- Before you start, you must choose the words you would be learning. While doing so, it is paramount that the words you pick are relevant and applicable to your surroundings.
If you end up aiming for a list of complex or archaic words, you would be able to learn them, but that would be as far as you can go as there won’t be any situations for you to use those words in conversation.
As a result, they will end up being a part of your passive vocabulary; words which you know, but don’t use that often. - Another important factor is not learning words with similar meanings at the same time. “Avoid interference from related words” Words which are similar in form (Laufer, 1989a) or meaning (Higa, 1963; Tinkham, 1993 and 1997; Waring, 1997b) are more difficult to learn together than they are to learn separately. (Nation, 2000)
Even though it might seem that doing so will help you categorize the words easier, it is proved that they would only cause greater confusion. The similarity between related items (of the same lexical set) makes it difficult for the learner to remember which was which. (Nation, 2000)
- Step 1 - Learning the spelling and pronunciation correctly.
This comes first as these aspects are those which give a word its identity. Getting them right is crucial for progressing on to the word’s meaning and usage.
In the mental lexicon, words are not just stored on the basis of their meaning and syntactic implications, but also on the way they sound, that is orthographically. - Step 2 and Optional - Beginning with a simple meaning.
“Learning words is a cumulative process. The various aspects involved in knowing a word can be built up over a series of meetings with the word. What is important is to start the process of learning in a clear way without confusion. There are strong arguments for using the learners' first language if this will provide a clear, simple, and brief explanation (Lado, Baldwin and Lobo, 1967; Mishima, 1967; Laufer and Shmueli, 1997)”. (Nation, 2000) - Steps 3 and 4 - Coming up with synonyms and making a personal definition for the word.
While performing the steps mentioned above, your mind would be developing Word Schemas - Linking Word and World knowledge. (Raphael, 2006) In that process, you -
• Activate prior knowledge to learn/confirm word meanings.
• Make connections to learn/confirm word meanings.
• Access prior knowledge triggered by words or text events.
• Think critically: analyze, evaluate, and make judgments.
• Use context to resolve ambiguities about word and sentence meanings.
(Raphael, McGraw Hill - Wright Group: LEAD 21) - Step 5 - Make your mnemonic.
Even though they inter-lap to great lengths, understanding and remembering are two different processes. Initially, understanding a word is relatively easy as compared to being able to retrieve it later. “In order to help remembering, information needs to be processed thoughtfully and deeply. The quality of mental processing affects the quantity of learning.” (Nation, 2000)
This is exactly what mnemonics do. As the are personalized, they help you in drawing a connection between a subject you already know to a subject you want to learn. “Like a good metaphor, a mnemonic can tie an abstract idea to a concrete one, making the unfamiliar familiar”. (Fodor, 2012) - Step 6 - Writing it down.
Let’s face it. You can not just ‘store‘ words in your mind while learning. That happens involuntarily. However, for your retention capacity to be active, you have to record your process in some form or other.
Then comes the question of writing v/s typing. But believe me, even though the latter promises to be time efficient, it is the former which is way more effective.
Writing is an activity which activates your Reticular Activating System, which is the attention centre in your brain. The RAS is a uniquely complex collection of neurons which are required to process and learn information and also to be able to focus on a goal and its associated activities. Turning this on is like switching your mind on! With this, you can focus more AND achieve more! - Step 7 and 8 - Drawing connections and Contextualising your word.
This step would help you determine all the different parts of speech in which your word can be used, significantly increasing your command over its usage. As a result, you would be in that position where you can identify the various situations in which it could be used. In short, you know where to use the word.
- Step 9 and 10 - Repeating the process.
These steps are based on the process called Spaced Repetition System.
“Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect”. (Wikipedia)
The ‘spacing effect’ in psychology is a phenomenon which puts forth the point that animals tend to remember or learn things when they are learnt over a significant stretch of time. So in this method, you keep going back to words and focus on them repeatedly, strengthening your grip.
Here are some other important factors on which the method is structured -
- Frequency
“Knowledge of a word can only accumulate if learners meet the word many times. Repeated meetings can have the effects of strengthening and enriching previous knowledge”. (Nation, 2000) - The use of metacognitive strategies - In the process of working on this method, one would inevitably plan/organise their progress, manage their learning, use their background knowledge and personalise.
All these acts are some basic metacognitive strategies. They help us understand the way in which we learn. - The Cohort Model - This is a linguistic model about word retrieval proposed by William Marlsen-Wilson. The cohort model is based on the concept that auditory or visual input to the brain stimulates neurons as it enters the brain, rather than at the end of a word. (Altmann, 71)
- The Cohort Model makes use of the uniqueness point - the point within a word at which there ceases to be any overlap with other words in the lexicon. (Altmann)
This entire process takes place in the mind naturally. It is somewhat like the process of elimination. - “The more cognitive energy a person exerts when manipulating and thinking about a word, the more likely it is that they will be able to recall and use it later (Craik and Lockhart, 1972; Craik and Tulving, 1975).
This hypothesis implies that it is not important how recently learners have learnt something. What is of more importance in learning is, in fact, the depth of processing.
As stated earlier, according to this theory how well information is remembered is not a function of how long a person is exposed to that information, but instead depends on the nature of the cognitive processes that are employed to process that information.
This theory can be described by comparing the levels of processing to the levels in a pyramid. The bottom levels represent preliminary, shallow processing, and are concerned with physical and sensory features. The top levels of the pyramid represent deep processing and are concerned with the extraction of meaning where depth refers to a greater degree of semantic involvement. This is an important concept because it illustrated the fact that simple rehearsal will not facilitate long-term recall, however, elaboration at deeper levels will promote long-term recall. Thus, deeper, richer semantic processing, such as memory strategies will be more likely to enhance learning than shallower processes such as rote repetition (Schmitt and Schmitt, 1995).” (Nation, 2000)
- Finally, there are three stages of vocabulary comprehension - (Nation, 2000)
- Noticing - Working on the same word form frequently.
- Retrieval - Recalling the same meaning several times.
- Generation - Recalling a meaning in different contexts requiring a different situation of the meaning.
Brain - https://www.dshs.state.tx.us/mhsa/creativeartscontest.aspx