Tag Archive: vocabulary

September 26, 2018

How to learn vocabulary by grouping words together

In this blog post, we look at a useful way to help us remember vocabulary – putting words into groups.  We find out how to harness our brain’s natural tendency to understand the world through association (this object is green and has leaves – it must be a plant!) to help us create groups of related words that will help us learn and remember them.  We can create groups based on different things: themes, verbs/nouns and adjectives, synonyms, prefixes – these are just a few that we explore here.

I know what you’re thinking, another post on learning vocabulary! But this technique is different from the visualisation technique or the recognising cognates technique we explored in other blog posts.  And remember, everyone is different and so everyone learns a language differently – and once you have worked out which type of language learner you are and which techniques work for you, you will have a recipe for success!

Grouping By Theme/Context

You will have heard it before, context is key to language learning.  Children learn that “hello” means “hello” because people say it to them when they see them for the first time and not when they are going away (that’s “bye bye”).  They learn that “yummy” is an adjective to describe food but not, say books.  We are no different from children in the way we learn.  When we associate words with a context, we learn and remember them more quickly.  I can assure you that you will remember that “cucchiaio” means “spoon” in Italian much more readily if you are using it to eat soup with than if you ask, “how do you say ‘spoon’?” in a car trip across the Alps and then try to remember it after a fun day’s skiing.

So, how do you group words by theme?  Try drawing and labelling a picture.  Draw a picture of the kitchen in your house and label all the things in there, draw a picture of the human body and label the parts, draw a picture of a car and label that.  If you are learning words that go together or make up a whole, you will remember them more easily.  Learn words about the weather together, learn how to say whether you are well/ill/have a headache/have a toothache together.  Learn words you will use in the classroom together.  Learn words and phrases you will need to use in a restaurant (“I’ll have a…”, “the bill, please!”).  You will remember them better than if you are learning random clusters of words.

Making Nouns and Adjectives out of Verbs

I remember when I learnt this technique to learn three words for the price of one – I was literally excited because it opened my eyes to a new, efficient way of learning!

Think of a verb in the language you are learning.  Let’s take “éclairer” (to brighten/become clear/clarify) in French.  If we look in a dictionary near “éclairer”, we will see “éclaircie” – a clear patch in a cloudy sky (which metaphorically means an improvement in a difficult situation), and “éclaircissement”, clarification.  We will also see the adjective “éclairé”, informed/enlightened.  With this exercise, we have just learnt four words instead of just one.  Try this with verbs you can think of.  You can combine this grouping technique with tools such as tables and diagrams if this will help you.

Learning Synonyms

Another way to learn several words instead of just one word at a time is to learn synonyms.  It is a good idea to use a thesaurus for this exercise.  Think of the word “hungry” in English.  How many synonyms can you think of? “Famished”? “Starving”? “Ravenous”? “Peckish”?  Try looking up  synonyms in the language you are learning and use them in conversation instead of the standard word.  This will help you remember them because you are using them and may impress your friends!

Grouping Words by Prefix

It is likely that the language you are learning will use prefixes (beginnings of words) that have a specific meaning.  Let’s look at Spanish.  If we know that “des-“ means “un-“ or “not”, we can work out that “desconocido” (des-conocido) means “unknown” and “desbloquear” means “to unblock”.  “Descubrir”, literally “to uncover”, means “to find out/discover” (it’s similar in English).  This amazing word is similar in a lot of languages – “scoprire” in Italian is “to uncover” or “discover”, “ontdekken” in Dutch is the same and “odkrywać” in Polish is similar.  These words all have prefixes (s-, ont-, od-) which also mean “un-”, “away” or “from” in the respective languages.  If we identify these little parts of words, we can understand the gist if not the meaning of new words and remember them because of their theme (such as “un-“ meanings).

Can you think of other ways to group vocabulary together?  Share them with us in the comments!

Suzannah Young

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July 26, 2017

Learning a Language: A Fast and Efficient Way to Learn and Remember More Vocabulary

There are quite a few techniques you can use to help you learn and remember vocabulary in a new language.  In a previous post, we explored how to remember words by associating them with an image in your mind.  In this post, we look at how to associate words with other words to help you understand new words and remember them too.  You can associate words through their spelling – how they look – or their sound.

The type of association we are going to look at is recognising cognates. Cognates are words in different languages that have the same linguistic root.  If you know a word in one language, it is likely that you will recognise and understand a cognate word in another language.  For example, the English word ‘father’, is cognate with the German word of the same meaning ‘Vater’ and the Latin word ‘pater’.  Learning to pick up on these words is a good way to expand your vocabulary in the language that you are learning.  It is a quick way to learn a lot of vocabulary, and can save you memory space for learning words that are not related to ones you know and therefore more difficult to remember!  Even words that do not have the same meaning but have similar meanings can help you remember them.  For example, ‘fiume’ in Italian, that means ‘river’, looks and sounds a bit like the English word ‘flume’, so you can remember that it has something to do with water and flowing… a river!

For English speakers, recognising cognates can be an efficient way of learning words in languages related to German and French, because English vocabulary draws heavily from both of those languages.  That means that an English speaker might recognize cognates from the Romance languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian) as well as Germanic languages (e.g. German, Dutch, Flemish, and Danish).  English shares a lot of cognate words with Romance languages because many of the words in these languages have Latin or Greek roots.  For example, the Greek term ‘astir’, ‘star’, gave rise to ‘astronomy’ and ‘astronaut’, that are ‘astronomía’ and ‘astronauta’ in Spanish.  This can even be the case in languages that seem opaque to English speakers at first glance.  Polish, for example, has a lot of words with Latin and Greek roots, such as ‘cenzura’ (‘censorship’), ‘epidemia’ (‘epidemic’) and ‘katastrofa’ (‘catastrophe’).  Read more about Latin and Greek cognates in this teaching resource (it discusses using cognates to help Spanish speakers learn English but the principle is the same for English speakers learning Spanish).  The resource also gives a useful list of Spanish/English cognates.

Many languages are related to each other (some scholars would argue that all languages are related), so this means that the more languages you speak, the more you will start recognising cognate words with words you already know in another language.  This is one reason why it is easier to learn a new language when you already speak more than one language.

Borrowings

Another easy way to learn more vocabulary in a new language is to recognise words that have been directly or partially ‘borrowed’ from another language.  Asian languages like Korean, Chinese or Japanese may have fewer Latin/Greek/German derived cognates with English than Romance languages do, but what they do have are ‘borrowings’ from English.  Sometimes they will be direct loan words with no change, or they will have been changed slightly to fit in with that language’s system.  This can include changing the meaning of the English word, creating new phrases using English words that do not exist in English or abbreviating an English word where abbreviated versions do not exist in English.  This can of course occur in European languages as well: there are lots of English loan words in German, for example, such as ‘Party’, ‘Baby’, ‘Basement’ and in Polish, such as ‘grejpfrut’ (‘grapefruit’) and ‘ksero’ (‘photocopier’ (from ‘Xerox’)).  Italians use them too, such as ‘una fiction’ which means a TV drama.

How to learn new vocabulary through recognising cognates

When you are reading a text in the language you are learning, circle all the words you think could be cognates of your first language or other languages you know.  Look these up to confirm their meaning.  Look at the differences as well as the similarities between the words (spelling, pronunciation).  Write lists of cognates that share a common prefix, e.g. ‘kurs’ (‘course’), ‘kurier’ (‘courier’), ‘kursor’ (‘cursor’), ‘kursywa’ (‘cursive’) in Polish, or a common theme, e.g. ‘grafico’ (‘graph’), ‘fotografo’ (‘photographer’), ‘fotografia’ (‘photograph’), ‘fonografo’ (‘phonograph’), ‘iconografia’ (‘iconography’), ‘monografia’ (‘monograph’), ‘autografo’ (‘autograph’), ‘calligrafia’ (‘calligraphy’) in Italian (the theme is ‘writing’, ‘-graphos’ (Greek)).  Of course, this grouping exercise also works with cognates within languages.  For example, when you know that ‘high’ or ‘tall’ in Polish is ‘wysoki’ and that words ending in ‘ość’ usually mean -ness or -dom, you can work out that ‘wysokość’ is ‘height’.  Similarly, you know that ‘żyć’ means ‘to live’, so you can remember that ‘życie’ is ‘life’ and ‘żywy’ is the adjective ‘living’.  Finally, you know that ‘sen’ is ‘sleep’, so you can work out that ‘senny’ means ‘sleepy’.

What to watch out for

Sometimes, cognates can share one meaning but the cognate in your new language might have another meaning as well.  For example, asistir in Spanish means to assist but also to attend.  Watch out for these and try to remember the additional meaning as well.  There are also false cognates, that look the same or similar but have different meanings, such as the word ‘embarazada’ in Spanish that means ‘pregnant’, rather than ‘embarrassed’.  There are many more true cognates than there are false cognates, though, so learning cognates is always useful.

Enjoy putting this trick to good use and see your vocabulary grow!

Written by Suzannah Young

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June 21, 2017

Learning a Language: Learn Vocabulary Faster with 6 Fun Games

We published an article on how to learn vocabulary around a month ago, but I wanted to explore the topic even further and give you some more motivation and ideas on how to learn vocabulary.

There are many techniques you can use to learn vocabulary through reading, listening, moving around and being serious, crazy or creative. You can choose your favourite technique or you can mix & match them. Below, you’ll find 6 games which will help you learn vocabulary faster and have fun at the same time. Let’s get started!

 

Cards—to learn and revise vocabulary, sentences or grammar

Write a new word, sentence or fragment of grammar on one side of a piece of card with a picture or the translation into your first language on the other. Create a pile of cards and start memorising new words. When you think you have learnt them all, test yourself. Start again each time you make a mistake.

 

Match the halves—to revise the spelling of a list of words

First, write out a list of words you want to learn. Next, make a second list showing the beginning of each word and a third list with the end of each word. The endings in the third list must be in a different order from the beginnings. Cover up your list of complete words. Look at the other two lists and try to write all the words in full. Say the words to yourself as you write them. Compare your new list with the original list to make sure that your words are correct.

 

Different groups of words—to revise different topics

Organise the words into different categories and then write your groups of words. If you write the words on cards, it makes it easier to move them around into different groups. Can you explain the logic of your groups?

 

Mind map—to revise sets of words or phrases relating to a topic

In mind maps your ideas spread all over the page. You can connect ideas and group them. You can colour them and make the lines thick or thin and the bubbles big or small depending on how important the ideas are to you and how you feel about them.

 

Write a crazy story—to help you revise and remember words

Put all the words you want to remember into a story. Make it a crazy story and then you will remember the story and the words.

 

Be dramatic—to remember words or phrases

Try saying ordinary words and phrases in a dramatic way.

 

All the above examples come from a great handbook called Games for Language Learning by Andrew Wright, David Betteridge & Michael Buckby. If you would like to explore the topic of language learning techniques further, I highly recommend reading the book. By the way, what is your favourite language learning game? Please share your ideas in the comments below.

Written by Kinga Macalla

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May 10, 2017

Learning a Language: Learning Vocabulary with Word Association Techniques

There are several techniques that can help you learn and remember vocabulary in the language you are learning.  In this post, we will explore techniques that help you remember what a word means by associating it with an image in your mind.  Association links new information with old information stored in your memory.  If you link a word with an image, it can be linked with other information already stored in your memory and so you will remember it better.  For example, to remember a person’s name, you can relate it to a feature of their appearance.  Here are a few more examples of using images to help you remember vocabulary.

learning a language--word association techniques

Linkword Technique

The Linkword mnemonic (memory-aid) technique, developed by Michael Gruneberg, uses an image to link a word in one language with a word in another language. Here are some examples from French vocabulary for English speakers: the word for “rug” or “carpet” in French is “tapis”.  To remember this, the Linkword technique says you should imagine an image of an oriental rug with the picture of a tap woven into it in chrome thread.  “Tap” is found at the beginning of “tapis” so should help you remember the word when you visualise a rug.  Next, the word for “grumpy” is “grognon”, so you should imagine a grumpy man groaning – “groan” sounds like “grognon” so should help you remember it.  Other examples from German and Spanish are: to remember “Raupe” (German for “caterpillar”), you should imagine a caterpillar with a rope around its middle.  To remember the Spanish word for cat, “gato”, you can imagine a cat eating a chocolate cake, or “gateau”.

Visualisation Technique

It is not always necessary to think of words in your own language in the visualisation.  It is also possible to learn vocabulary by associating the word with an image.  This technique uses the idea that when you hear a word, you visualise things that are associated with it in your mind.  For example, when you hear “bird”, you think of what a bird looks like.  When you hear “sweet”, you think of things that taste or smell sweet such as desserts or flowers.  This is how we understand the word’s meaning, according to this technique.

Teachers teaching languages can show students a picture representing the meaning of a word they are trying to teach them.  Otherwise, they can act out the meaning.  They can ask students to think of things that are associated with the word, such as food if the word is “tasty” or a successful or hardworking person if the word is “ambitious” (and abstract concept).  If you are learning by yourself, you can draw pictures of the words you are learning or think about images that the word conjures up.

This visualisation technique can also help you learn connotations of words (ideas or feelings that a word invokes beyond its literal meaning).

The Town Language Mnemonic

An extended example of the visualisation technique is the town language mnemonic developed by Dominic O’Brien.   It is based on the idea that the core vocabulary of a language relates to everyday things – which can typically be found in a town or village. To use this technique, you should choose a town you are familiar with and use objects there as cues to recall images that link to words in your new language.  Here are some examples:

Nouns in the town

Nouns should be associated with locations where you might find them: the word for “book” should be associated with an image in your mind of a book on a shelf in the library. The word for “bread” should be associated with an image of a loaf in a bakery.  Words for vegetables should be associated with a greengrocer’s shop. If there is a farm outside the town it can help you remember the names of animals.

Adjectives in the park

Adjectives should be associated with a park in the town: words like “green”, “small”, “cold”.  People in the park can help you remember adjectives for different characteristics or hair colour or

Verbs in the gym

Verbs can be associated with a gym or playing field. This allows you to make associations for “lift”, “run”, “walk”, “hit”, “eat”, “swim”, “drive”, etc.

Try It Yourself

As well as being powerful tools for learning and memorising vocabulary, these techniques can be fun and can keep you interested in learning new words.  Lists of words can be useful too but images can help jog your memory.  You may remember the words better if you write them on a whiteboard too – you are active and moving around when you do this so your brain is stimulated more than when you are sitting at a desk.  We hope you find these tips useful.  Let us know if they work for you!

Written by Suzannah Young

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