Lesson Transcript

If a native speaker of your target language spoke to you, how much of their speech do you think you could understand? Your answer, of course, depends a lot on your vocabulary skills.
In this video, we're going to cover 5 tips for memorizing vocabulary quickly.
When you learn new vocabulary words, you increase your skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
As you learn a language, you gain the ability to recognize vocabulary words and learn when to use them. It's important to have a vocabulary that covers a range of topics, so that you can understand important announcements, safety information, conversations between friends, and posts on social media.
In this video, we're going to talk about why vocabulary is important, some features and the tools we offer that help you focus on memorizing, and some tips for memorizing words faster. Throughout this video, remember that consistency is a key component to memorization!
If you haven't done this already, consider adding a number of vocabulary words you'd like to master to your monthly language goals! Okay, let's get to our tips.
First: Master Our Core Word Lists
We offer 11 core word lists. These lists are made up of the most common words in your target language. The 100 Core Word list is the best list for absolute beginners. After you master that list, you can move on to the other lists in the series! The 2000 Core Word List is a combination of all of the lists plus an additional 1000 words. Having knowledge of about 2000 vocabulary words in your target language will set you up for success!
Knowing a variety of words in your target language is important because it allows you to speak about (and understand) many different topics. While grammar is certainly important, having the vocabulary you need to go about daily life, study, or make plans is essential.
So, how do you use the core word lists? With our flashcard feature!
Our flashcard tool can display the vocabulary word, show a picture and translation, and play an audio recording of the vocabulary. You'll work on improving your recognition, production, and listening comprehension skills. Using a tool like this helps you associate new words with images. You also get to hear pronunciation and pitch accents from native speakers. You have the ability to choose how many new cards you’d like to learn daily.
By the way, using the 2000 core word list isn't the only way to review all key vocabulary words. You can also merge your preferred lists.
If you lack confidence in speaking, studying vocabulary can help you. If you master the most common words in your target language, speaking will become a bit easier. Among our core word lists are popular topics relating to hobbies, nature, food, and recreation. If you need some help making sentences with your new vocabulary, you can take a look at the core word list example sentences for ideas. These are all steps you can take to improve your speaking confidence.
Second: Create Your Own Sentences
Creating your own sentences is a great way to work on memorizing new vocabulary. You can create sentences related to your daily life, so that you can easily remember the sentences and use them! You can also try creating sentences you think you're likely to need before a conversation with a native speaker. In addition to our core word lists, we also have a dictionary feature. If you need help finding a certain vocabulary word, you can search for it in our dictionary. The dictionary includes audio from native speakers, so you can hear how the word is pronounced naturally (and at a slower speed).
With a Premium membership, you'll have access to your own personal Word Bank. You’ll be able to add words from the dictionary and our lessons to this Word Bank and study them using flashcards.
Another thing that can help you with memorization is reading along with lesson dialogues and listening to the host's explanations. When you find a sentence that stands out, or when you make a sentence you think will be useful, make sure to actually use the sentence! Your memory will grow stronger and stronger as you review sentences and practice saying them from memory.
Third: Read Every Day
How often do you read in your target language? Reading is a fun activity that can motivate you to spend some time studying new vocabulary. When you read, you encounter words you've seen in lessons, but you also find new words!
Apart from reading for fun, our language learning program offers reading comprehension pathways for all levels! These pathways feature video lessons with vocabulary you are likely to see in real life. For example, an advanced pathway might include lessons for understanding promotional information, medical instructions, and directions. These pathways are designed to test your ability to recognize words.
Another way to memorize words fast is by learning songs in your target language.
If you're studying a language with sounds that are very different from your first language, this can be a really helpful tactic. You can make a monthly goal to memorize 1 to 3 songs you like in your target language. You can find the lyrics to the song with a search online (and you can search for a translation as well). As you listen to the song, read the lyrics. This can help you connect the sounds you're hearing with the characters or the letters you're reading. And remember, the songs can be from anywhere! It could be a kid’s song, a new pop song, or a TV show theme! You can choose.
The key is to find a fun way to read every day. This will help you improve your vocabulary.
Fourth: Test Your Listening Skills
Test your listening skills with our Listening Comprehension pathways. Each of the pathways presents a conversation, asks a question, and then gives a breakdown. In our audio lessons, the hosts break down the dialogue by talking about the usage of key vocabulary and phrases. They also explain the grammar. After you listen to the breakdown, the dialogue is easier to understand! Make sure to re-listen to the lesson dialogues to review these important concepts.
Another way to use our site for listening comprehension is by changing the flashcard settings. With our flashcards, you have the option to focus on building listening comprehension. If you choose this setting, the front of your flashcard will play an audio clip and the back will show the answer.
Additionally, if you’re a Premium PLUS member, you can practice listening with your native speaker teacher. You can request audio responses from your teacher instead of text. If you understand their message, you can respond with an audio file of your own, or with text. If you don’t fully understand, you can ask your teacher for help.
One more thing you can do is use TV shows to practice listening. You can choose a segment of a show to practice. Watch it once with subtitles, then once without subtitles. Determine how much you can comprehend, then look up the words you don't know.
Fifth: Take Vocabulary Quizzes
There are many ways to test yourself with vocabulary quizzes. Each of our lessons includes a vocabulary slideshow and quizzes that you can use for review. We also have video vocab pathways, which introduce new vocabulary based on certain themes (and they include pictures).
You can also try making your own written tests with our flashcard feature. Change the flashcard settings according to your preferences. You can choose between recognition, production, and listening comprehension card types. Based on the card type you chose, write down either the vocabulary word or its translation when the card appears. Check your answers and give yourself a score for your study session! Writing vocabulary by hand is another great way to work on memorizing words.
Earlier, we talked about learning vocabulary with songs. A fun and effective way to test your vocabulary and writing skills is to fill in the blanks. Copy and paste the lyrics of a song into a document, and replace some of the words with blanks. Test your knowledge of the lyrics by filling in the blanks with the correct words. You can make it a little easier by including a word box - a list of vocabulary to use somewhere in the song. You can also do this with dialogues you want to practice from TV shows.
To make sure you get all of the tools mentioned in this video, subscribe to our premium plan! You'll get access to all of our resources, including the core word lists and the flashcard tool.
So, to recap: In this video, we talked about 5 tips for memorizing new words. They were:
- Master our core word lists
- Create your own sentences
- Read every day
- Test your listening skills, and
- Take vocabulary quizzes
These tips are fun and effective ways to help you reach your vocabulary goals a bit faster!
If you want to go the extra mile, subscribe to Premium PLUS to get access to your own native teacher.
What are your vocabulary goals? How will you achieve them? Share your answers in the comment section below!
And for even more tips on how to remember vocabulary fast, check out our complete language learning program. Sign up for your free lifetime account by clicking on the link in the description, get tons of resources to have you speaking in your target language, and, if you enjoyed these tips, hit the "like" button, share the video with anyone who's trying to learn a new language, and subscribe to our channel. We release new videos every week! I'll see you next time. Bye!

Comments

Hide