Learn more vocabulary, improve your memory, and never forget right words anymore
Most of us get stuck on the 1st stage of language learning: memorizing vocabulary. Read on to learn a killing technique that will help you move on without forgetting a single word.
The human brain is wired to look for shortcuts. In language learning, such a shortcut is figuring out how to learn vocabulary fast. As I found out, you can get by very well despite a frightening Russian accent and no knowledge of grammar – but, alas, not without words. So every time I attack a … Read more How to Learn Vocabulary Fast: The Power of Zipf’s Law
Using cognates in languages is the best shortcut to more efficient vocabulary learning. Here, I tell how to apply this strategy to any language you learn
Imagine that you’re reading a novel – in French – say, Citadelle by A. de Saint-Excupéry. As time passes, you slowly crawl your way through a forest of unfamiliar French words, conjugations, and expressions. You can say that you’ve read more of your French-English dictionary than of the novel, but I bet that was Exupéry’s … Read more Incidental Learning: How to learn vocabulary automatically
You have probably heard that in order to expand your vocabulary in a foreign language you have to read a lot. You might have even tried reading stuff in your target language… just to realize that your vocabulary is not very expandable this way. Yup. Reading random things doesn’t really work. But, hey, don’t get … Read more How to Learn More Vocabulary with Narrow Reading
The more time I spend learning languages online, the more I’m getting convinced that software created by language learners for language learners work the best. For whatever reason. And this is exactly the story of Beelinguapp: an atypical language learning app for language hackers and bookworms in one person. The story of Beelinguapp: 2017 “kickstart” … Read more Why Beelinguapp is better than flashcards?
There’s a link between reading and language skills. And this link is so strong that many 20th century polyglots were able to learn a language by reading books, whether they had previous knowledge of their target language or started from the zero. The problem is that this technique, perfectly working for our kind a hundred … Read more 21 century: Is it still possible to learn a language by reading?
Average adult knows 60 000 words but only 10% of them is a result of deliberate teaching. The rest 90% of words we know and understand comes from oral or written context. Master this technique (incoded in the scientific world as Context Vocabulary Acquisition) and you will find the answer on how to learn vocabulary effectively. And, … Read more How to learn vocabulary effectively: the power of context
Learning a language (at least in its initial phase) all comes to learning new vocabulary. And one of the first questions you want to ask yourself to downsize this overwhelming task is how many words you need (really need) to learn in order to understand and speak a foreign language. The answer may be not … Read more How many words you need to learn to speak a language?
So here’s the magic equation. If you learn how to memorize vocabulary fast, your speed of learning a foreign language will skyrocket automatically. How is that? Because language learning is 80% of memorizing, forgetting and relearning vocabulary. I know, we both want the second word has never existed. And yet, it’s there. And like a … Read more How to memorize vocabulary fast: 7 everyday strategies