How to memorize foreign words easily and effectively. How to quickly learn a lot of English words: effective memorization techniques

When studying foreign language It is very important to constantly replenish your vocabulary - to remember new and new words in the English language. However, not everyone is able to do this successfully. We offer you seven tips to help you remember new words in English more effectively.

Create associative networks

Our brains take what we read and transform it into images, ideas and feelings, and then form connections between the new information and what we already know. This is how memorization occurs - the new is united with the old.

Imagine a tree. Isn’t it easier to see a large spreading tree with many branches and leaves than a small tree with a few branches? The same is true for the brain. When you connect a new word or concept with something you already know, it is easier for your brain to find it and remember it at the right time.

How to do it? Very simple. Draw a network of concepts. Take what you want to remember (a word, an idea, a sentence) and write it in the center of the paper. Then draw lines from it in all directions, like a spider's web.

At the end of each line, write down any English words or even draw pictures that come to mind when you think of the word written in the center. It doesn't matter what the associations are, just write down everything you come up with.

It only takes a couple of minutes and now all the words or concepts will be interconnected in your brain. If you see or hear one of them, it will be easier for you to remember the others.

To make this work even better, pronounce how this or that word in English is connected to others. The more often you do this, the more connections are formed. And the more connections, the easier it is for your brain to “see” the word you want to remember.

Remember phrases (word combinations)

Remembering the word is important, but English language, like any other, is not just a set of concepts, it is a tool that people use to communicate and express their thoughts. Find examples of how this or that word is used in the text.

Write down not only the word itself, but also the neighboring ones. For example, if you need to remember the English word “arrogant,” you could write “the tall, arrogant man.”

This will help you remember that "arrogant" is an adjective used to describe people. Then try to make three complete sentences to practice using it.

Use pictures

Draw little pictures to remember the meaning of a word. Don't know how to draw? It's not scary, it's even better. Our brain receives so much monotonous information that a strange picture is a kind of surprise, and we always remember surprises.

Our brain reads visual information better. Draw a funny picture to illustrate the meaning of a word and you will remember it much faster.

Make up stories

English learners often complain that there are too many new words and it is difficult to remember them. There is one trick you can use to learn words quickly. Compose any story, even a ridiculous one, that uses all the words in English. Imagine it in detail.

We remember stories easily, especially strange ones, if we can recreate them in our imagination. Feel free to combine words in funny and awkward ways. Let's say you need to remember the following 20 English words:

shoes, piano, tree, pencil, bird, bus, books, driver, dog, pizza, flower, door, TV set, spoons, chair, jump, dance, throw, computer, stone

(shoes, piano, tree, pencil, bird, bus, books, driver, dog, pizza, flower, door, TV, spoons, chair, jump, dance, throw, computer, stone)

You can compose them like this incredible story:

Give it a try. You will surprise yourself!

Remember opposites

Memorize words with opposite meanings (antonyms) and words with similar meanings (synonyms) in pairs. For example, memorize the pairs angry/happy and angry/cross at the same time. We remember similar and opposite things faster because the brain creates connections between them.

Parse the word according to its composition

Use roots, prefixes and suffixes to guess what a word means.

For example: even if you don't know the word "microbiology", you can guess what it means. First, take a look at the prefix "micro". Micro means something very small. You may know that the "-logy" part means science, the study of something.

So we can already say that we're talking about about learning something small. You may also remember that "bio" means life, living things. Thus, we can come to the conclusion that “microbiology” is the science of microscopic living organisms.

If you make a list of common prefixes (un-, dis-, con-, micro-, etc.) and suffixes (-able, -ly, -ent, -tion, -ive, etc.) and remember what they mean, you will be able to guess the meaning of new words in English.

The main thing is time

Psychologists who study memory processes say there is a good way to remember things quickly and for a long time. Use a new word as soon as you learn it. Then use it after 10 minutes. Then an hour later. Then the next day. Then a week later.

After this, you are unlikely to have to make an effort to remember it - the new vocabulary will remain with you forever.

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We learn many, many words. Beginners process Gunnemark's Minilex, intermediate ones - various lists of irregular verbs, special vocabulary and so on.

We are faced with the task of mastering a fairly large volume of words in 7 days, and an even more important task is to find the most effective method memorizing words for each participant.

Step 1.

First you need to figure out exactly how you best perceive information. There is a small but very important checklist for this. If you are an auditory learner, then the “read a notebook” method will work much worse for you than the “listen to a list of words for a text” method. And you may not even think about it and look at this stupid notebook for a long time and persistently, until the bitter end and the feeling of your own worthlessness, and not understand why nothing is remembered!

All you need to do is figure out what works for you personally. The checklist will come to your email if you send your email to the cat (see the cat on the side :))

Step 2. Ways to remember words

Traditional methods

1. Yartsev method (visuals)

In fact, of course, this method appeared long before Vitaly Viktorovich, but it was thanks to V.V. Yartsev that it appeared in my life, and this is a very cool method for lazy people like me (visual people), so in this article I begin that's why I call him that :)

Let's take a notebook. We write down the word - translation - in 2 (3) columns. We give synonyms\antonyms\examples next to each other.

We read lists from time to time, just read, don’t cram anything.

I don’t know how it works, but I didn’t cram German from this teacher, I just read the notebook from time to time. He did not give dictations and never checked us against lists. And I still, many years later, remember a bunch of words.

Those. It turns out that you don’t strain yourself, you don’t try to cram 100 words into yourself in 30 minutes, you just systematically refresh the material from time to time. But you should immediately warn that these words should appear in textbooks, articles, i.e. you must, in addition to reading the notebook, somehow activate them.

2. Card method

The second popular method. We take and cut up a bunch of cards or buy square blocks of note paper. On one side we write the word, on the other - the translation. For advanced users we provide examples. We pass the cards around, putting aside those that we know well. From time to time we repeat what we have covered in order to refresh ourselves.

The downside is that if there are a lot of words and little time, you will spend a lot of time creating the cards themselves.

For fun, you can arrange them in piles of 10 pieces different places apartments, stumble upon them from time to time and repeat.

Auditory learners should definitely add speaking out loud to this method.

Cards are great for children; this can be turned into an interesting game.

3. Prescription method

A classic of the genre:) You take a word and write it down many, many times. It works great for Chinese characters (I’ll tell you about how to learn characters more effectively below). Minus - green melancholy. But the method has been tested for centuries.

4. Half-page method

This is one of my favorite ways. You bend the sheet in half, write a word on one edge, reverse side- translation. You can quickly check yourself. For me, as a visual learner, it works well, because... I easily remember in which part of the sheet a given word was written down.

The downside is that you get used to a certain word order. (but this is partly a plus :)

5. Method "Interior Designer"

If you are learning something specific vocabulary, which surrounds you, you can make unique “labels” everywhere - paste stickers with the names of objects. Also, you can stick on the monitor the most disgusting words that do not want to be remembered. The advantage of this method is that it’s fun :) The disadvantage is that the brain may begin to ignore all these pieces of paper, and then they will hang somewhere for a long time.

Optimization methods

6. Method of grouping by grammatical features

if you have big list In other words, the worst thing you can do with it is to teach it haphazardly.

It can and should be processed and grouped.

For example, first you write down verbs, and you do not write them out in a row, but group them by type of ending, or you write down masculine nouns, then feminine.

Thus, because most of words are not exceptions (you group exceptions separately), you begin to see the logic of the language and remember words in conjunction with similar ones.

7. Method of grouping by meaning

You write down and remember the word and its synonym/antonym at once. This is true for both beginners and intermediates.

Now that you have learned the word “good”, find out right away what “bad” will be. And if you also remember “excellent, so-so, disgusting,” then you will greatly enrich your vocabulary.

8. Method of learning words with the same root (for fans)

We take words and group them around a root. Those. conditional “deed\do\done” and learn several parts of speech with the same root at once.

Be sure to watch Professor Argüelles’ lecture on the topic of word families, he tells you how much and what you need to know for complete happiness.

9. Etymological method: my favorite (another lazy way)

Works for those who have learned several languages ​​:)

When you study multiple languages ​​within the same language branch, you begin to see similar roots. This actually comes with experience, and the need disappears. again learn great amount words At a certain stage, you just already know enough :) And if I understand that this word doesn’t tell me anything categorically, I look into the etymological dictionary and find out where it came from. While I do this, I remember it. (Well, it is remembered simply from the fact that it was not recognized and attracted attention)

The bonus of learning different languages ​​is that each subsequent language learns faster, unless, of course, you take something completely unfamiliar.

10. Chains of words

You take a list of words that you need to learn and make up a story (even a crazy one) from them.

That. you learn not 30 words, but 5 sentences of 6 words each. If you approach this matter creatively, you can have a useful and fun time :)

Methods for those who don’t like old-fashioned methods :)

11. Spaced Repetition (spaced repetitions): memory retention technique, which involves repeating what has been memorized educational material at certain, ever-increasing intervals.

Those. in fact, you install an application on your phone, and there the program will automatically show you words in in a given order and with the required frequency. You can use like ready-made lists words, and create your own.

Pros: thoroughly etched in memory

Cons: it takes a lot of time. If you've already memorized a word, it will still pop up from time to time in some programs.

My personal attitude: I played, but didn’t get into it. But it's a useful thing. I definitely recommend it to fans of playing games on their phones, so at least you will spend your time usefully :)

The most popular program for this method is Anki

I personally liked Memrise more than Anki, simply because it is more fun and has a super rating! You can also choose ready-made word lists or create your own. If a word is absolutely not memorized, you can use special funny pictures that users create using mnemonic techniques, or upload your own.

Be sure to try both programs, choose the one you like better, and try Spaced Repetition. In fact, it’s a good thing and helps a lot of people.

And here you can create your own lists and generate different ways word tests (tests, choose correct option, spell it, etc., etc.) Good way check yourself in game form for lovers of different tests.

"Magic" methods

Various marketers and language gurus love to use magical methods to lure people. Usually the essence of the methods is “ secret techniques special services,” which, well, objectively, are described in a lot of literature. And they ask for ludicrous amounts of money for this.

Mnemonics is one of the most popular methods.

14. Mnemonics

The essence of the method is to come up with funny and absurd associations for a word that you can’t remember.

You take a word and come up with some kind of associative image, which should be very vivid. But in this image there must be a “key” to the memorized word.

Example (stolen from the Internet :)) “grief”:
“woe to the wounded tiger, (vultures) are circling over him”

Subjective: you need to practice and get used to it before it starts to work out. But those who use it achieve great success. A good example is our 16-year-old Alenka, who in the following month goes by take HSK6 ( highest level Chinese language). She uses it. She talks about how she works on the language, and you can look into her notes)

Alena recommends reading the book “Einstein Walks on the Moon” by Joshua Foer.

The Memrise app allows you to create your own “Mems” and use the associations of others. I highly recommend this option for those who cannot remember difficult words :)

15 - “stressed syllable” tactic (you can read more about it (in English), the essence of the method is that you come up with an association specifically for the stressed syllable in a word)

For auditory learners

Rule #1 for you is to always say out loud what you are learning. If you use flashcards, recite them. If you are reading a list, read it out loud. Listen to the words, for you this is the most quick way remember them! Naturally, you will have to register them, but the point is will go faster than if you just read them and write them silently.

16. Listening to words

You can play audio recordings of word lists and repeat after the announcer. Usually, good textbooks provide a well-read list of words for the lesson. This is your #1 tool.

Also, you can listen to high-quality podcasts that provide detailed analysis of dialogues. Our podcast recommendations on different languages you can find in the section

Important tricks (for everyone!)

19. Learn words in context

Don't just learn the list. There’s Minilex, and it starts with the word “without.” Right after “without” comes “safe,” and then “worry” and “ticket.” If you look at the list of the most frequent words in Chinese, the particle 的, which is a syntactic function word and has no meaning of its own, will be in first place!

Always learn words in context, choose examples and phrases. Work with a dictionary!

20. Memorize dialogues

Learning small dialogues and texts with useful vocabulary by heart is one of the the surest ways that you will remember at the right moment and use the word correctly in the context you need.

Yes, it will take more effort and time, but in the long run you will have a set of ready-made structures in your head that you will be happy to use.

21. Ask someone to check on you

Take your husband/mother/child/friend and ask them to run you through the list. Of course, you won't be graded, but an element of control and discipline will appear.

22. Learn what is really necessary.

In one of my textbooks, the word “hoe” appeared in the vocabulary before the words “short and long” appeared. Don't learn hoes and all that unnecessary crap until you've learned some really relevant and pressing vocabulary.

How to determine relevance? There are many manuals and lists from the “1000 most common words” series. First we learn frequency, then hoes, not before. If you have not yet learned to count and do not know pronouns, it is too early for you to learn colors, no matter how much you would like to. First it’s important, then it’s interesting, then it’s complicated and necessary for some reason.

(Future translators, this does not apply to you, you need everything. I somehow found knowledge of the term “desk drawer” in Chinese useful, although who would have thought:) If you are a translator, you should know a lot of different vocabulary.

23. Be creative!

If everything infuriates you, words don’t come into your head and you want to quickly close these lists, experiment. Some people get help from drawings, some people walk around the apartment and recite out loud, some people talk to their cat. If you see something that interests you, don’t be lazy to look into the dictionary. Be interested in what interests you. Don't get hung up on methods that don't work. In general, be as creative as possible!

And everything will definitely work out :)

Luca Lampariello

Italian polyglot. Knows 11 languages, including German, Russian, Polish, and Northern Chinese. Lampariello became famous person in the language learning community. Currently lives in Rome.

Search for associations is a process in which new information connect with existing knowledge.

One piece of information can have thousands of associations with memories, emotions, experiences and individual facts. This process occurs naturally in the brain, but we can take conscious control of it.

To do this, let’s return to the above-mentioned words: “gene”, “cell”, “synapse”, “skeleton”... If we remember them separately, we will soon forget everything. But if we learn these words in the context of a sentence, it will be much easier for us to put them together in our minds. Think about it for 10 seconds and try to connect these four words.

You might end up with something similar: “Genes influence the development of elements as diverse as the skeleton, brain synapses, and even individual cells" All four words are now united by a common context - like pieces in a puzzle.

Approach these exercises progressively. First, try combining groups of words that share a specific topic like physics or politics. Then try to build more complex associations between unrelated words. With practice you will get better and better.

3. Repetition

More than a hundred years ago, the German physicist Ebbinghaus came to the conclusion that we forget information according to a certain pattern, which he called the “forgetting curve.” We remember perfectly everything we recently learned. But this same information disappears from memory in a matter of days.

Ebbinghaus discovered a mechanism to combat this phenomenon.

If new information is repeated at precise intervals, it will become increasingly difficult to forget. After a few spaced repetitions, it will become embedded in long-term memory and will likely stay in your head forever.

You need to regularly repeat old information while working on new information.

4. Recording

The ancient Romans said: “Words fly away, but what is written remains.” That is, in order to remember information, you need to record it in a permanent format. When you learn new words, write them down or type them on your keyboard so you can save them and come back to them later.

When you come across a new useful word or phrase while talking, watching a movie or reading a book, write it down on your smartphone or laptop. This way, you can repeat what you wrote down at any opportunity.

5. Application

Use what you learn in meaningful conversations. This is the essence of the last of the basic methods for effective word learning.

University of Montreal researchers Victor Boucher and Alexis Lafleur discovered Honor Whiteman. Repeating words loud to another person increases memory recall. that using words in conversation is more effective in terms of memorization than saying them out loud to yourself.

In other words, the more you communicate with other people, the better your linguistic memory works and the faster your language proficiency grows. Therefore, always use the learned material in real conversations. This method will greatly improve your skills and give you experience using new and long-learned words.

Let's say you read an article on a topic that interests you. You can choose unfamiliar words from it and use them later in a short conversation with a language partner. Can be noted and learned keywords, and then use them to retell the contents of the article. See how well you understand the material after the conversation.

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THREE SCIENTIFICALLY BASED METHODS THAT WORK

You teach and learn these words, but there’s no use! After a couple of days everything is forgotten.

Use scientific approach to remembering! We present to you three scientifically based techniques that will allow you to remember quickly and for a long time. foreign words.

HOW MANY WORDS DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?

First, let's figure out how many words you need to learn in order to begin to understand most foreign speech, and even express your thoughts yourself. A five-year-old child living in an English-speaking country uses 4,000–5,000 words, and a university graduate uses about 20,000 words. However, a person learning English as a foreign language has a vocabulary of only 5,000 words, despite several years of study.

But there is also good news : vocabulary 2,000 words are enough to understand 80% of foreign speech. The researchers came to this conclusion based on an analysis of the Brown Corpus. A linguistic corpus is a collection of texts on various topics.

Interestingly, after you have learned 2,000 words, increasing your vocabulary for each subsequent 1,000 words allows you to increase the amount of text you understand by only 3-4%.

HOW TO QUICKLY REMEMBER A WORD?

The first question that interests everyone is how to quickly memorize foreign words?

Scientists have concluded that information is remembered faster when has an emotional connotation. Accordingly, it is a good idea to study words through games, riddles, and films. If you liked the song, don’t be lazy to look at the translation of unclear words. These words will forever be associated with the song you liked, which means they will leave an emotional mark in your memory.

A great technique is mnemonics. Create colorful associations - this will allow you to remember even hard-to-pronounce words. Usage example: The word weather is similar to Russian word wind, we build a wind-weather pair in our heads, forever remembering that weather translates to weather. There are special reference books in which you can find various mnemonic techniques for memorizing English words. However, it is better to come up with such associations yourself, since our associations and emotions are strictly individual.

HOW TO NOT FORGET A WORD SO QUICKLY?

So, you have learned a couple hundred words, but after a week about ten of them remain in your memory. What is the problem? This is explained by the existence of short-term and long-term memory. Mechanisms short term memory allow you to save information for 15-30 minutes, then, noticing that this information does not find use, the brain gets rid of it as something unnecessary. How can we make it clear to the brain that we really need these words? The answer is repetition. It’s like with Pavlov’s dog: the light comes on and saliva comes out. However, it is released only after 5-10 repetitions of the food + light chain. If you stop feeding food when the light is turned on, the association of the light bulb with food will be destroyed in the dog’s brain, and saliva will stop secreting.

So how many times does a word need to be repeated for it to move consistently from short-term to long-term memory?

German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus developed the Forgetting Curve, which measures the amount of information lost over time in the absence of repetition. Within the first 20 minutes after learning the words, we will already remember 60%, and within 1 hour we will lose more than 50% of the information. Then, over time, more and more information will be erased, and by day 3, only 20% of the information will remain in memory. Thus, if you miss at least one day in the repetition - forgotten words you won't get it back.

The conclusion is obvious: no repetition. Use words in speech, come up with stories using new words, play cards on your smartphone for at least a couple of minutes a day - all this will help you retain the words you have learned. Otherwise, the time spent on their initial study will simply be wasted.

We suggest using the following repetition schedule:

• 10-15 minutes after learning the words;
• After 50-60 minutes;
• The next day;
• After 1 day;
• In 2 days.

After this, most of the information will be fixed for life.

HOW TO EXPRESS THOUGHTS FASTER?

I really want foreign words to pour out of my mouth without requiring excessive brain strain and several minutes to formulate a phrase. There is an opportunity to speed up the formation of foreign speech - this is the development of muscle memory. By muscles here we mean the muscles of our articulatory apparatus. These muscles, like the muscles in the legs when riding a bicycle or the muscles in the fingers of a pianist, have a memory that allows them to perform automated movements almost unconsciously.

In order for muscle memory to form, it is important to pronounce them out loud when learning words, making movements with your tongue and lips. It is also useful to simultaneously imagine an image of the subject being studied. Over time, you will no longer think about what word to say - your muscles will do it automatically.

Thus, proper organization the work of the brain to form short-term, long-term and muscle memory will allow you to quickly and permanently replenish your vocabulary.

Good luck with your studies!

Fun English for children and adults!

It's no secret that most of the time when learning foreign languages ​​is spent on memorizing words. At school we were taught only one method - rote learning. Yes, this is a cool method, although not! – not fun, ineffective and very boring. Cramming makes memorization seem like torture, but this is far from true. How to memorize foreign words effectively and interestingly?

In fact, with the right technology, it's a very fast and fun process. And the main thing is that we can remember huge amounts of information in a short period of time.

How to do it? How to increase the speed of learning any foreign language at least 2 times? The answer is simple - using the technology described in this article.

How to memorize foreign words We memorize one, two, three

The magic tool we will use is called a mnemonic. Yes, good old mnemonics. This tool is by far the most effective assistant in memorizing any type of information.

To remember a foreign word, we need to do only three steps:

→ Encode the meaning of the word
→ Encode the sound of a word
→ Combine two images into one

Everything is very simple. Moreover, this method is suitable for memorizing words of any foreign language.

Let's look at examples:

English language.

Word foot – foot

1. Image for meaning. We represent any foot. You can look at your foot first, then imagine it in your head.
2. Image for sound. We select the closest possible association. For example, T-shirt, football.
3. Connect two images. We wrap a T-shirt around our foot, concentrate our attention on connecting these images and at the same time pronounce the word “foot” three times to remember the pronunciation of this word.
Or you can imagine a football player kicking a ball with his bare foot.
This is how easy it is to remember nouns. How to remember verbs and adjectives?

Similar:

Word press (pres) - iron (iron)

1. Image for meaning. Imagine an ironing board and an iron.
2. Image for sound. Pres. Imagine a person with 6-pack abs.
3. Connect two images. Imagine that instead of an ironing board there is a bare-chested man. You walk up to him, take the iron and start stroking his abs. Concentrate on the connection point and say the word “press” three times.
The pictures may seem very strange, but the more unusual the images in your head, the better for memorization.

Word green(green) - green

1. Image for meaning. For example, a green apple.
2. Image for sound. You can take the Brothers Grimm.
3. Connect two images. You can imagine one of the Brothers Grimm biting into an apple and turning green.

What to do if you can’t find one image to go with the word? Then you need to use several images.

Example:
Word Elderly (‘Eldali) – elderly

1. Image for meaning. A gray-haired old man with a stick.
2. Image for sound. Elf and Dali (Salvador)
3. Connect two images. Introducing the old elf with a Dali mustache. The elf's mustache and hair are gray. We introduced you, said this word three times and that’s it, you remembered it.

Some tips when working with images:

∨ When working with images, we do not close our eyes; they are directed upward. This is the correct position to engage the visual channel
∨ It is necessary to create objects of the same size, or at least approximately the same. If you combine the image of an elephant with the image of a fly, then the fly should be the same size as the elephant
∨ The most best ways for connection - sex, humor, violence. The simplest one is to stick one image into another
∨ You need to concentrate on the connection between two objects at a time. No more
∨ Focus not on the objects themselves, but on their connection

Mnemonics allows you to remember a large amount of information in a very short period of time, but in order to remember this information for a long time, you need to repeat it.

During the first 96 hours, repeat the words you have learned as often as possible. Then repeat the learned words after a month, then after 2, after 6 and after a year.

If you decide to memorize 100–1000 words a day, then I recommend working in batches:

∨ Remember ten words
∨ We repeated them three times (from Russian to foreign, from foreign to Russian)
∨ Move on to the next ten words
∨ They repeated them three times, moved on to the next ten words, etc.
∨ We accumulated three packs of 10 words each and repeated all 30 words
∨ When they had accumulated three packs of 100 words each, they repeated all 300 words, etc.