I would have never thought anyone would just want to memorize random words. Words that are useless to me, I just forget about them. People focus too much on memorization rather than exposure to engaging content. I was pretty successful learning French and Spanish while living in countries that spoke those languages. My approach was to systematically rote learn about ten new words each day that I had encountered during the day.
This ensured that the words were relevant to me and likely to recur. In both places I was around other students. Based on your observation of students that fell behind, though, were these students also the kind not to get exposed to large amounts of input in the foreign language they were learning?
Also, when rote learning 10 or so new words a day, did you try to have them memorized as part of sentences to give the words some context? Did you feel that you could easily use in conversations the words you had rote memorized?
Thanks for commenting! Great to hear that this tactic has been working well for you Jenny. Do you feel you end up remembering the words that you review through your flashcards for a long period of time? It has been working great for me too. It helps me to learn new vocabulary and improve my pronunciation. At the end of the day I think the thing that really matters is patience and consistency. Yes, Eric sets a wrong goal. At the same time, I believe his even bigger mistake is committing to it too soon, being unconscious about the learning process itself, and letting automatic negative feedback loops to kick in.
Why am I getting upset? How to make the process more relevant to me? What part of French I like the most? Probably carefully guarding his positive attitude and following what he enjoys and loves doing by blending it with French would be the right thing to do.
Based on the argument made in the article, would you agree that trying to memorize a set amount of words every day is the wrong way to approach language acquisition?
If we look at lives of high achievers, many of them have faced a lot of failures and wrong goals, wrong processes, wrong questions, etc. What makes a difference is their mind-set and ability to learn from mistakes. It helps build resilience discipline if you wish and techniques not only coping up with failures but praising them as valuable lessons.
As Jenny mentioned, learning 30 cards a day works for her. Yes, it goes together with reading and creating cards often ignored by beginners. So, what memorizing means anyway? Learning pre-made cards is probably the least effective tactic. Collecting words from reading active relevant reading , spoken language is more effective because of connections you mentioned and relevance. It would be actually even fun. I knew about that problem, so I rendered it a non-point.
Using Anki makes your brain understand that information is important because you see it over and over until you remember it.
Even if you only learn a word in one way by that, I mean only by reading hiragana, or only by reading kanji, or only by recalling in response to an English stimulus , the fact that the word is somehow stored in your mind enables you to more easily learn other aspects of the same word.
Indeed, the more links you can make between already-known information and new information mnemonics, anyone? I need to put that into an Anki deck, too. However, when I struggle to complete a sentence and my Japanese friend suggests a word, I almost always recognize the word, and after just one such instance, it becomes a whole lot easier to remember that word when I want to use it later.
It is a great article. Then I got sick of anki and got studying and became pretty good it was by no means a full time thing. I am well past fluent but my limit is the lack of first word families and I suspect learning by rota would work in this case.
So I did a few hundred words, assimil, some series with English subtitles just to get used to sounds and pick up words, then a families or so with first shot serious grammar study, then we see. You can anki all day using every memory technique out there and if you are ready, you can do words in a day. But if the words are past your level then you start to burn out at Obviously words get you to your level in 2 or 3 days and then you hit a wall.
I presume most people give up because of that rather than move to other learning methods for a bit. Used that way I really thing memorization apps are a great help. It helped me greately when I was living in Chile for 6 months. Without every having studied Spanish before, just after 3 months I was able to at least cope with daily life situations and read my first not too hard Spanish novel.
However, I completely agree that the way some people treat language learning as an almost competitive race for cramming in a short amount of time as much into your head as anyhow possible will most likely result in demotivation but even worse lots of time wasted.
If you are never going to actively use the word and add context to it the situations or environments it appears in , you just will forget it again. I realized this instinctively even as a school kid. So when our French teacher wanted to get some for him no effort grades by just quizzing us on chapters from our vocabulary book, I simply refused to go along with it.
Lucky for me the teacher erased all those Fs cause I was the topper of the class and keeping his average grades quite high, which in return would show favourably on his employee evaluation. This article truly sums up what I feel is the biggest problem in language learning today! I immediately started learning German simply using short articles with audio, and shockingly, within a few months I could make my way through a novel, and then after a year, I could now comfortably read a novel with many unknown words, but it never hindered my enjoyment , and could watch documentaries and TV shows!!
It truly feels like you are discovering and exploring a world, not even aware that you are learning. The process itself is exhilarating!
Reduce Anki to the minimum possible usage, and use simple articles with audio to work yourself up to the point where you can read a novel. As fast as possible, get into the world of authentic content, and then swim in it for years, following your interests!
I find it hard to formulate a simple message on how to learn naturally, especially when in their mind, they already have an awful method they consider good pretty solidly anchored in there lol. Without understanding the words? How does that even begin to make sense? I agree. It takes a few different approaches that complement and supplement each other.
And most importantly…. Actually speak it! I think it just depends on how much time you are going to invest on average every day. As for whether to learn words by rote in advance, or learn them as you go along while immersing yourself in a language activity e. But I can easily imagine that for others it could be quite the opposite. I think, my advice would be, experiment with different ways of doing it, and do it whatever way works out best for you.
Besides, you are not going get a medal for doing things you did not enjoy.. Generally speaking, new words will first be gradually absorbed into your passive vocabulary as you encounter them several times and start to get a feel for their use. Native speakers and second language speakers alike generally have a passive vocabulary several times greater than their active vocabulary.
In general, we can describe levels of fluency in a foreign language with these rough word counts:. A good starting point in any language is a list of high frequency vocabulary , or a handy base vocabulary list for any language. In any language, there are a few categories of words that will come in handy before others. That means exposing yourself to linguistic input like TV, videos and reading material, as well as plenty of real-life conversation. Every new word starts as an unfamiliar word, and repeated exposure is the only way to truly learn rather than memorize unfamiliar vocabulary.
FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons. With FluentU, you hear languages in real-world contexts —the way that native speakers actually use them. Just a quick look will give you an idea of the variety of FluentU videos on offer:. FluentU really takes the grunt work out of learning languages, leaving you with nothing but engaging, effective and efficient learning. All you have to do is choose any video that strikes your fancy to get started!
Each word in the interactive captions comes with a definition, audio, image, example sentences and more. But I need to visualize each place in my memory palace clearly. So I would say, you can learn any number of words in a day you want. But you need to remember them longer.
Different memory techniques may help you to remember them longer. But every individual has their own limits. Actually in 8 hours, I learned English vocabulary words.
Using vocabulary apps on smartphone. However it's important to integrate these vocabulary words skillfully in writing and speaking. Vocab apps need to also consider having the user apply their new knowledge into practice, from easy to complex situations, and not just memorize lists of words. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.
Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How many vocabulary words should I learn every day? Asked 8 years, 8 months ago. Active 6 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 19k times.
Improve this question. I think this is Off Topic. If not, it would have to be Not Constructive. How do we know how many words one particular asker is able to learn every day? There can be no "right answer". Fu: Of course, there's a "right answer". Please read mine. The other two answers have some good ideas, too. I've still a ways to go with it, but it is very satisfying to be able to read many things in Japanese.
Try this app to learn more words: play. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. A: How long should my legs be? B: Long enough to reach the ground. Improve this answer. I've noticed that most of Yoichi's highly-esteemed ELU questions tend to come from news articles he's read.
I wonder if he uses this technique, and then one way he "recycles" unfamiliar words and expressions is to ask about them on the Stack Exchange. He's a smart guy who seems to know what he wants, so I'd not be surprised to learn that he's using the best language-learning techniques. Eric S Eric S 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges.
There is no such universal magic amount of words to learn. Simone Simone 21 1 1 bronze badge. Although this question already has several good answers, I think they can be improved. How many should I learn per day? How can I remember words? However, I can also tell you from experience: If you are learning from vocabulary lists, you need to know the word really well before it will come naturally when you're speaking or reading or listening You can write a word out times and still forget it 10 minutes later!
JViveros JViveros 1. As it stands, this is almost more of a comment than an answer. Maybe you could tell us which app you used and how it had you apply your new knowledge in practice? DCShannon: This user previously posted an answer which did mention the app they used; for some reason, it was deleted.
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