A couple of days ago, I discussed the details of a quote that talks about the various activities we do and the memory recall rates associated with them. This procedure is able to be applied to any topic like learning how to cook a certain recipe or how to study for the national boards for optometry. Here, I exemplify the most useful techniques in order to show how they can be used to learn one new vocabulary word:
Avoid Regular Memory Methods
Let’s say you have a word you want to learn like sanguine, which means cheerful or confident. You could try studying it simply by memorizing that sanguine means cheerful and confident by reading it five or ten times. While this has a low rate of working, there are many methods of learning the meaning that have a much higher efficacy. It would make more sense to not focus on raw memorization or simply reading it a few times, and to instead focus on making the word important to your mind.
Try Making A Unique Memorization Method
Take the word “sanguine” and get into a habit of finding ways that are inventive in order to learn the word more quickly. If you are able to use mnemonics to use parts of the word to remember it, that would be the first step. Maybe you could think that you become cheerful when in the sand at the beach, and that relates to the san- in sanguine. In another way, you might think of the word sandwich, and how you enjoy sandwiches that you make yourself. Then you would just have to remember the nuances that make sanguine mean confidently optimistic and cheerful.
Pictures Are Powerful
If you can draw a picture that shows the meaning of sanguine, you will certainly not forget its meaning, because you have taken the time to draw a picture about it, with your mind processing how you could depict its qualities in an image, possibly by having one with a person walking by smiling with his head held high. The picture itself could be used as a future tool. There are plenty of opportunities like this to encode information into our thoughts.
Use New Media
For this vocabulary example, you could easily learn the word by searching for its usage on Google News or Twitter Search or a regular Google search. You could even search a set of PDFs that you have for presentation of the word. By searching for usage of the word in a regular location or area you normally check online, it would make its meaning more relevant to you, and would make it that much more valuable than a random word taken out of the Oxford English Dictionary.
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Hi Armen
That’s a fabulous post which you have written and we @ WeboWord agree to it each bit. It is our pleasure to tell you that we created WeboWord (http://www.weboword.com) specifically aimed at visualizing vocab through simple, stick figures!
Additionally, we have created a Ning network – http://weboword.ning.com where everyone can create and share their own visual vocab.
Look forward to having your support @ WeboWord.
Regards.
Hey there.
I sure have come across WeboWord in the past and it is quite representative of an efficient and successful way to learn new words, with drawn pictures for each one.
I had not seen the Ning page and it certainly is oriented towards making vocabulary learning more interactive and pictorial, as well as discussed, utilizing the better memory techniques.
This is right on point with what I was discussing in the article.
Hey Armen, nice post.
My favorite method is associating something around me with the word. I read it at:
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/practical-tips-to-memorize-vocabulary/. The example is: “Connect the discovery of a piece of spinach between your teeth to a new word, such as mortifying.”
That is extremely helpful to me!
Ron: You’ve got a great point there. Attaching a cool actual environmental image with a word will make us almost unable to forget it. I learned that squalid means “filthy” using repetition, but I easily remember taciturn and reticent as being un-talkative or quiet based on remembering some individuals in relation to those words.
Memory techniques and learning vocabulary go together like apple pie and ice-cream. You posted some great ideas. I have learned a foreign language and your post brought me back to hanging out with groups of people also learning the language, and everyone’s brain was spinning with memory methods. Fun times!
Twitter: Armen
June 29, 2010 at 11:19 am
Hi Paul.
They sure do go together that well. I bet you learned the language much more smoothly because of working with those people. I know I do better when I’m dealing with people or battling people in some way. We feed off of each other.
I remember a lot that I memorized during intense periods of memorization, like vocabulary or facts.