How to Remember and Recall Your New Words.

Three weeks ago I asked you about your learning styles. You can read that post here if you missed it. Last week I recommended four websites to you, three of which will help you to expand your vocabulary. This week I am going to let you in on (Phrasal Verbs explained at the end) a couple of secrets for remembering those new words that you have been learning.

left_right_brainWhen I started learning Czech I just couldn’t remember new words unless I used them very often. Living in Cambridge in the UK I didn’t have that much opportunity other than with my girlfriend and a couple of her friends. Our brief conversations, if you can call them that, were merely pleasantries, Dobry Den, Ahoj, Jak se máš etc.

I did find a very helpful application called BYKI which uses flashcards and sound to assist in your learning, English one side, Czech the other with a picture if it was a noun. I soon started to show off how many new words I thought I had learned. My first words were as a child would learn, colours and animals. I was particularly good at birds, go on, test me! Sokol, orel, labut I have recently found out that this type of application is called a “Spaced Repetition System” and is quite effective. However, I soon learnt all the words in the programme (there weren’t so many for the Czech language). My motivation to learn stopped and I learnt almost nothing new until we decided to move here. Check out Anki, my new favourite flashcard software.

Listen, Lisen, Listen

ear-clip-art-McLLy6RXiSince I moved to the Czech Republic I have found it increasingly easy to remember new words as I am surrounded by the language and hear it constantly. This repetition of hearing sounds has clearly helped my understanding of the language but as I said last week I still learn very passively. You, on the other hand, probably live in the Czech Republic so you don’t have that luxury. What you need to do is listen to English songs, watch films, TV channels and series in English. Of course, you are learning and practising regularly from books, reading and in conversation with me or your other English teacher (aren’t you?) so a good system for memorizing your new vocabulary is a must.

Use Your Memory

Many years ago I read a book called ‘Use Your Memory’ by the author Tony Buzan. You may know of him because he invented Mind Maps, the system of drawing brain-like pictures to aid memory recall. His book has many fantastic ideas with memory techniques from 2000 years ago like the Roman Room to modern inventions like his Mind Maps. One of my favourites is to make a visual story from the words in your imagination. This works fine for remembering a list of words in your own language however it needs some adjusting to work for foreign languages, in your case English. Enter ‘Mnemonics‘. (Pronounced – nemoniks)

lightbulbMnemonics are memory techniques to help you remember large pieces of information. There are many types of mnemonics including, rhymes and songs to remember things but my favourite style of mnemonic is the image mnemonic (number 7 in the list if you follow this link). You invent a colourful, exciting image, or better still video, in your mind using the two words you need to attach together. For example, if you want to learn the English word for ‘konvice’ which is ‘kettle’, you could think up an image in your mind of a konvice v Barceloně. Barcelona is in Catalonia which in both English and Czech (Katálonie) sounds similar enough to kettle for you to remember.

When I was learning the months of the year in Czech I used mnemonics to remember some of the months with great success. Some words were a little difficult to imagine so I used another technique of word association. If your images are clear enough in your mind it might only take a few seconds per word to fix in your brain. It’s also great fun and very creative. The simple idea behind it is that you are attaching the new word to something your brain already remembers. Buzan calls these ‘hooks’ on which you can ‘hang’ your new words to remember. Here’s how I learnt the months of the year in Czech.months

  • January = Leden – Sound like the English word lead (olovo)
  • February = Únor – Uno is one but this is the second month.
  • March = Březen – Brrrrrrr (the sound we make to mean it cold) I imagined a Buddhist Zen monk sitting in the snow shivering.
  • April = Duben – my associated word was ‘doobie’ (adults can look that one up)
  • May = Květen – I already knew flowers in Czech and in May there are flowers right?!
  • June = Červen – Because I knew ‘red’ it was simple, and May’s flowers in my image were red which led me straight to June.
  • July = Červenec – Just add th ‘ec’
  • August = Srpen – Sounds like serpent ( a mythical snake-like creature) at my birthday party (the 20th!)
  • September = Září – The Russian Tsar going back to school.
  • October = Říjen – I had a Nazi officer interrogating me saying ‘Zee end is near’
  • November = Listopad – I already knew the Czech words for leaf and fall so it was simple. I also thought about making my Christmas list.
  • December = Prosinec – Robert Prosinečki (ex Croatian international footballer) standing next to a Christmas tree.

What Now? Leave a comment.

Of course, if your English vocabulary is already pretty large you could try using English words to make the associations, it really doesn’t matter whether the hook word is English or Czech as long as it is just that, a hook. If this is you, have a look at this great mnemonic dictionary for some ideas on how to remember new words.

Have fun with this and leave me one example in the comments below of a mnemonic or word association you use.

Richard.

Phrasal Verbs Used

  • Let you in on – to allow someone to know or share (something secret or confidential).
  • Show off – make a deliberate or pretentious display of one’s abilities or accomplishments.
  • Found out – to get information about something because you want to know more about it, or to ​learn a fact or piece of information for the first ​time
  • Think up – to devise or contrive by thinking
  • look that one up – to search for something in a book or online

4 Websites Every Czech English Learner Needs

Are you one of those English speakers who often uses the same word to describe different situations? ‘Special’ anyone?  Do you feel your vocabulary is a little thin, lacking or non existent? Or do you just want to improve your command of the English language to appear more intelligent, thoughtful or erudite?

What’s the newest English word you’ve learnt? .. Me?  Ermm… Actually it was ‘malodorous’ meaning a bad smell but I admit I’m a bit lazy when it comes to learning new words in either my own language or in Czech. (I’m a very passive Czech learner so if there are any Czech Language teachers who would like to help me out please let me know).

OK so we all use Google translate or Seznam now and I’m sure there are some good Czech English specific translators (Slovnik Online) but how often do you remember that new word or phrase?  And what about enhancing your vocabulary, enriching and enlarging it? (By the way remember that vocabulary is not pluralised unless referring to the vocabularies of more than one language)

So here without further ado are the 4 websites that every Czech English learner needs to do just that. Some of them also have apps for your favourite toy… your phone I mean 😉

vocabulary logoVocabulary.com is a brilliant website I recently found. You can search for lists of related words by topic and even upload your own lists. There are lists of new words for all subjects and even words to specifically help you better understand certain books and films for example there is a list of words for The Hunger Games books, by chapter.

Dictionary logoDictionary.com will tell you exactly what words mean (in English of course) giving you a definition, origin and first use and helpful examples of how to use the word correctly in a sentence. You can also hear the word pronounced though I hasten to add it’s U.S. pronunciation and not always to my liking.

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icon-thesaurus-lgThesaurus.com is the sister site of Dictionary.com and is the best site I have found for synonyms (similar words) and antonyms (opposites). Perfect for relieving yourself of that ‘special’ word!

helpforenglish logo

And finally the excellent HelpForEnglish site which gives you explanations of English grammar in perfect Czech.

The first three of these sites recommend new words every day and have some very interesting and underused words, expressions and phrases.  I am looking forward to hearing my one to one students use some newly garnered words and phrases but I’d like YOU right now to leave a comment below with two words:

  1. Your favourite or most overused English word that you need to find an alternative for and…
  2. The new word you have found as an alternative to it.

Be brave.

without further ado

Without more ado means to continue without more work, ceremony, or fuss. For example, Without further ado they adjourned the meeting and went home, or And now, without more ado, here is our speaker of the dayAnd without further ado, I would like to introduce Mr. Bill Franklin! The time has come to leave, so without further ado, good evening and good-bye. This idiom has one of the few surviving uses of the noun ado, meaning “what is being done.” (Another is much ado about nothing.) [Late 1300s]
Don’t forget to leave your favourite (overused) word below and your new alternative word.

The Easy Way To Pronounce TH. (The, These, Think, Thursday)

How to Say Th, the, these, that, those, and Thursday

TheWhen I started to learn Czech (I’m still learning, albeit very slowly!) I had to learn some new letters and with them some new sounds. Č was not too difficult, neither was Š or even Ž. You know where this is going right? But when it came to Ř it was another story.

I can remember just after our first daughter Daisy was born, practising the sound over and over while she looked at me from her cot as though I was a crazy person. (She’d thank me now though as her pronunciation is perfect!) Indeed it took me many, many months to get something sounding close just from listening to you native speakers. I was fortunate enough to have my future wife and all her Czech friends to help me, though somehow I still wasn’t able to get my tongue around it. “It’s like a rolling R with a Ž at the same time“ they’d say. Rolling Rs is difficult enough for many British people, the Scottish excepted of courrrse.

So it wasn’t unthink-mdtil a visit to Prague a few months before we moved lock, stock and barrel (idiom explained at the end) to the Czech Republic that Radka’s sister showed me how it should be done. Letting me look closely at her mouth (she’s very trusting!) as she curled her tongue behind her teeth, rolled the R and blew air from her windpipe. This was the moment I finally understood and made the leap from something that sounded like a sneeze to something much more pronounced and close to what I was looking for. Now I am told I have a super sounding Ř. Test me on Křivoklát, křižíkova and řeřicha! Ok maybe not perfect but better than a Slovak’s! Sorry Ivana 😉 That said I still have trouble with pronouncing a simple rolled R when it follows a T or D for example. That makes it pretty hard for me to pronounce my own sister in law’s name Petra.So why am I telling you this?this-imageI’m telling you this because I want you to know that I understand how hard it can be to master a new sound that is not of your native tongue. I’m talking here about TH. Many of you have a problem with this sound as it doesn’t exist in Czech. Neither does our English J (as in juice) but you can easily compensate for it with a DŽ. However there is no way to make the TH sound using other Czech letters so I’m afaid you will just have to learn it.

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Here is my best explanation of how to position the various bits of your mouth in order to make a good attempt at it and below you will see a link to a video with a close up of my mouth (I apologize!).

But first are you aware that there are two TH sounds? One we call a voiced TH and the other unvoiced or voiceless. Let’s start with this unvoiced sound as in Thursday, a word which I know causes considerable discomfort and embarrassment as well as missed meetings and dates down the pan. And believe me I know what it’s like because I had to learn how to put five consonants in a row when I learnt čtvrtek. In English we like to use a vowel every now and again!

So the TH as in ThurDay of the week photographed with vintage letterpress characters.sday is produced by:

  • a) placing the tip of your tongue behind your slightly parted teeth. (If you put your finger to your teeth you should just feel your tongue between the gap.)
  • b) simply blowing air through the gap in your teeth over your tongue.

Click here to see the video.

Some explanations will tell you to stick your tongue out a bit between your teeth. While you do get an almost identical sound I think keeping your tongue back a bit makes the sound much cleaner and clearer.

At no point do you need your lips in this process. You can even hold them out of the way while you are practising to zzzz-1024x1024get the correct sound. I don’t want to hear any DZZZ or SSZZZZ o r SSS or T ok?!   

Right, now you have mastered the unvoiced sound (Thursday, think, thought) you can move onto the voiced sound as in The, This, These, Those. The instructions for this sound are exactly the same as for the unvoiced sound but with one addition. You are also going to use your vocal chords/voicebox to produce a sound. That sound is the same as when you can’t think what to say and you ERRR as we say in English. For example “I don’t know anything about Van Gogh, eerrrr, maybe he was French? Eerrrr, I really don’t know.” So follow theses instructions as follows:

  • a) place the tip of your tongue behind your slightly parted teeth.
  • b) make the eerrrrr sound and continue making it as you start to…
  • c) blow air through the gap in your teeth over your tongue.

Click here to see the video.

And there you have it. The perfect TH sound, both voiced and unvoiced. Congratulations. I can’t wait to here the improvement the next time we talk. Here are the two idioms I used explained.

Idioms:

lock, stock, and barrel

The entirety; all of something. For example, Richard moved out of the house, lock, stock, and barrel. This expression alludes to the three elements of a firearm (gun) -the lock or firing mechanism, the stock or handle, and the barrel or tube. [Early 1800s]

down the pan

Completely and irreversibly wasted, lost, or destroyed. Primarily heard in UK. In an instant, we saw all our hopes for our business go down the pan. All those years of research down the pan. I guess it’s back to the drawing board.

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How Are You Learning English?

Originally posted by Richard, Sep 23 2015 10:10AM

What Techniques Do You Use For Learning English?

Are you a textbook only person or do you like to practice conversation too? booksAre you one of those people who writes Czech words down one side of the paper then folds it over and writes the English on the other side? (just like my dad – yes he’s learning Czech!) Do you go to evening classes? Are you listening to CDs? Is watching films your favourite way to listen to English or are you more of a song person?

Learning Styles

Each person learns differently in their own way. There are many theories telling us of ‘Learning Styles’, that is that we all learn in a variety of different ways. It’s said that we are usually more dominant in one learning style than another. Here’s an example:

Neil Fleming’s VARK model suggests that there are four discernible ways in which we learn.

Visual learningGetBetterGradesNow-Dot-Com-Learning-Styles-274x300

Auditory learning

Read/write learning

Kinesthetic learning

Fleming said that Visual learners prefer to see something more than just words in order to assist their learning. Aids such as graphs, diagrams, symbols, and pictures for example). Auditory learners by listening to lectures, discussions and audio recordings, etc.). Kinesthetic (or tactile) learners like to learn with real first hand experience that is to actually BE moving, touching, and doing things. (exploring, experiments and physical activity etc.).

More Styles

In recent years this theory has been developed and according to the Institue of Learning Styles Research the list now contains seven different learning styles: Print, Visual, Haptic, Intereactive, Kinesthetic, Aural and Olfactory. You can find out more here: http://www.learningstyles.org/

It’s true also that there are scientists out there who claim that these learning styles don’t exist. However whether you believe it or not surely covering all bases and using as many different techniques as you can (to aid your learning) can only be a good thing. If nothing else it keeps you interested and enthusiastic.

Share Your Styles

So share with me your prefered ways of learning English, I’d love to know what has and hasn’t worked for you. Tell us by leaving a comment below. Sign up for my weekly English Tips email here.

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