THE SECRET TO LEARNING VOCABULARY EFFECTIVELY

This is about the key to learning vocabulary effectively and in a way that actually increases your active speaking skills.

So, what is the best way to learn vocabulary? Well, definitely not the way that most of us were taught to do it in school. Consider this list of words:

struggle

threat

relish

hurdles

feasible

If I asked you to learn these words for our lesson next week, how would you do it? Look them up in a dictionary? Write down the translation in your language? How close do you feel to being able to use them freely in a sentence?

If you have read some of my other posts, you already know this:

✨ CONTEXT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY ✨

First of all because words can mean different things according to the context. When I presented the list above to a client this week, she asked “Relish, that’s the stuff you put on a burger, right?”. I hadn’t even thought of this because our session was on Business English, but of course she was completely right: depending on the ✨context✨, relish can be a delicious sauce made with pickled vegetables, or it can be a verb that means something like enjoy or savour. But again – not in every context! Words are not easily interchangeable and so, learning that relish is a synonym of enjoy might technically be right, but it could lead you to produce some odd-sounding sentences like I really relished that meeting! or I didn’t relish the weekend much because I had too much to do. The sentences are definitely easy to understand, but they don’t sound natural because, well, that’s just not how we use the word relish.

So, instead of trying to remember definitions and rules about the exact way a word is used, just learn the word in context and then use it in sentences that are very similar to the one you originally found it in. Remember: we don’t usually encounter single words in the wild after all. When you hear or read a new word, it will almost always be in context, so make sure that’s how you write it down. No more random lists of single words. Promise me now!

Also, our brains simply aren’t built to learn languages one word at a time. You know the feeling of frustration you experience when you can’t remember any new words even if you read them again and again? Well, that’s because your brain needs more help to remember them.

By learning words in context, you give your brain more material to sink its teeth into. With context, new language is more interesting, has more personal meaning, and becomes more memorable. This is also an experience you know – when someone tells you a story or teaches you a phrase and you really engage with it and make an emotional connection? Then it’s suddenly easy to remember things, even if you heard them only once!

So, for the vocabulary phrases you want to remember, make the effort. Take the time. Spending five minutes really learning something is worth a million times more than looking up the same five words hundred times because you just can’t remember them.

Okay then, so what's the best way to learn vocabulary in context?

STEP 1: Look for vocabulary in places that you love.
This can be your favourite newsletter or podcast, a book you are relishing at the moment, or a particular character on a tv show whose style of speaking you really admire. It can also be things that your colleagues say at work. Write down what they say in a full sentence, or as full a sentence as you can manage. The rule of thumb: write it down in a way that if you find this piece of paper again in a month, you can still remember who said it when and about what.

STEP 2: Look up any parts that you don’t fully understand

Using a great online dictionary like REVERSO, look up the words or also the whole phrase. This way, you can form a better picture of the meaning of the phrase and the contexts it can be used in.

STEP 3: Write down a personal example that is almost exactly the same as the original

Remember: Talent borrows, genius steals. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and start from scratch every time you want to say something in English. Just copy what you heard and tweak it slightly to make it fit what you want to say. This step is the one that will take you a few minutes but trust me, it is completely essential if you want to really learn the new phrase and have it ready for active usage. Here’s a few examples:

relish:
ORIGINAL: "I really relish the quiet moments in the morning before the day gets hectic."
YOUR EXAMPLE: “I really relish the quiet moments alone in the office before my colleagues come and the day gets hectic.”

hurdles:
ORIGINAL: "We hit a few hurdles during the project, but nothing we couldn’t work through."
YOUR EXAMPLE: “I hit a few hurdles during the process of moving to Canada, but nothing I could’t work through.”

feasible:
ORIGINAL: "It’s definitely feasible to finish the report by Friday if we all pitch in."
YOUR EXAMPLE: “It’s definitely feasible to complete the project by the end of the month if we all pitch in.”

You see, none of my example sentences are very creative, as this is not the point here. We’re copying, which is a smart thing to do. This way, you can be relatively sure that your new sentences are grammatical and natural-sounding. And because you are adapting the content to your personal situation, the phrases become so much more memorable.

STEP 4: Memorise the phrases

As I wrote before, the more personal and relevant you make the examples, the more your brain will be naturally inclined to remember them. From here, you have a lot of options how to repeat the phrases to yourself – maybe writing them on a post-it note that you keep on the side of your screen. Maybe repeating it out loud a few times until you have the phrase echoing in your mind like a song stuck in your head. What exactly will work depends on you, but if you start with a strong, personal, and relevant example, it should not take a lot of work.

STEP 5: Use your new phrases

Find reasons to try out your new phrases! Keep them close to you on your next trip or in a meeting so that you prompt yourself to use them. Play a game with yourself that you have to use one of your new phrases every day. Or –if you don’t have so many situations you use English in– write or voice-record a diary entry or a little note to yourself where you use this vocabulary. Speaking to yourself out loud is a really useful exercise. Don’t just do it in your head, but actually open your mouth or put your pen to the page – you will easily see that it’s very active language practice!

Follow this routine and your active English speaking skills will soar. :)

Hope this was helpful! If you want more information on personalised learning strategies, do my learning styles quiz and download the PDF guide. It’s full of ideas to build your active skills. And if you want to create a more complete learning strategy, check out my 5-day course PLAN YOUR PROGRESS, which will show you how to finally see progress in your language learning.

Enjoy! :)