Whenever I start learning a new foreign language, I ponder which words I will memorize, in what quantity, and how I will do it.
These challenges face not only me, but every language learner. Let me list them again:
- Determine how many words need to be learned (Quantity).
- Which words they will be (Content).
- How to learn them (Method(s))?
All these tasks are interconnected; solving one depends on solving the others, and vice versa.
To find solutions to these tasks, you need to be able to ask yourself the right questions – that’s half the battle. The other half of success lies in the ability to find the right answers to the questions posed.
We’ve asked ourselves the three most important questions. What’s next? Next, we’ll look for the other questions, without answering which we cannot answer the three main ones.
Actually, there’s another question, more important than the first three combined: What does it mean to “know” a word? That’s the one we’ll seek an answer to now.
You might hear: “I know 1000 English words.” “He knows a lot of German words.” “She knows 10,000 French words.” “A student after finishing high school should know 3000 words of the foreign language being studied.”
If we know something, we don’t just store information in our heads; we are ready to use it. True knowledge is knowledge that can be used! Everything else is dead weight!
So, if I know a word, firstly, I can recognize it in speech or in writing, I understand what it means, and secondly, I can use it in speech and writing. The first is passive knowledge, the second is active knowledge.
We understand far more words than we can use – even in our native language. Learning to understand words is much simpler than learning to use them. Why? Because to use a particular word correctly, you need to know not only the word itself, but also how to use it: in what form, with which preposition, in what position in the sentence. You don’t need to know all this if you just want to understand. If you just want to understand, the main thing is to be able to connect individual words into a single semantic whole – that is, to reconstruct the meaning of the whole from its parts, and its parts are the words.
However, there’s this pattern: the more words a person can understand, the more words they can also use.
And another thing: the boundary between passive and active vocabulary is very fluid. Words we only know passively can easily transition into active vocabulary. All that’s needed is practice speaking or writing: we hear words from our conversation partner, we understand them (assuming we didn’t use them before), and then we respond to their remarks, using those words in our reply. That’s the path for transforming passive vocabulary (i.e., words) into active.
But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves. First, we need to master this passive vocabulary and constantly work on expanding it.
At the initial stage, even mastering passive vocabulary is fraught with great difficulties. And the main difficulty is that new words leave no imprint on memory; they seem to slide over its surface, leaving only barely noticeable traces.
Again, the question arises: why? Because. Because in every language, there are sound combinations unique to it, upon which most words are built. In the new language we’re learning, these sound combinations are different! To feel relief in memorizing foreign words, these fundamental sound combinations need to settle into our memory. Then, each new foreign word will no longer seem entirely new to our memory – it will consist of familiar elements! That’s already a huge relief. It means the energy needed to memorize the word’s form will be minimal. And who among us can boast of having excess energy? Moreover, in adulthood, the energy supply for memory is limited: most of the energy goes to fueling thinking processes; memory in an adult is just on support, serving the mind…
All this time, we’ve been talking about the difficulty of memorizing word forms. However, it’s important not only to memorize the form but also to associate this form with the content it embodies – that is, the word’s meaning.
We hear the word “стол” (table) and we picture the object “стол”. The word “стол” is a pointer to the object “стол”. Any word is merely a pointer to some element of real or imagined reality.
When mastering our native language, we heard words and saw (felt, touched, heard, smelled) objects, actions, properties of objects and actions. This created the necessary associations, the link between the word and the element of reality.
The same task faces the language learner: to create a link between form and content, the word and its meaning.
Let me repeat: at the initial stage, the hardest thing is to master the form. Therefore, you need to work on phonetics, strive to learn to pronounce sounds, sound combinations correctly, then words, phrases, and then sentences. But that’s not enough. You need to immerse yourself in the stream of speech.
This can be done in different ways: listening to the radio, audio course recordings, TV programs, and so on. You need to do this even if you don’t understand a single word of what you hear!
But even that’s not enough. Words still need to be learned, actively pronounced. This allows the mind, at a subconscious level, to isolate frequently occurring sound combinations, and after that, they will be transferred to memory storage. Active and repeated pronunciation of new and old words will solve the first and main task: a bank of sound combinations will form in your memory, and memorization will become easier and easier with each passing day.
The process of learning a language is like the movement of clock hands: if you watch the hour or even the minute hand, it’s very difficult, or even impossible, to notice their movement. But they do move! It’s the same with learning a language: changes happen so smoothly and gradually that we cannot notice them in the midst of the work. However, looking back, we see that we’ve already come a long way!
It will be hard for you to notice how learning words becomes an easier and easier process, but that doesn’t mean the relief hasn’t come. Trust me and my experience: there comes a moment when words start learning almost by themselves – in the process of communication, reading, watching videos, films, TV programs. The main thing is a constant influx of information that is necessary and interesting to us. True, you will only feel this effect when you move from the beginner level to the intermediate level, but isn’t it worth the effort, isn’t it?