7 Insanely Effective Techniques to Memorize Vocabulary in a New Language

A question I get asked all the time is, Luca, how can you memorize so many words across so many languages?

And my simple answer is, I build a word spider web.

And in this video, I'm going to give you the tools to create it, to maintain it, and to make it stronger.

If I say the word game, what is the very first thing that comes to your mind?

Probably something associated with playing, playing games.

But the reality is that game has many other meanings, for example, you can say, I was hunting game, meaning I was hunting wild animals, or are you game, like, are you down, do you want to do something?

So, this goes to show that many words have multiple meanings and functions according to their context.

And what gives it meaning, context, that is, surrounding words.

So, whenever you find a word that you don't know in a foreign language, always make sure that you either take the sentence in which that word is embedded and you copy it somewhere on your notebook, for example.

Or you create your own sentence in which you embed that word.

A very common mistake is, for example, to take all these words that you don't know from a text and simply put it on a list.

But isolated words are not as strong as words in context, embedded in sentences.

Always remember that as a first rule.

A simple yet very effective way to memorize and learn new words is to listen while reading.

Think about it for a second, you can, for example, read a text as a beginner material.

Or you can have podcasts with scripts or movies with subtitles.

The most important thing is you listen while reading or reading while listening.

If you just listen to the language without subtitles or a script, you will not see the written words, you will probably not understand if you don't have a good level.

On the other hand, if you just read a text, you will not see and hear how the language is spoken.

So you will miss out on the spoken language.

Easiest solution, read while listening as much as you can.

When you read a text in a foreign language, there's a very high chance that you're going to stumble upon a lot of words that you don't know.

A very common reaction is to try to strike and underline and look up every single word that appears on the text.

I don't think that this is an efficient way to deal with it.

A much more efficient way is to focus just on the words that are relevant for you.

Let me give you an example, if you're an engineer, words such as tile or pillar will probably much more interesting and relevant to you.

Then if you were a doctor, for example.

And for a doctor, some other words might be more interesting.

And anyway, the brain discards a lot of words that it deems as not important.

So, just focus on one third of the unknown words that you find in a text because the brain will remember those words if they're relevant for you.

Heart, elephant, and sand.

If you think about it, these simple words have a constellation of elements around them.

For example, you can say pink elephants, or the elephant in the room, to draw a line in the sand, at the heart of the matter, golden heart, and so on and so forth.

This goes to show that the brain creates big networks of associated elements.

And this is how you can use your brain in order to start learning new words, every new piece of information.

You can link it to old pieces of information, so always make sure that you look at words from this perspective and thinking, how can I associate this new piece of information to the other pieces of information in the network that I have talked about, and this is the word spider web I was talking about at the beginning of the video.

Some languages have notoriously long words.

Let's take the German word Freundschaftsbeziehung.

Which means display of friendship.

But if you think about it, the first reaction is to get scared by the length of this word.

But then, by looking closely, you will realize that this word is made of Freundschaft, friendship, and Beziehung, or Beziehungen, display, displays of.

This makes the word easier to retain, easier to pronounce, and easier to remember.

So, get into the habit of looking at words as made of smaller parts.

If you learn how these smaller parts make longer words, things will get much easier in terms of everything.

Romans used to say repetita juvant, which means repeating helps.

And that's true, and that's what we do at college, at university, at school.

We tend to repeat things over and over, but repeating things in the very same way in which we had been exposed to the very first time is not actually a very efficient way of dealing with texts.

Let me give you a metaphor, imagine that you have to conquer a castle.

That is conquering the language.

If you always attack it through the main door, the defendants will realize your tactics and your strategy and it will be easier to defend the castle.

If, instead, you attack the castle from multiple angles, you are more likely to win the battle.

To give you a very concrete example, if you listen while reading the text the very first time that you get exposed to it.

Three or four days down the line, do things differently.

Maybe just listen to the text or just read it or listen to it in the target language while reading it in your own native language.

Whatever is different is relevant.

And it makes a big difference in the way our brain retains information because we're adding variety to it.

Novelty and repetition is a fantastic combination to retain words, texts, and whatever you want.

Verba volant, scripta manent, spoken words fly while written words stay.

Another wise quote from the wise Romans.

Why is this so relevant 2,000 years ago as it is now?

It's because words that are spoken just fly around the air and you need a system in place to catch them.

So, always make sure that you have a device, a note-taking device, be it your mobile phone or your notebook to catch these words and these sentences on the fly.

You can do it everywhere, you can do it while you're sitting and you're trying to learn the language.

And you can do it while you're talking to your friends in a bar, you can do it even while walking and you come up with a word that you want to know the meaning of in a foreign language.

Whatever it is, just make sure that you have a notebook that you can fit in your pocket and you can carry it with you at all times.

And another tip is, when you mark words or sentences, always make sure that you mark the place and the time where this happened.

Because it's going to give you a very clear reference in time and space for your episodic memory.

It makes a huge difference if you get into the habit of doing this every single day.

This video contains a lot of information and I've condensed it for the sake of brevity and clarity.

If you want to know more, you can click on the link in the description box below and you will be able to read a very extensive article about this very same topic.

So here you have it, these are the seven tools to create and strengthen your word spider web.

All you need to do now is to get out there and catch as many word flies as possible.