Don't try to memorize vocabulary in a new language — Transcript

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1. 0:00People try to say, well, you should try to learn 10 words a day
2. 0:03and really make sure you can use them and sort of nail them down.
3. 0:07I've never found that effective.
4. 0:08Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.
5. 0:11Today I wanna talk about learning vocabulary and why we shouldn't
6. 0:16try to remember vocabulary.
7. 0:18Now, if you enjoy my videos, please subscribe, click on
8. 0:21the be for notification.
9. 0:23If you follow me on a podcast service, please leave a comment.
10. 0:28I mentioned the other day that I went to visit my brother who's
11. 0:31not well, he's sort of bedridden.
12. 0:33I gave him an iPad and I tried to get him going on LingQ.
13. 0:36So it's very interesting for me, and I speak to him every couple of
14. 0:39days, it's very interesting for me to see his experience because he's
15. 0:45not an experienced language learner.
16. 0:47And so he's learning LingQ and he's getting used to learning
17. 0:52in his case Spanish using LingQ.
18. 0:55And so he said to me on several occasions, I keep on trying to remember
19. 1:00this sentence or this word, and I can't remember it, then it's quite frustrating.
20. 1:05And so I try to explain to him again that, you know, don't
21. 1:09worry about not remembering.
22. 1:11In fact, don't even try to remember the vocabulary, keep moving,
23. 1:16keep moving on and eventually the words will start to stick.
24. 1:21And I thought of my own process of language learning and, I mean,
25. 1:26the bulk of my words I learn them through listening and reading.
26. 1:31Um, I look words up every time.
27. 1:33Like if I'm on my lesson page in LingQ, if it's a blue word, obviously
28. 1:37I look it up in order to get the meaning, it's now a yellow word.
29. 1:40But when I come across a yellow word, even if I kind of think I know the meaning,
30. 1:44I'll just give another quick look.
31. 1:47Uh, and then of course, that doesn't mean I can use it.
32. 1:50It doesn't mean that I won't, again, have to look it up the next time, but it's
33. 1:53part of that gradual process of getting a sense of what the scope of meaning of the
34. 1:59word is as I see it in different contexts, getting familiar with the word, the word
35. 2:04getting familiar with me, and, and at some point it starts to click in and it's very
36. 2:09hard to predict when that's gonna happen.
37. 2:12And so most of my activity is listening and reading, noticing things while
38. 2:16reading, noticing things while listening but I also do review words in list.
39. 2:23Uh, and I've said that I'll sometimes pick, you know, the status three, the sort
40. 2:27of familiar words to try and move some to known to pad my known words number.
41. 2:34Uh, I'll sometimes look at them in alphabetical order just to see
42. 2:37the words that have the same, you know, prefix, because that can help.
43. 2:42Uh, if I do flashcards, I want all the information on the face of the flashcard.
44. 2:48It's all just exposure.
45. 2:50I don't try to rack my brain.
46. 2:53In other words, have the...
47. 2:55either the word in the target language on the front of the flashcard, and then
48. 2:58try to think what it means and flip it over, or conversely to see, say the
49. 3:04English word and try to remember what that is, uh, in the target language.
50. 3:07I don't do those things.
51. 3:09Some people do.
52. 3:09I'm not saying that it's not effective for some people, but
53. 3:13for me, I don't believe in it.
54. 3:14I, I, I feel that if I can continue to expose myself or expose these
55. 3:20words to my brain in different ways eventually I will learn them.
56. 3:25And I have noticed that a lot of the words that I learned that are added to my known
57. 3:31words total are words that I didn't even look up because words, you know, they
58. 3:36have things in common and pretty soon we know, uh, maybe a different tense or
59. 3:42a different person or a different form of a word that we've already learned.
60. 3:46And so without even looking that word up, it's just added to our known words
61. 3:51total because we didn't save it and so the system considers it known.
62. 3:55So I sometimes feel that this sort of deliberate attempt to acquire words
63. 4:00and what's particularly bad is, is, is if people try to say, well, you
64. 4:04should try to learn 10 words a day and really make sure you can use
65. 4:07them and sort of nail them down.
66. 4:10I've never found that effective.
67. 4:12I far rather just expose myself to as many words as I can rereading old
68. 4:18lessons, you know, going into new lessons, exposing myself to these words and
69. 4:23gradually low and behold the statistics in increase and my known words total
70. 4:29all of a sudden it's 10,000 words.
71. 4:31Granted, the way we count them at LingQ where each form of the word is considered
72. 4:36a different word, but the point is don't in my view, don't rely on memory.
73. 4:44Like a lot of people say to me, well, I can't learn languages
74. 4:46because, uh, I have a poor memory.
75. 4:49Your poor memory is probably not that poor, it's irrelevant.
76. 4:53Language learning is not about memorization.
77. 4:56Language learning is about committing yourself to a
78. 4:59process, enjoying the process.
79. 5:02Allowing the language to come into you and trusting that your brain will
80. 5:06gradually understand more and more, gradually acquire more and more words.
81. 5:11So my advice on language learning, or in, in terms of acquiring words, and I
82. 5:16should say, accumulating words is the fundamental task in language learning.
83. 5:21And so the more words you have even passively the better your
84. 5:25potential in the language.
85. 5:26So it is important to acquire the words, but you're not necessarily
86. 5:29gonna acquire words by deliberately trying to remember them.
87. 5:34Uh, a couple of videos I'll leave you with one where I talk about learning a hundred
88. 5:37words a day and another one where I talk about memorization and language learning.
89. 5:43I did these a few years ago.
90. 5:45Hopefully I said the same things then as I'm saying now.
91. 5:49Thank you for listening.
92. 5:50Bye for now.