It’s All about Learning Vocabulary

Acá dejo mi primer artículo "académico" publicado por la escuela de español donde trabajo en Londres.

It is widely believed that in order to speak Spanish or any other foreign language fluently, you first need to have a repertoire of words, expressions and phrases at your disposal which will enable you to speak confidently about a certain topic.

Learning and remembering vocabulary has been a life-long struggle for language learners. But, maybe, it was just a question of getting to know how to do it properly, rather than an I-just-don’t-have-a-good-memory sort of problem.

Source: linguistics.ohio.edu

Along the years, education and beliefs on how to educate have been changing for the better. And with these changes, there came the new idea that the way in which we learn vocabulary and the techniques our brain uses to store this lexicon should be revisited and improved.

            For sure, many of us can look back in time and remember being given long lists of vocabulary to memorize. Maybe it proved to be an efficient technique for the following day, in which the learner was still able to retrieve these words from their memories. However, there is no doubt that, after some time, a lot of these words are not available anymore. The issue is that our brain wasn’t developed to remember isolated words. We absolutely need to learn them in a context. Our mental lexicon is organised in a specific way, which enables us to recognise and use certain units of vocabulary very fast. These units are stored by way of all sorts of associations (such as graphic, morphologic, semantic, discursive, to name just a few).

            It has been scientifically proven that the units that appear in a meaningful context are better incorporated into our lexicon. Also, it is widely believed that if these units bear a relation with the person’s interests or needs, or are associated with a strong stimulus for him/her, then the chances of acquiring this new vocabulary increase considerably. The mental lexicon “(…) is never actually ‘finished’. Connections in the brain between words are constantly made and re-made, strengthened and solidified” (McCarthy, O’Keeffre and Walsh, 2010: 105).

            One of the greatest difficulties for the language learner is how hard it is to be able to systematise vocabulary. We have come up with a list of three useful ideas to help you:

   1) Learn vocabulary through chunks

A chunk is a combination of words that is used as one unit. To put it simpler, chunking means learning phrases by heart. However, these chunks shouldn’t be too long or complicated.

Just like Alex Owen-Hill puts it in his article Split It Up: The Top Technique for Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, which you can find here, a chunk may be made up of a few chunks. To use his example, two chunks could be found in:

¿Qué película te gustaba mucho cuando eras niño/a? — What film did you love as a kid?

Te gustaba mucho — You really liked/loved
Cuando eras niño/a — When you were a boy/girl

So now, the learner has learnt two phrases that sound natural and could be used in many different situations. Moreover, one can mix and match these phrases with others to form new sentences. As a Spanish language learner, you need to “get into the practice of combining the words into little phrases”, like Owe-Hill suggests.

It is important to bear in mind that some chunks are self-contained, which means they only make sense in their chunk, as a unit.

2) Build vocabulary webs:

Another great idea to memorise vocabulary is to set yourself a theme per week. Say on week number one you will try to memorise vocabulary related to holidays. You can, for example, create a vocabulary web that could look something like this:

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Of course, you will need the Spanish version, which would look something like this:

Copyright © 2016 Friendly Spanish

You can create your own webs according to your needs and interests. Just find something that you would like to talk about and write it in the middle bubble. Then, you have to think about all the things related to the big theme that you may want to mention when talking about it. Find all the words, expressions or phrases that you could use related to the topic. Then, memorize some useful chunks.  

3) Create your own phrasebook

Think about the topics that you would normally like to talk about when you are in the company of a Spanish-speaking friend or colleague. It may help you to think about the words and expressions you normally use in your mother tongue and then find out how to say them in Spanish. For example, you could create a section of your phrasebook to talk about your specific job and things related to it. Another section could include your hobbies and interests. The main idea is to find the Spanish words, expressions and chunks that you could use on each occasion and then try to learn them in context.

Source: www.tagxedo.com

In conclusion, it is widely believed by teaching experts, linguists and scientists that learning vocabulary is entirely in the learner’s hands. As a Spanish language student, it is greatly beneficial to become an independent word learner to increase your vocabulary knowledge according to your special interests, likes, dislikes, life experiences and motivations. In this way, once your mental lexicon is expanded, your fluency will also have become better and that’s when you will feel rewarded when engaging in a conversation with a native Spanish-speaker. So, what are you waiting for?

By Florencia Mantoan, Friendly Spanish Team’s member.