Luca: Hey guys, and uh welcome to Berlin. I'm here with a "language hero", or "sprachheld", Gabriel. Gabriel...
Gabriel: Hi, I'm Gabriel. I'm the owner of the website sprachheld.de, which teaches about language for German speakers.
Luca: So, I met Gabriel, actually we met on the internet two years ago. We, uh, I gave him an interview and then we met also in Bratislava, and we became friends, and here we are, and we thought we'd brainstorm about a way we can help you, language learners, in some, in some aspects of language learning, and we thought that vocabulary aquisition is a great idea.
Luca: So we're going to talk about the five most common and biggest mistakes that people normally make when it comes to learning vocabulary. If you're wondering why you can't commit these damn words to your long term memory, you're making one or all of the mistakes we're going to talk about. So, without further ado, let's get started...I will talk about one mistake and he will talk about another mistake. And here we go.
Luca: So the first biggest mistake that people make is normally to try to wrote memorize words. Words are part of a system, part of a network and you always have to make sure that you learn them in context and you make them part of a bigger system. If you try to wrote memorize words, it's not gonna...it's not gonna happen, y'know. And like, making lists and try(ing) to cram words one by one and you have to find other strategies in order to commit words to your long term memory, and once again, make them part of a network, because that is the real key to acquiring vocabulary in any language.
Gabriel: The second biggest mistake is to learn words that you don't need. You should only learn words that you can actually apply, that you actually use, that you need. If you learn words that you don't need...and that's really common in school and textbooks where there's sometimes situations, dialogues, whatever that nobody ever encounters like that in real life. Then, you learn words that you don't need and there is(are) a few problems with that. The first one is, it's harder to memorize a word that you don't actually care about, that you don't actually need. And, another problem with it is that, once you learn it, what's going to happen with it? You are never going to use it because you don't need it, and then you'll forget it just as quickly. So, learning words that you don't really need and can't apply is the biggest mistake number two. Luca?
Luca: Very well said. Mistake number three is to learn words out of context. It's really important, once again, which relates to mistake number one, is to make sure that you always learn words in context, be it...forget about lists or, if you want to make
lists, just create lists out of texts that you read or texts that, you know, conversations that you hear. It always have(has) to be something in context. You learn words in sentences. Sentences are parts of a longer text so make sure that you learn words always out of some situation, out of a text, out of a conversation because that is really key and that is also how, actually, kids learn to speak languages at a native-like level.
Gabriel: The fourth biggest mistake and we already touched upon that in the last tip and the last mistake and in mistake number two is to not apply words. So, if you learn words, maybe even out of context or in context, you actually need to apply them. Which means you need to either write them in the text in a sen... in a sentence or you need to speak and use it in a sentence and only if you do that you can actually memorize them. If you don't do that, you learn them and you might be good at it if people ask you what the word means or you might remember it in a vocabulary test, but when you actually need to use them you won't remember them because you never applied them in a real-life context.
Luca: Okay, great, fantastic. Last big, biggest mistake is... The Latins used to say "Verba volant sed scripta manent" which means that, "Said words..." or "Spoken words fly away like birds, while written words stay" and that is the reason why you should always make sure that you jot down words. That is really easily done because, with the current technology, we can always, you know, jot down words on your notebook, on your computer, on your phone, but use paper and technology, so that you can always, always make sure that you write words down. When you hear a conversation, when you're watching a movie, when you're reading text, make sure that you do that because, by doing that, you're indirectly and directly telling your brain these pieces of information that I'm learning are really important. Most people are kind of "Okay, well I learn...I hear words, I see words, and I will learn them." It doesn't work that way. You have to put a little bit more attention and effort into it. So, to wrap it all up, these are the five mistakes that people normally make, and there are other mistakes, but these are the biggest mistakes, and if you start (changing them?), there are strategies to overcome these. It's not the end of the world. These are just common mistakes that people make, and if you want to know more, you can click in the description box where you will find a wealth of information of how to learn words more effectively, more in practice, more naturally and you're going to have a lot of fun in the process. So, thanks Gabrielle for this and we're going to make more videos here and so stay tuned and we're going to see you in the next episodes. Bye Bye. Hugs from Berlin. Ciao.
