The hard part of learning a new language is having to learn everything you know in a new vocabulary.
To make the words stick in your mind, I suggest that instead of memorizing them, you relate them or make an emotional connection with the new words.
Relate:
When I started French, I had trouble remembering the word window in French. My teacher had already repeated it to me many times, and I still couldn’t remember it.
To make me remember it, she told me a curiosity about the word (Fenêtre) so that I wouldn’t forget it:
- In old French, some s’s were omitted and circumflex accent was used instead. If we change it to old French, we wold be left with the word “fenestre”.
- From this word comes defenestration, which means to throw someone or oneself out of the window.
These may seem like minor facts, but they help me not to forget the word I had a lot of trouble with.
Emotional connection:
Make an emotional connection with the words you are learning, in general it’s easier to remember important moments or things that are related to an emotion.
When learning vocabulary, try to do it with things that are related to your life at the moment.
- For example, if you want to go an exchange, learn words related to that (university, airport, etc).
Emotion is very involved with memory.
