5 Powerful Ways to Memorize Words in a Foreign Language

Having a college degree and being good in studies is not the only way to be successful in your career. If you want to stand out among others, you need to be multilingual. Today businesses, for their worldwide expansion, prefer to hire multilingual staff.

Whether it is the hotel management staff in Puerto Rico or carpet cleaning London, every corporation prefers a multilingual workforce to cater to an increasingly diverse consumer market. According to a study conducted by the American Community Survey, in the USA, every one in five children over the age of five years speaks English as well as an additional language at home.

Being multilingual is awesome, but learning a foreign language is not an easy task. Of course, it needs a good memory, but it also needs time and effort. Memorizing the words of a new language is a big challenge, and you need the right kinds of strategies to learn it and become smoother with time.

In this article, I have come up with five powerful strategies that would help you to memorize words of a foreign language in the least time. But patience is the key to success, and gradually you will succeed.

Let us explore these strategies one by one:

1. Learn Words with Their Contexts

While learning a new language, people often make two columns in their notebook; one, where you write the word, and in the other column, you write the translation. You are forgetting the third column. In the third one, you can write a short example in the form of a sentence in which the word is used.

This would let the foreign language word and its meaning stick to your brain. Wordincontext is a helpful website in learning about a new word and you don’t know what doe sit mean and how to use it in a sentence. This would help you to learn new words more effectively and how to correctly use them in a sentence.

2. Read the Content That Excites You

Reading is another good way to increase your vocabulary. A human brain remembers the phrases and words that are used on a common basis or we like listening to them. the vocabulary used in content that excites us is memorized quickly than reading content in which we have no interest.

For instance, if you a person who has an interest in science and technology, you find it easier to remember words that are related to science. Similarly, if a person likes music, for him it is easy to memorize the names of musicians or singers.

3. Practice More with Flashcards

You would agree that retrieval practice is the best way to learn new things. The moment we feel like the information is running out of our heads, we should start practicing with flashcards.

According to Jeffrey Karpicke, an Associate professor of psychology at the University of Purdue, flashcards not only promote long-term learning but also encourage meaningful learning. Karpicke argues that students learned more in closed-book tests, which required retrieval practice in comparison to open-book quizzes.

Similarly, while learning a new language, the use of flashcards to learn new words is one of the most appropriate techniques. You can either use digital flashcards or old-school paper flashcards.

The choice is yours, however, I prefer old-school flash cards. People normally use digital flashcards. The best thing about using digital flashcards is that they can be used anywhere at any time.

If you want to build your foreign language vocabulary using digital flashcards, and downloading apps from the mobile app store. There are plenty of options. WordTheme is one good example on the list. It has wonderful features for free.

4. Explore the New and Complex Words

While learning a foreign language, you come across many new words that you found complex at first glance, but don’t be afraid. It is very normal to come across intimidating words when learning a new language. Analyze such words so that they scare you less.

One other tip is to break down the complex and long foreign words into pieces so that you can learn about them. For instance, “Tietokone” is a French word that means Computer. When I started learning French, I find this word complex initially. It was a struggle to remember it. Later I realized that in the French language “Koko” means machine. All I was left with the first part to memorize. Find ways to learn and memorize the words of a new language.

5. Use the Repetition Technique

At last, but not the least, to memorize the words of a foreign language, it is important to repeat the difficult words. I do not say repeat them every second. It is not a one-day task. Repeat the words for at least a week to memorize them effectively.

According to psychologists, the power of spaced repetition cannot be ignored when it comes to learning a foreign language. It also does not require a lot of effort- just you need is goodwill to learn something new.

You can set a weekly time table for learning new words, repetition, and memorizing. Start with Monday- on Monday learn new words, and memorize them throughout the week using the flashcards and spaced repetition techniques to come up with better results.

Final Thoughts

I agree, learning a foreign language is fun, but it is not an easy task. You are required to give time and effort if you want to memorize the words of a new language. Remember, this is not a one day or one week task; you need to be patient. I am sure that the above 5 tips for memorizing the words of a foreign language must help you out.

Author Bio

Myrah Abrar is a computer science graduate with a passion for web development and digital marketing. She writes blog articles for Carpet Cleaning London.

 
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