The BEST Way to Learn New Vocabulary

There’s an abundance of academic studies about vocabulary, what words do and how they’re acquired. But it’s really quite simple: listen and read and your vocabulary will grow!

0:00 - What does it mean to know a word?
1:55 - How LingQ tracks vocabulary in your target language.
3:36 - Forgetting is an important part of learning vocabulary.
4:43 - The books Steve has in his library on vocabulary.
6:50 - The most important thing to do when learning vocabulary.
8:01 - Don't complicate things!

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My Podcast:

#languages #learnlanguages #learnvocabulary

[Thelinguist]

Language learning is fundamentally about acquiring words. If our vocabulary grows through lots of listening and reading, our sense of the language, its structure and usage, will also grow.

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Social Media

[aidenhall]

Okay but can we just take a moment to admire those cool glasses

[springbreak]

"It's gonna take as long as it takes" man that takes a lot of weight off of feeling like I'm behind! Thank you for these videos seriously, they always inspire me to go harder at learning Mandarin!

[eiriks]

Language learning by reading is kind of like a Galton Board. Every time you see a word, your understanding of that word is slightly increased. After some time you understand words in the language based on how frequent they are. This is automatic. Sometimes you may feel like you don't make any progress, but you have some understanding of a lot of words at the same time. There are thousands of words ready to be "activated", which they will be by reading them a few more times. They are just waiting to reach the line which is needed to be able to use that word in a sentence. And when those words reaches the line, it will open a new world of words because all words in a language are connected. You may never have seen the word "pitaju", but you know that "pitanje" means question, so you kind of just know it anyway.

[joao]

Thank you Mr. Kauffman, I'm brazilian and I spend the time in quarentine improving my english and learning the japanese language. Your videos are really helpful.
Obrigado!

[IKEMENOsakaman]

Some people say Steve Kaufmann is fake and can't speak so many languages. But I believe Mr. Kaufmann, and I have learned a lot from him. Now I speak four languages, using his methods. At least, it worked for me. Thank you Mr. Kaufmann.

[jeoneunthatbitch]

love your straight to the point no bullshit way of looking at the language learning process 😂(please pardon my french)

[KarlShreeves]

Hi, Steve, love your videos. I'm a language learner and an instructional designer, and you hit it on the head: ENJOY is the trick. People who enjoy (i.e. find rewarding) learning keep learning and will find ways to learn anything (not just language), even if the instructional methodology isn't there. Finding ways to love what you're learning overcomes obstacles.

[tristanrujano]

“Just keep enjoying the language”. In all my search to find the best way to study A language, this is it. When you love something, you not only do your best but you don’t worry, judge or get frustrated.

[tedc]

Mandarin is pretty far from American English, so (as you say) it takes longer. I'm on my 4th year of self-study, but I've improved in the last month. I learn new phrases, forget them, learn them again and after a couple times I remember them. It works. Thanks for the ideas and suggestions.

[TheAnarchist]

Basically the takeaway from this video is to immerse yourself and enjoy the language you're learning, period.

[artiesolomon]

You have reduced this learning thing to its simplest form. Thank you for keeping it simple for us simpletons.

[kailaineabreu]

Hi Mr. Kaufmann! I'm Brazilian and I'm learning English! Your videos are so amazing and they're helping me a lot in my learning! Thank you so much for this rich content and for motivating the people to keep learning languages!

[hackptui]

Since I'm an engineer, I've been spending the last year and a half trying to take an engineering approach to learning Japanese. It's been rough. Hearing Steve talk like this is so refreshing. He's the anti-engineer. Here's to the next 18 months being a lot more enjoyable for me.

[camdamagee]

Steve I’ve seen your channel on my recommended for years. I just wanted to drop by and say your video production quality has gone way up. You’re awesome and your ability to excitedly learn new skills at a later stage in life helps me keep going in my language learning.

[Tehui]

Quote of the video: "So you're better off to simply spend your time enjoying the language, reading and listening as much as you can, to acquire the language naturally. In the natural way, eventually words will stick."

[zaa]

6:45 that's true l have friend
He was study ilets
1• He forget every vocabulary he learned.
2 • He began reading various fields, reading the space field as well, and fortunately for him, on ILETS he had a question writing a post about space
the reading helps him alot.

[robeldawitt]

I just want to say thank you very much i am studying English language but sometimes i forgot and suffering with grammar. You have helped me what i should have to do to improve my skill.

[TheLibraryOfEmotions]

I always find it really frustrated when I forgot the Russian words I previously learned. Now I feel relief after listening to you, just need to forget and re learn, it good to forget. Amazing.

[signmeupruss]

Hi Steve, I think the way you count the words a reader knows on Lingq is so much better than trying to track a reader's "understanding" of a word family through some convoluted algorithm involving the various forms of a word.

I was a software developer for many years and I am learning German. My experience with both of these intellectual disciplines tells me it would be nearly impossible to develop a good general algorithm for identifying word families, and it would be even more difficult to explain such an algorithm to a user. In fact, I'm sure almost no one would want to, or would bother to, wade through such an explanation.

By itself, the word "ziehen" in German has many forms. Here are a few, counted out for illustration: 1-ziehen, 2-ziehend, 3-gezogen, 4-ziehe, 5-ziehst, 6-zieht, 7-zog, 8-zogst, 9-zogen, 10-zogt, 11-ziehest, 12-ziehet, 13- zöge, 14-zögest, 15-zögen, 16-zöget, 17-zieh

If one can use all these forms of "ziehen", does one "know" the word. No, not even close because each of these can be used with at least 15 prefixes. Then, too, things get even more complicated when one considers that Duden, a standard dictionary for the German language, lists at least twenty definitions for the word "ziehen." Also, let's not forget that many of these forms and variants have other uses in colloquial speech and fixed expressions. And, this is just one verb out of tens of thousands.

This is why my experience says it would be nearly impossible to work up an algorithm capable of assessing one's knowledge of, or understanding of, a word.

I think Lingq has the right approach with its counting individual word forms. It's a good metric. It's a concrete measure of progress which celebrates each incremental conceptual step toward internalizing one's target language. To be able to say, "I am, " in another language is an important step, however, large or small a step that might be, and Lingq rightfully counts that as progress. To effectively use a language requires that tens of thousands of small language-learning steps be made. Lingq tracks each of these steps along the language learning path. With each new word-form counted, Lingq assures the reader that they are always moving forward.