The secret to remember more words in English

This is the one thing all our students, 100% of them, have always mentioned at the end of any vocabulary class. «Teacher I’m not going to remember what we have learnt today. I’ll forget as soon as I step out of the classroom. I have a really bad memory». You won’t believe how often we listen to this. In this post we are going to tell you the secret to remember more words in English. Really!

If you’re a teacher you might want to check our lesson on Learning here. You could probably do it with B1-B2 students

It’s been a few years since the trend to avoid learning anything by heart has taken over the school system and other academic areas. Certain things don’t need to be learnt by heart given their little use in real life. Therefore, it’s easy for us to determine that vocabulary is the area in which memory plays a key role. Without the ‘bricks’ of the language (words) we can’t build anything.

Keep in mind that the situation and the content you want to learn are the two most important factors. In order to keep an updated and functional vocabulary bank is more a habit to train than anything else. Let’s take a look at the steps that you need to follow:

1. Little is good: Always try to learn things in really small chunks. Choosing three words would be ideal. At first starting off with adjectives seems the best way to gain accuracy quickly. Chunking information into small ‘pills’ is one of the most effective ways to remember. Doing this in your ‘dead’ times like coffee breaks, commutes and other wait times, has proven to be incredibly effective. We have chosen three adjectives for you: OUTRAGEOUS; AFFORDABLE; SELFISH.
2. Repeat words every 5, 10, 20 minutes after you have read them: This is called spaced repetition. The more effort you make while remembering a word, the more likely it is to stick. This means that the moment you are actually thinking about the word that you can’t seem to remember is the best exercise you can actually do. You might tell us now, «but I spend my whole day doing that, trying to remember stuff». And that’s true, however you never complete the process. Once you initiate the ‘recall’ process, you need to complete it. If it’s a word, look for its meaning or something that reminds you to it and complete the process. The first time you try to remember the word, you might feel frustrated. But if you repeat the process 5 minutes later and check, and then 10 minutes and check again, we’re sure you’ll end up remembering. Try remembering the three words we mentioned earlier. We haven’t talked about meaning yet, but we’ll do now.
3. Build connections: Remembering is all about making connections and then testing. Let’s take a look at our examples:
   • OUTRAGEOUS – We see the word RAGE right in the centre of this rather long word. RAGE: means anger. So, we can actually infer what OUTRAGEOUS might mean, we’re almost sure it’s something related to anger. The actual meaning of OUTRAGEOUS is shockingly excessive. When something is so much that it makes you feel angry or shocked.
   • AFFORDABLE – This one might be easy because AFFORD is something you are able to buy. The suffix is -ABLE, which means allow. So, there you have it, AFFORDABLE is something that is considered cheap and easily purchasable.
   • SELFISH – When someone focuses more ‘onesself’ than any other one, is a SELFISH person. The suffix -ISH is usually added to explain the manner or way of something. So, if someone is selfish his/her manner is of him/herself.
4. Expansion: You don’t know it yet, but these three words can evolve into more words. That’s because of the versatility of English. Take a look:
   1. from OUTRAGEOUS we can make: OUTRAGE, OUTRAGEOUSLY
   2. AFFORDABLE: AFFORD, AFFORDABILITY, UNAFFORDABLE
   3. SELFISH: SELFISHNESS, SELFLESS, SELFLESSNESS
5. Make mind maps: mind maps will help you create these word connections and your own technique to remember will let you use the word when need it.
6. Can you think of the words again? O________, A________, S__________

If you were able to remember all three, you have carried out the process almost perfectly. If you didn’t try again in 10 minutes. Let’s see if you do. If not, keep trying. The key is to find your own way (recall and repetition) to remember more words in English.

Try our Quizlet lesson to learn and practise these words here.

The next step, which does not imply memory, but would be great for grammar accuracy, would be to mentally use it. A good way is by using it in any sentence you can think of. Don’t write it down, just think of it. e.g. The price of the new iPhone is outrageous. 😉

There are many more ways to remember words, but we’ll talk about that in a future post.

We hope you found our way to remember more words in English interesting and you can start off with these three words. Let us know in a comment how you did. Were you able to remember all three by the end of this post?