How To Learn (And Remember) New English Words/Vocabulary

What’s up guys? My name is Shane and today you will learn how to improve your vocabulary by not forgetting the words you learn.

I know how you feel.  I am also learning another language. You learn ten, twenty, thirty words and then the next day, you’ve forgotten them all. So today I have seven tips for you about how to stop forgetting the vocabulary that you learn.

Are you ready? Let’s go!

Tip #1

The first tip is to read a lot. Read everything that you can.

Why?

Because this is the most relaxing way to see how native speakers actually use the language. You can sit there, take your time. You don’t have to worry about if you don’t understand a word that you’re reading. You don’t have to listen to anything. You can sit there, take your time and enjoy what you’re reading.

And when you’re reading, don’t think too hard about the language. Just relax. Let the language come into you. Absorb the language.

And I know a lot of people say that they don’t like reading. And this could be because that you’re not reading something that you enjoy. Read what you enjoy. It can be anything. It can be the news. It can be a magazine about fashion. It can be a blog about fitness. It can be anything.

Just make sure that you enjoy it.

And when possible, you should do everything that you can in English. For example, read the news in English. Change your phone’s language to English. Use English to English dictionaries. This will help you see English every single day and this will help you to not forget the words that you learn.

Tip #2

The second tip is when you’re learning new vocabulary, try and really feel the meaning of those words. And if it’s a noun, try and put a picture of that thing in your mind.

For example, if you hear the word ‘book’, in your mind you should see a picture of the word ‘book.’ You don’t want to be translating the word ‘book’ into your language in your head.

When you hear words in English, you want to really feel them. Because if you want to understand English and speak English like a native speaker, you have to learn to feel the meaning of words.

For example, I recently put out a video on ‘to’ and ‘for’ which you can watch right here. And I talk about that the feeling, the meaning behind the word ‘to’ is normally about movement. So when a native speaker hears the word ‘to’, they will normally think about movement.

For example, I went from my house to the shops. We are talking about movement. So if you start to really feel the meaning of words, then you will start to remember them better.

Tip #3

The third tip is to learn all forms of words. For example, look at this word. Beautiful. What part of speech is that? It’s an adjective.

What about the noun? What’s the noun? It’s ‘beauty.’ What about the adverb? It’s ‘beautifully.’ What about the profession? It’s a ‘beautician.’ And what about the verb? Do you know the verb for the word ‘beautiful’? The verb is ‘beautify, beautify.’

So you see here, if you just learn one word, you can actually learn many words. You can learn three, four, five different words.

Tip #4

The fourth tip is to use what you learn. This is a very common mistake I hear with a lot of students learning English. They learn a word, write it down and that’s it. They never use it. They never see it again. They never do anything with that word.

So if you want to remember words, use what you learn. Write it in sentences. Say it out loud in sentences. Send messages to your friends with that word. Go onto Google Images and search it. Go onto Google and search it and look at all the different sentences that use that word.

Don’t just do this once. Do it many times. This will help you remember the word and help you be able to use it, not just to understand it.

Tip #5

Tip number five. Learn phrases. Why? Because it’s quick. It’s easy and you learn a whole sentence that you can use in many different situations.

For example, let’s pretend you learn the phrase ‘could I …’. This is a phrase that we can use to politely request something. If you learn this phrase you can change it to use it in many different situations. For example, if you go to a coffee shop, ‘Could I have a green tea, please?’ Or if you go to a hotel, ‘Could I check in, please?’

Learning one phrase takes a very short amount of time and you can use it in many many different situations. And the more you use something, the more likely it is that you will remember it and you won’t forget it.

Tip #6

The sixth tip isn’t really a tip. It’s more of a warning.

I am learning Thai at the moment and in Thai, they have a loanword ‘ผับ‘ which comes from the word ‘pub’ in English. Now in English, this is a pub. But in Thai, this is what a pub is. It’s not the same, right? It’s very different.

And if you use that word without knowing what it really means, you could cause some confusion if you’re talking to a native speaker. So just be careful and check the meaning of words you learn. A really good way to do this is to just type it in to Google Images and then you will see lots of pictures of the word that you are looking up.

Tip #7

And the last tip, tip number seven is also a bit of a warning because when you learn a new word, that word may have several or many meanings.

Let’s look at an example. The word ‘date.’ This is a ‘date’, right? It’s a fruit. Let’s pretend that you think the only meaning for the word ‘date’ is this, the fruit. And then someone says to you ‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’

And you think ‘Umm … How can I go on a date with you? Why would I want to go on a fruit? That doesn’t make sense.’ So just be careful because many words have many meanings which are very different.

So if you hear a sentence and it contains a word that you already know but the sentence doesn’t really make sense, then this word may have another meaning. So just be careful.

Conclusion

That is the end of the video today. Comment down below and let us know. How do you learn vocabulary? How do you remember vocabulary? And if you’re interested in learning the right way to learn English, you can check out this video right here.

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