Learning a language entails immersing yourself in it. There are different levels of difficulty depending on the language, but luckily Spanish is considered one of the moderately easy ones since it is considered close to the English language. You may not be giving yourself enough credit in your ability to actually learn a new language, but you have to remember if other people can do it, so can you. The key is to determine the best way to learn and once you’ve gotten to the bottom of that, everything else will come easy.
The classroom setting might not be the best way to learn a language especially if the teacher does not use engaging methods. Writing words on a board and quizzing you on it is not necessarily an effective way to remember everything.
So, what will help you remember the word? It’s about how you experience the word and how you can relate it to something memorable. It may seem like a taxing process, but doing this will help you remember more words and actually put meaning to them.
As mentioned in an article in fourworkweek.com written by Tim Ferriss, he discussed what a writer, Gabriel Wyner had written in an article for lifehacker.com. He said that a memorable word has 4 different parts:
- A spelling
- A sound
- A meaning
- A personal connection/experience
If you can have all these parts in a word, then you will definitely remember the word and never forget it. Again, learning a language is not an instant thing, but with techniques like these, you will be able to really retain what you learn and accomplish becoming fluent.
So how do you get all these parts in a word? Perhaps it would be best to give yourself a target number of words each day. Start with 3 or 5 and increase the number of words you learn daily when you feel that you are improving.
Understanding the spelling, the sound, and the meaning of a word pretty much goes together. When you read a word, you first want to know how to spell it, in order to say it. But of course, before you say it, you use it, you need to know what it means. In order to do this, you may want to consider using Spanish language learning applications to help you.
Once you are able to fully understand the 3 parts of the word, then you consider making an experience out of it. Perhaps using the word while hanging out with friends, using or hearing the words through movies or even consider traveling and using the Spanish words to get around. When using the word during a memorable experience, somewhat the word becomes memorable too, helping you learn it quicker and retain your learnings.