Language Tools

Language Tools

Memory:

Since vocabulary occupies a large place in every language, it can make or break your learner quest, vocabulary is often a matter of associating a meaningless collection of syllables with a word in your own language. Usually people associate these words by repetition or by saying the word in their own language and the foreign language many times over. You can improve on this tedious way of learning by using for example the following technique:

Mnemonics to link words, this method is based on using images to link a word in your own language with a word in a foreign language. For example, if you're learning Spanish, and learned that bread in Spanish is "el pan", to make it easy to memorize this new word, imagine bread on a frying , which will help you one connect one thing to another in case you forgot. This is called the LinkWord technique, it can speed up your memorization efficiency and therefore save you a lot of time, but you have to be creative and make a good association that you may not forget.

Practice:

it's what keeps you in the right path, first because it allows you to "play" with what you already know, and discover what you don't know, also it helps you learn new things and best of all it prevent you from forgetting what you already learned. Practice lets you know your level, and by knowing your actual level you can determine your next level would be.

Motivation:

it's what keeps you going, and that's something you really need more than anything, because many language learners lose interest within the first stages of their learning quest, that will not only mean that there will be no improvement, but also may put everything you learned before at risk, because lack of motivation leads to lack of practice, and gradually you will forget most of what you know.