7 Tricks To Help Remember New Words

Quickly & Easily

Words, words, wordsso many to learn and its so hard to remember them all, let
alone use them, right? Well, today Ive got seven tips that should make learning &
remembering new vocabulary easier, faster, more fun, and more effective. 1. Make
word association webs our brain takes what we read and makes it [...]
Words, words, wordsso many to learn and its so hard to remember them all, let
alone use them, right? Well, today Ive got seven tips that should make learning &
remembering new vocabulary easier, faster, more fun, and more effective.
1. Make word association webs our brain takes what we read and makes it into
images, ideas, and feelings etc. and then makes connections between what we knew
before and the new information (words and ideas). This is how we remember things.
The new stuff is fitted into the old stuff. Think of a tree. It is easier for you to see
a big tree with lots of branches and leaves than it is to see a small tree with very few
branches and leaves, right? Well, its the same for your brain. When you connect a
new word or idea to things you already know you make it easier for your brain to find
(see) it when you need to remember it. How can you do this? Easy. Make an Idea
Web. Start with the thing you want to remember (words, ideas, sentences) in the
middle of a piece of paper. Then draw lines from it like a spiders web. At the end of
the line write down any ideas or words or even pictures that you think of when you
say the word or idea in the middle of the page. Anything you think of is okjust write
it down.
This only takes about 2 minutes. Now all the words/ideas are getting connected in
your mind. If you see or hear one of them it will help your brain remember all of the
others. To make this work really well, you can talk to yourself about how each
word/idea fits together with the others. The more you do this, the more connections
you make. Lots of connections makes it very easy for your brain to see the word
you want to recall when you are trying to remember it.
2. Remember in Chunks (collocations) Remembering the word is important but
English, like Chinese, is a language and languages are NOT just facts to be
remembered they are tools for people to USE to express their ideas and
communicate. So, find examples of how each word is used in your text. Write a few
words before and after the word so that you remember how it is used. For example: if
your word is arrogant write something like this.the tall, arrogant man This
will help you to remember that arrogant is an adjective and that it describes people.
The next thing to do is to make 3 full sentences with the word to practice using it.
3. Use pictures Draw small pictures that show the meaning of the word if you can.
Sounds crazy, right? Thats why it works. Our brains have so much normal
information coming in every moment that a crazy image is a nice surprise and you
always remember surprises, dont you? Our brains are also specially designed to catch
and understand visual information quickly. So, make a funny picture that shows the
meaning of the word you want to remember and your brain will remember it easily.

4. Tell a tall story I always hear my students say that there are too many new words
to remember. Theres a memory trick you can use to do this. Just make a crazy story
that uses all the words. Picture it in your mind as you make the story. We remember
stories easily, especially crazy stories that we can imagine in detail in our minds.
Repeat the story and you will remember the words. When you make the story connect
the words in funny ways. For example, if you want to remember these 20 words:
shoes, piano, tree, pencil, bird, bus, books, driver, dog, pizza, flower, basketball, door,
television, spoons, chair, jump, dance, computer, stone.you could make a story like
this:
There is a piano wearing shoes and sitting in a tree. The tree is strange because
someone has stuck a giant pencil through it. On the pencil a bird is sitting and
watching a bus full of people reading books. Even the driver is reading a book which
is bad because he isnt paying attention to driving. So, he hits a dog that is eating a
pizza in the middle of the road and kills it. The driver digs a hole and buries the dog
in it and then puts a flower on it. He notices that there is a door in the dogs grave
and opens it. Inside he can see a television with 2 spoons for antennas on top of it.
No-one is watching the television because they are all watching the chair. Why?
Because the chair is jumping and dancing and throwing stones at the computer.
Try it. Youll be surprised!
5. Recycle the pieces Use roots, prefixes and suffixes to guess what a word means.
For example:
Maybe you dont recognize this word microbiology but may be able to guess what
it means. First, look at the prefix micro. Micro means very small. You may also
remember that ology means a subject, the study of something. Already we know
that part of this words meaning is the study of + something small. Now, you will
probably remember that bio means living things. So, we can figure out that
microbiology probably means the study of very small living things. This is correct.
English is like a puzzle we put the pieces together to make new words. So if you
make a list of word beginnings that you often see (un-, dis-, con-, micro-, etc.) and
word endings that you often see (-able, -ly, -ent, -tion, -ive, etc.) and remember what
they mean, you will be able to guess what many new words mean.
6. Think & learn in opposites Learn words with opposite meanings (antonyms)
and words with similar meanings (synonyms) together. For example, learn
angry/happy (antonyms) and angry/cross (synonyms) at the same time. We can
remember similar and opposite things more easily because they stick together in our
minds.
7. Timing is everything According to psychologists who study how we remember
anything, there is a better way to learn things quickly and permanently. Use the new
word immediately. Use it 10 minutes later. Use it 1 hour later. Use it 1 day later. Use it
1 week later. After that, youll rarely have to review the new vocabulary is yours
forever.
Have Fun!

--