How to Learn Vocabulary

CC subtitles available in: English, Italian, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Spanish.

I'd like to thank the volunteers who created this video's translations:

Sara
Jackson
Fernando Arancibia Instagram: @fegggno

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Language learning is about acquiring words. The number of words we know, if they are acquired through lots of listening and reading, is a good measure of our familiarity with the language.

0:00 What is the simplest evaluation of where we are in a language?
1:36 Some books I have read on learning languages.
2:58 It's all about learning vocabulary naturally.
3:56 How many words I know in the languages I can speak.
7:51 The way I recommend you use flashcards to learn vocabulary.

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My Podcast:

#learnvocabulary #vocabulary #languages

[Thelinguist]

How do you go about increasing your vocabulary?


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Social Media

[AndreSantos-qvkd]

Hi! My name is André, I’m from Brazil, I’m learning English and I have a dream to speak many languages and to be a linguist.

Thanks for this video👏🏾

[IKEMENOsakaman]

My memory is really bad, so I really can't memorize vocabulary by writing them down in a notebook and trying to memorize them. Rather, I memorize whole sentences in contexes and situations. My body can remember so much more than my brain. Weird, but true.

[Heidelbuam]

The idea that passive vocabulary is your main indicator of how far you“ve progressed in a language is very appealing to me. I think though it depends on your communicative (or for that matter non-communicative goals) you are trying to achieve in a certain language. If your aim is to be able to understand reading and listening material passively, it would help you a great deal. Once you want to communicate or write something in a language, you“d eventually have to turn your acquired passive vocabulary into an active one. Thus, being aware of the contexts (syntactical, lexical and pragmatical) in which you can actively use certain words is quite essential, I think. I would love to see comments on that.Being a linguist and polyglotte myself, I“ ve always enjoyed learning vocabulary, even out of a dictionary:)

[starlightphoenix]

I can definitely get behind this! I'm relearning Japanese after not speaking it for about 10 years. I remember a lot more about the grammar than I do actual vocabulary... which leaves me in an awkward position when trying to have a discussion 😅. I'm doing my best to relearn as much vocab as possible so that I can actually start speaking it again, lol.

[fahadhussain]

2:08 this is why you're a gem, somebody who has been through all of this, and is now sharing is knowledge in simple 10 minute videos is truly a treasure to be found. Thanks!

[alonsocastaneda]

It is impressive how we can learn any language by just doing simple things like reading books, listening to podcasts, and writing things in that language. When I first started to learn English, I didn't take it very seriously because I thought that if I went to school and studied English there, I would learn English as time went by, but then I realized that if I really want to learn and speak English fluently, I will have to study English everyday and make English learning a habit.

[mostafathunder]

از این ویدیو استفاده کردم و برام مفید بود. چقدر خوب که در حال یادگیری فارسی هستید. براتون آرزوی موفقیت دارم. بترکونید.

[laurentpicard]

Parfait comme toujours. J'ai 40 ans et bientôt 41 et moi qui ne suis jamais aller à l'école ( vie très particulière suite à différentes circonstances) ait commencé l'anglais il y a quelques mois ( je ne me l'étais jamais autorisée auparavant).
J'avançais très lentement puis il y a environ un mois et demi je vous ai découvert ainsi que toutes vos précieuses méthodes et depuis je suis bien plus confiant.
En faite, je suis en train de lire votre livre actuellement et bien qu'il existe en français je l'ai acheté en Anglais et je suis en train de le lire en Anglais ... À ma grande surprise je m'aperçois que je comprends à plus de 90% ...
Parler, surtout en circonstances réel est bien plus délicat... Mais je sais que ça viendra en continuant à prendre du plaisir.
Merci 🙏

[paland]

A have my own experience in studying foreign language words - when I started to study Chinese, studying characters and tones was very hard, therefore I wrote a short application in Python with random appearing of words. It helped me much to get initial Chinese vocabulary.

[BryanAJParry]

As a language teacher, I independently came to Steve's conclusions myself. This Man has it bang on!

[Kender]

Very Interesting video!
There are a lot vocabularies that I've learned long time ago and i never use them, I don't forget them, but thanks to them I can understand more complex ideas.

[davidsthoughts]

I signed up for LingQ a few weeks ago, after seeing several of your videos over a couple of years. My Russian learning has moved from ‘stagnation’ to ‘making process’ since then. I watch a few polyglots telling how they learn languages, but as you say, it comes down to spending time with the language and having comprehensible input. Thanks much for LingQ and for your continued motivation.

[vunguyentr]

This is fantastic, I love binge learning new words but felt guilty not using any of them. This gives me perfect excuse to indulge in this hobby

[PikRabbit]

I completely agree with you, and I also see language imput as a form of review because everything we consume in the language is only going to have repetitive words so you dont have to worry about ever seeing it again

plus it'll still give you context (90% of the time) compared to if you only stuck with language programs.

[teamjipper]

Thanks for this video. From my own limited, but intensive experience I find that there is a 'scale' of knowing a word. In the early going it is exposure, exposure, exposure in context for non-cognates. True cognates are a gift. My biggest current challenge is recognizing known words in speech. Early on I might recognize a word, but slowly. So slowly that I loose the context - the world passes me by. A weird, long delay until my brain accepts it knows this word. This delay shortens the more times I hear a given word. So in this context I wouldn't say I fully know a word (or phrase) until I can understand it in speech at a normal listening rate. Repetition matters a lot.

Reading is different, the delay in recognition doesn't matter because the rate I read at is not important.

Great stuff!

[pourad]

با درود و احترام .
از مطالب آموزنده شما سپاسگذارم .

[youssefelmrabet]

I'm really grateful that I know you. every time you upload a video I learn something new. thank you for your time.

[_Username__]

I will be forever thankful and grateful for you Steve for sharing your invaluable wisdom and experience, I actually totally agree with your statements but I never were able to summarize it for my self and output it elegantly and clearly as you just did, Thank you so much.

[ariohandoyo]

I want to say that my weakness is learn new words in english, i'm still struggling with vocabulary i agree with you mr. Steve learn new words by memorsing 500 words it won't affective at all we should do more input learning ya you're right good luck on your languange learning guys.