0:00 I want you to think about the last time you were having a conversation in a foreign language and you knew exactly what you wanted to say, but you just couldn't find the words to say it. You're standing there, your brain frantically searching through all the vocabulary you've learned, but you just can't put your finger on the word you need, or worse, something completely wrong comes out. We've all been there, right? But here's the thing. The problem isn't that you don't know enough words. You probably know hundreds of thousands of words in your new language. The problem is that you're learning vocabulary in a way that makes it impossible to actually use it when you need it most. Most people think vocabulary is about memorization. Get more words in your head, get better at
0:45 the language. But that's like stuffing books into a library without any organization system. They're there, but good luck finding anything when you need it. So, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you five ways to learn vocabulary that actually helps you in the moment when you're trying to communicate. Not just recognize words, but recall them instantly under pressure. And by the end of this video, you'll never think about vocabulary learning quite the same way again. So, here's the thing. We all know that we need vocabulary when you're in a conversation in a foreign language and you know exactly what you want to say. Why is it so hard to find the words you need? You know what it's like? You're standing there, your your brain's frantically searching through all those flashcard words you memorized, but for some reason, you just can't put two and
1:32 two together. You can't get that word, can't pluck it out of the ether, or worse, something completely wrong comes out. Something happened to me recently on a trip to Poland. I went to Pausnan for a few days speaking exactly zero Polish and the moment I walked into shops and couldn't even respond to their basic greetings, I could see it immediately in their eyes. Oh, another tourist who couldn't be bothered. Here's what really got me thinking. What if I had learned just hello and thank you. Just those two words might have completely changed how people saw me. Not as someone who couldn't be bothered like yet another tourist, but as someone who had at least made an effort. Whether you're trying to order food without pointing at pictures like a caveman or or you want to actually understand what your favorite
2:18 Netflix show is saying without subtitles or you just want to stop feeling like an idiot when you can't remember how to say I'm running late. We've all been there. The problem isn't that we don't know words. The problem is that we are memorizing words instead of learning how to actually use them when we need them. All those hours spent drilling flash cards, none of it helps you in the moment when you're actually trying to communicate unless something else also happens. So, let me show you what actually works. So, the first method is all about highquality input. Now, what do I mean by highquality input? We don't actually need to obsess over which words we should learn. We don't need to choose the words that we want to learn. You know that feeling when you're staring at a list of words thinking, "Okay, here are 100 words I need to memorize." Yeah, we can skip all of that torture.
3:03 Instead, what we can do is just spend time with input. And input means listening to stuff, reading stuff, watching movies. What happens then is just by following along with the plot or the story, we create the conditions for our brains to pick up vocabulary naturally. Now, this isn't like memorizing from a list, but rather just exposing our brains to vocabulary so that over time, with lots of repetition, it has a chance to actually stick. And what's more, these words are going to be easier to learn and better remembered because of context. Now, here's the key, and I learned this the hard way. You need to expose yourself to the right kind of input. Now, the best type is where you understand at least 80% of what's going on, what's already there, maybe even more, like 90 95%. This is important. You want to choose material
3:49 where you already understand most of what you see or hear. Here's why. If you already understand nine out of every 10 words, it's going to be very, very easy for you to guess that 10th word, that makes learning from context a lot easier. Where people get into trouble is that they listen to stuff that's way too hard for them and then every single word becomes a mystery because there's not enough context. There's not enough support to guess from and that's why they can't learn from input and they start to think, "Oh, reading is too hard. Listening is too hard." So, here's what I want you to try. Instead of just turning on the first thing you can find on Netflix, instead spend a little bit of time reviewing different material and find something that is at your level, something where you can already understand most of it. My short stories were written for this exact purpose.
4:34 They're interesting stories, but they're written at an easier level. So even if you're not a very fluent reader or an advanced speaker yet, you can still understand a lot of it. spend a bit of time finding material that's in that comfortable zone and then try this reading or listening activity again and see how you get on. And actually, if you're wondering what the best TV shows there are to watch, I've put together a list of bingeable content organized by language. It's completely free and honestly would have saved me a lot of trial and error and annoying hours wasted on Netflix. There's a link in the description there. Now, stick with me here because this next part is where most people screw up. The next part about learning vocabulary is to actually use it to talk. And here's why this is so important. A lot of people develop what's called a passive vocabulary.
5:21 These are words you can recognize when you hear them, but you can never actually recall them when you need to use them in conversation. You know that feeling when you have a word on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't get it out. The problem is, you can't be a fluent speaker if you can't instantly retrieve the words that you need. It's like having a library full of unorganized books. They're there, but you have no way of knowing where anything is when you need it. The way to get words off the tip of your tongue and into actual conversation is to practice that recall. It's to practice being in a conversation, digging up the word when you need it, and using it. It's like speeding up the pathways in your brain. The more we talk with people, the more we have to recall vocabulary under pressure, and that's what eventually leads to fluency. But here's what often
6:07 happens, and I bet you've experienced this. You end up falling back on the same safe words that you always use, and it creates this vocabulary prison where you always describe everything with the same basic words. You know that feeling? Have you ever tried to explain something and ended up saying the the the the equivalent of like uh it's like, you know, the thing that Yeah, that's the vocabulary prison right there. So, here's what I want you to try. I want you to be very aware of words that you've made an effort to learn recently and then take them consciously into your next conversation. You can try to just remember them. Some people actually even like to write them down and make an active effort to use these words that you have prepared. Once you've used a word successfully in conversation, it really gets implanted in your brain on a deeper level. You want to know something embarrassing? I sometimes practice new
6:53 words with my cat first. See, they don't judge. They don't correct my grammar. And uh honestly, it works better than most language apps. Now, we've talked about finding the right content and using it. But here's where it gets interesting. What words should you actually focus on? This next method creates a lovely virtuous circle, and it changed everything for me. You're reading and listening to stuff you're interested in. You're naturally going to do more of it. It's funny how we always find time for the stuff we actually enjoy, isn't it? But here's the key. If you're interested in something, you probably engage with that topic in multiple different ways. You read about it, you watch videos, you talk about it. For example, I really enjoy uh travel. So, whenever I'm learning a new language, I often learn words related to travel first. And this is this could be
7:39 when I'm actually in the country and I want to ask people for things, whether that's going to directions, recommendations for for for food, uh cultural events, and things like that because I know that I'm going to use that. It's also a great way to and a great excuse to actually talk to people. But whatever you're interested in, whether it's coding, trees, or sports, make an extra effort to learn vocabulary around those topics becomes more useful because you're actually going to use it. And that creates this virtuous circle where you keep engaging with the language through things that you care about. Now, I used to think I needed to learn so-called useful vocabulary first. You know, the numbers from 1 to 10, the the colors, those those three phrases that show up in every textbook. Where's the dormatory? Where are you from? I'm British. Stuff that the publishers decide are important. But then I decided
8:25 to learn Japanese. And it was for my own reasons. I was fascinated by Japanese culture. I lived there. I was interested in uh the way that they approach work and relationships and the food. So instead of learning textbook phrases, I dove into content about things that actually intrigued me and excited me. I read articles about Japanese business culture, for example, watch cooking shows, listen to podcasts about, you know, people talking about daily life in Tokyo. And because I enjoyed it, I did more of it. I kept going in that little vocabulary island. And suddenly my vocabulary grew really, really quickly. I made a lot of connections and now it's a huge part of my life. All because I followed my genu genuine interests instead of some random curriculum. You know what I'm realizing as I'm talking there's this pattern in everything I'm sharing. We we keep trying to memorize vocabulary like we're cramming for a
9:11 test. What we actually need to do is develop a relationship with new words because a strong vocabulary is like a great friendship. The words you spend time with, they stick around. The ones you just meet once at a party, they're kind of gone. So, now that we know how to make friends with words, let me tell you how I learned to keep those friendships strong because I used to be terrible at this part. Here's something crucial about vocabulary. Once you think you've learned a new word, it is very dangerous to assume that you will know it forever because there is something called the forgetting curve. It's a curve goes out into time where guess what? We forget stuff. And this is why I want to introduce you to something called vocabulary islands. This is a concept I first heard from my friend Richard. Now, here's the concept.
9:56 Instead of learning random vocabulary from different topics each time, you intentionally spend time reading and listening to stuff around specific topics. So you might spend a few weeks deliberately reading about food and drink. That's the vocabulary island. When you do this intentionally, what happens is the same vocabulary crops up over and over again. And that repetition makes you learn faster. Here's the key. You need to go back to that material. You need to go back and read that article again. watch that TV show again. Whatever's been interesting and useful for you, you go back and you revisit it. That repetition leads to mastery. And it could be that that one extra hour spent with something you've already seen is the thing that solidifies it forever in your memory. This is exactly what happened when I was
10:41 learning Cantonese. I got completely hooked on this TV drama called Triumph in the Skies. There's two seasons, like a bazillion episodes in each one, but I watched the same episode over and over and over. same characters, same conversations, same romantic drama that I was probably too invested in. But something magical happened. The language started to stick naturally. The words that they kept using, I I knew them. Each time I went back, I caught more words, more phrases, more natural rhythm. My brain did the same thing with language that it does when you rewatch your favorite shows and notice things that you missed the first time. That bingeable TV shows list that I mentioned earlier, those are exactly the types of shows that work for this method. engaging enough that you'll actually want to rewatch them and they create these vocabulary islands around specific topics. Whether you use Netflix, library
11:27 books, uh story learning, language courses, or whatever, the principle is the same. Stories just happen to be really good at sneaking vocabulary practice past your brain's defenses. And there's a link below if you want to check out this PDF. But honestly, you can start doing this with anything that you're already reading or watching. Now, my next method is to focus on phrases, not individual words. And this is really enormous. We often think of vocabulary as individual words. But actually language is always used in chunks of words together. Take the simple phrase how are you? Now it might sound like three words stuck together and technically it is but we always think of it as one single phrase. None of us ask how are you thinking okay what grammar goes with what. We just say the phrase right? And most of language works
12:12 exactly like that. So instead of trying to learn words by themselves, put entire phrases into your notebooks or into your flashcards. And here's why this works so much better. The more words you're learning at the same time in a phrase, the more kind of anchor points you have to hold on to and remember. It actually becomes a memory aid to have more vocabulary in the same place, not not less. Whenever I'm learning a language, whenever I come across a word that I want to remember, I always write down the full sentence that that word comes in. It doesn't take much more work because I already know most of the words in that sentence, but it's much more memorable because I have all these different anchor points for this new word to hold on to. So, if you're watching a movie and you hear a word that you like, don't just write down that word, write down the whole phrase because it's the context that gives it
12:58 meaning, makes it stick. For the longest time, I was building sentences word by word like some kind of language robot and it sounded exactly as natural as you would expect. But when you learn phrases, you sound like you actually know how the language works, not like you're translating from English in your head. And if you would like a sneaky bonus trick, here is one that I discovered entirely by accident. A few years ago, I started reviewing new vocabulary right before I went to bed. This was not because I'm some super disciplined person, but it's because I was procrastinating going to sleep. It turns out your brain actually files away vocabulary for safekeeping while you sleep. So just spend 2 minutes before bed looking at phrases you you learned that day with no pressure, no stress, just like saying good night, your vocabulary friends, and you will find
13:43 that it stayed in your memory a lot better than you might think. Some days you will forget words you were sure that you knew. Some days you'll feel like giving up altogether. I still have those days all the time. But instead of feeling like I was failing at some system, I started feeling like I was actually learning a language, building a real relationship with it instead of just cramming for a test. And this makes all the messy, imperfect, embarrassing moments worth it. So there you have it. Find content that challenges you just enough. Talk about what interests you. Review, the content you actually want to revisit, and focus on how words actually work together in real life. Remember this, the goal is not to never forget words. It's to build a relationship with the language that's strong enough to handle forgetting and relearning and
14:28 making mistakes. Now that you've got a solid method for learning vocabulary, check out this video where I break down the very bestkept secret about studying grammar. Spoiler alert, you don't actually have to study anything. Go and check it out right now.
