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Can I Have Some Glue, Please?

 

Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome.

Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…

Can I Have Some Glue, Please? Or, How Do I Get vocabulary to Stick in My Brain?

Ah, the age-old problem of learning vocabulary. A thorny problem, indeed.

Let us time travel again, back to the halcyon days … erm, the really stressful days of school and learning vocab.

Let’s paint a little picture.

Step 1: Go to language lesson.

Step 2: Listen to teacher and diligently write down all the new vocabulary introduced in said lesson.

Step 3: Do homework, trying to learn the list of vocabulary you wrote down, by heart, by staring at it.

Step 4 - Version 1: Go to next language lesson. Keep your head down so you don’t get picked by the teacher. You all get tested on the vocabulary you were supposed to have learnt by a written test. Squeeze your brain to try to get all the answers out and worry that you’ve got them all wrong.

Step 4 - Version 2: Go to next language lesson. Keep your head down so you don’t get picked by the teacher. The teacher, nevertheless, picks you and you have to speak in front of the class, using the vocabulary you barely know. You get embarrassed and feel inadequate, as you stumble your way through.

Does this sound familiar to anyone, or is it all different now?

Is this really a good way to learn vocabulary? Well, this to me, in case you haven’t guessed, was a form of language torture.

There has to be a better solution, right?

It’s widely accepted, these days, that spaced repetition is a good way to learn vocabulary. That means, for most people, having all the vocabulary you need to learn in an app and to let the app test you on it. You will probably start off seeing every single thing you’ve put in and have to, in some manner, confirm that you do, or don’t know it. Then, the app will decide how long it should be before it tests you on the same words again. This will depend on whether you got it right or wrong, or simply confirmed whether you know it, or not. People have worked out what is considered to be the perfect space between repetitions to have the greatest effect on retention.

I have no idea whether or not this is now used in schools. I suspect not, in many cases, but I might be wrong.

This can, of course, be done with physical flashcards, too, but the repetition element is then much less scientific.

Some people swear by using this method to learn vocab. Others, like me, don’t find it that useful, in this simple, words-only form. It just doesn’t go in. I either know the word, or I don’t and that’s pretty much how it stays. It might work better if you have sentences, but I don’t have the time for creating something like that. I believe there are better things I could be doing.

But spaced repetition isn’t just used with word-list apps. It can be used in the whole learning process. Duolingo does this and that does work for me, because I’m seeing things in context. Although, admittedly, the context is, sometimes, pretty weird.

So, if spaced repetition vocabulary learning doesn’t work for you, and looking at a list of vocabulary is even worse, what else can you do?

Read. That’s how I find it works best. You are seeing the words in context, so the meaning fixes in your brain more easily. And I don’t just mean reading novels. Reading anything. You could be looking at articles on a particular subject, the subtitles on a movie, or a YouTube video, or reading another kind of book - not necessarily a novel.

What happens when you do this is not only that you see the words in context, but that you see the words repeated. If you’re reading something on a particular subject, then the same words will come up again and again and after only a few times of looking them up these words will begin to stick.

I have some examples of verbs I’ve learnt in context that are very clear to me, because I did try using a spaced repetition app approach for some of these to start with and every time I got them wrong, or just didn’t know what they were. They are Italian verbs where that glue just wasn’t strong enough and that aren’t the kinds of things that usually come up when doing Duolingo, but are actually pretty common when you start reading. There’s:

Afferare - to grab/grab onto

Assomigliare - to look like

Buttare - to throw

Cucire - to sew

Fingere - to pretend

Legare - to tie up or just to tie (Yes, there are lots of enemies who get tied up in fantasy novels.)

Honestly, there are a tonne more. These aren’t necessarily words I could produce all of immediately, but they are ones I can recognise straightaway, so they’re well on the way.

I’m also trying something else at the moment and that’s writing using specific phrases, individual words and grammar points that I find difficult to learn. I don’t know how well this is going to work for me yet. It’s too early to say. However, writing things down does help in most things, so I’m hoping for good things with this.

Of course, some people just write the individual words down a tonne of times to learn them. I think this would work, but, again, I’d much rather be doing something else than giving myself cramp in my hand.

And then there are other more, I would say, complicated ways. Such as using mnemonics, which is basically associating words in some way, with something else, to prompt you. Like an acronym. Or, perhaps, mind maps, where you connect a lot of related words with lines and colours and circles. I see more potential with this, but still, I think there are better things I, personally, could be doing.

And then there are other even more time consuming things, like drawing each word’s meaning, or studying its etymology. These things might work for you, but I don’t think they’d be very efficient.

I hope, at least, this has given you some ideas on how to learn vocabulary that will work for you. But, when it comes down to it, I still think that the best way to learn those stubborn words that just won’t stick is simply to read.

That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.

Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.

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