My 3 ways of remembering vocabulary.

Personally I don't find memorizing vocabulary very difficult. I have a pretty good memory for foreign words. But having said that, I have had to devote quite a lot of my schedule to memorizing vocabulary with Arabic.

The problem is that the words don't sound like anything in English, so they are almost impossible to remember. But maybe I will do another post on that. Today I am going to explain my 3 ways of remembering vocab.

1 - Repetition.

If you repeat something often enough with the correct spacing, then you will remember it. This is a good method if the word is very foreign and doesn't sound like anything in English.

You hear the word, and try to remember it. Then after 2 minutes you try to recall the word. If you can't, then you look at it again and do the same. If you can remember the word, then wait 5 minutes and try to recall it again. Then keep making the lengths of time between recall longer and longer until it is simply committed to memory.

I am having to use this with a lot of Arabic right now, and it works if you put the time in.

2 - Mnemonics.

This is when you remember a word because of a little story in your head. Then you have more links with the word and you find it much easier to remember.

Here's an example -

بيت (bayt) means 'house' in Arabic.

So to remember this word I am going to imagine myself laying bait for an animal outside my house. I am going to try to remember that image as strongly as I possibly can, with every detail possible. This will make it incredibly easier to remember a word that would other wise be hard to recall.

3 - Context.

Context is a little bit more advanced. This is when you remember a word because of its links with the words around it. An example of this would be song lyrics. You can remember the words much easier if they are strung together in lyrics.

If I taught you the first few lines of a French song then you would have no problem recalling those lines back to me in order. But then if I broke up the order, or asked you to just recall the middle section of the third line, then you would have a much harder time. Because the words are almost dormant in your mind until you sing the lyrics up to that point.

So I hope this post was helpful.

شكرا for reading, and I will try to post again tomorrow.