texts in a foreign language is appropriate when a person learning a language already knows about 2-3 thousand words. It is with the presence of such a vocabulary that comes understanding of simple texts.
The best option for memorizing through reading would be to write down unknown words from texts. In this case, you do not need to write out all the incomprehensible phrases in a row. Attention should be paid only to those without which it is impossible to understand the general meaning of the sentences. Surely they will be useful in the future use of a foreign language. Such memorization will be much more effective, since new information“extracted” from the context, forming more vivid and pronounced associations in memory.
The number of words written out should also be limited. To replenish your vocabulary without interrupting reading, it is enough to write out just a few of them from one read page.
If you wish, you can do without writing it out, since your vocabulary is replenished even in the process of continuous reading. But learning words and consolidating them in long-term memory in this case occurs much more slowly.
Watch video
Learning new words from videos also requires the learner to have certain knowledge of the language. Otherwise, it will be quite difficult to understand what foreign word, still unknown to the student, was uttered. Watching a video in a foreign language allows you to achieve two results at once: expand your vocabulary and improve your comprehension skills. oral speech aurally.
The simplest approach in this technique is to watch the video without being distracted by writing out unknown words. But as much as possible positive result will be achieved only if, while watching, you stop the film, take notes and analyze words and phrases that are new to the language learner.
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