Effective Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Techniques

Luke emphasizes that effective vocabulary learning requires understanding, context, and active usage instead of mere translation lists.

### Effective Vocabulary Learning: Strategies Beyond Word Lists
* 📚 Welcome to the talk by Luke Thompson, aimed at **enhancing vocabulary learning** through effective methods and resources.
* 📝 The goal is to help learners **understand new words**, record them in vocabulary notebooks, remember, and use them in context, creating a **continuous cycle of vocabulary acquisition**.
* 🔑 A wide range of vocabulary is crucial for advanced English proficiency, as highlighted by the Cambridge Advanced English exam criteria, where **lexical resource is a key assessment area**.
* ❌ A common mistake learners make is writing down words with direct translations, which lacks **meaningful context and important details** like grammatical roles, synonyms, and collocations.
* 🔍 To effectively learn vocabulary, one should **seek words in context** while reading or listening, reinforcing understanding and grammar through **continued exposure to language**.
* 📖 Keeping a vocabulary notebook is recommended, but it should include more than just translations—details like **definitions, parts of speech, and example sentences** are vital for **deeper understanding**.
* 🔄 Techniques such as **spaced repetition**, **active recall**, and **mnemonic devices** can significantly enhance **memory retention and retrieval** of new vocabulary.
* 🌐 Utilizing tools like online dictionaries, flashcard apps, and generative AI can support vocabulary learning, while engaging in **meaningful conversations** helps reinforce the use of **new words**.

Right, so hello, welcome to my talk, which is called "How to Really Learn Vocabulary and Not Just Stare at Word Lists." And I'm Luke Thompson from Luke's English Podcast. Right, so what's the aim of this talk? Well, uh, I want to help you to learn vocabulary more effectively and

to show you different methods and resources for learning vocabulary. Okay, um, we, what I want to help you to do is to understand how to understand new words, how to record them, and we'll be looking at making vocabulary notebooks, um, how to remember new words

and phrases, and then also how to use them because this is the cycle that you need to go through, right? You meet a new word or phrase, you have to understand it, then you have to probably make a record of it. You don't have to, you don't have

to do that step, but you certainly have to remember words and then use them. Okay, and you have to kind of keep going through this cycle. Um, so as we know, a wide range of vocabulary is vital for an advanced level of English. I think everyone knows this. Uh

just in case you're not convinced, this is a little extract from the official Cambridge Advanced English exam assessment criteria. So, when examiners are assessing, uh, Advanced English, this is the, this is the criteria that they use. So, we've got grammar, uh, discourse management, otherwise known as fluency,

pronunciation, interactive communication, your ability to interact with others, and we can see that lexical resource, which basically means the range of vocabulary that you have, um, available to you, is one of the most important ones. Right, this is one of the sort of pillars of, uh, good

English and if you if you get a good mark in your CAE exam if you genuinely have advanced English then you should be able to do this use a wide range of appropriate vocabulary so wide range meaning many different you know a wide variety of different words and phrases and

appropriate vocabulary that means using the right word for the right situation right uh and to to give and exchange views on familiar and unfamiliar topics um so expanding your vocabulary is obviously very important but how can we do it effectively this is the thing so here's a common mistake that I've seen

as a teacher many many times and I've spent many hours in the classroom looking over the shoulders of my students observing the things that they do here's a common mistake that I see so here we have a learner of English this is a this is I guess his his uh what

he's written here and he's got uh certain individual words and then just translations I guess this is Hindi I'm not sure actually um but this is a common mistake now what's wrong with this you might ask I mean first of all this is actually not bad I mean anything

is better than better than nothing right in learning English doing anything is better than nothing so this is not like the absolute worst thing you can do but still it's not quite enough in my opinion what's wrong with doing this doing doing it this way and I wonder how

many of you have done this just started writing a list of English words with translations right next to them or single English words on one side with maybe one simple definition on the other side um what's wrong with this exactly well it's just single words with direct

translations, uh, there's no meaningful context in his notes anyway, as far as we can see, so the words here are just on their own. There's no actual sentence around them, no meaning around them. Uh, there's no grammatical context, definitions, parts of speech, collocations,

pronunciations, synonyms, antonyms, formality level or other details, right? Grammatical context, we need to know how these words fit into a sentence. What kind of grammar, uh, you know, are they connected to? Are they nouns, verbs, adjectives? Uh, obviously, what do the words mean? Um, what words

typically go together with these things, right? Um, pronunciation, how do you actually say them? These are kind of multi-syllable words, so where's the word stress? Uh, synonyms, like similar words, opposite words, and other details that can help. The more connections you make to a word, the more likely you are to

understand it, remember it, and use it correctly. And so other detailed notes are very important. I'll be looking at some examples of this in a moment. There are no pneumonics to help him remember the words. I think it was Thomas you mentioned Darren Brown. He's a, a

mentalist, a sort of a, um, a kind of hypnotist, and he in one of his books has written a lot about pneumonics, but these are little memory tools, little tricks that we can use to help us remember things, and they can be very useful for

learning vocabulary, as we'll see in a moment. Direct translations like this can result in weird English because often English does not directly translate into your language, and it's not just a, a question of translating all the words individually and then just putting them together in the same way that you would

put them together in your language it doesn't work like that and also we get false friends as well which of course many of you will be aware of uh and this is especially uh easy to to to you know it happens very easily when you're just

looking at words on their own they have to be within a meaningful context so try to operate first of all try to operate only in English don't translate everything I mean it's certainly at this level if you're trying to get to an advanced level of English you need to be

operating exclusively in English and this helps you to think in English and produce a more natural form of English and you can see in the picture he's just staring at the list as far as I can tell I mean he's concentrating very hard but

he's not testing himself he's not trying to use the the new language to express ideas okay so let's carry on so how to notice and record new vocabulary this is the sort of first part how here are some things to consider so first of all you

should look for words in context while reading or listening so you're just reading a book reading whatever text you're reading and from that position that's where you find your new language this gives us a deeper richer more intuitive sense of what a word means and also how it works we can

notice how a word is used in a sentence which helps us to learn the grammar of words for example if it's followed by a gerund or an infinitive or other structures and also learn phrases not just individual words in English as you have probably discovered there are so

many different phrases and if you know individual words can have many different meanings and also it can be part of many different expressions and I don't just mean idioms but just multi-word expressions um so with continued exposure just by reading and listening a

lot the nuances and grammatical context of a word are reinforced in a sort of natural way and many of you will be aware of things like the comprehensible input hypothesis right which is the idea that reading a lot and listening a lot it just allows you to acquire language in a

natural kind of way uh I think there's probably a lot of truth to it but also it's worth taking a more considered approach I think as well um as we'll see in a second so the good news simply read a lot and listen a lot which is nice uh

but be mindful of the language you're consuming meaning sort of be aware of a lot of the things I mentioned before about the different aspects of the word um notice vocabulary as it comes up so you kind of have that little part of your brain which is kind of going ah

look there's an interesting expression oh there's that word again you know and look I see it's it's followed always followed by this verb or in this sort of structure uh consider keeping a vocabulary notebook but don't just write translations and also there are other

things you should do too and we'll look at remembering and using vocabulary as well but first let's consider how to see words and how to record them okay so let's look at an example of finding a word noticing it understanding it recording it and then remembering it and

using it okay so imagine you're reading an article about how to learn vocab right this is the article that you're reading it just happens to be about the subject of this talk so you're reading an article you've got your vocab notebook ready to record some new words

so here's a paragraph from the article that you're reading okay so I'm going to show you the paragraph here in a second all right so let's let me just read through this imagine that you're you're going to be picking up some vocab

from this so I could read the whole thing will I let's see bear in mind the importance of active engagement with the words you encounter instead of passively reading or listening actively engage with new vocabulary by using it in sentences speaking it aloud or

associating it with memorable images or experiences for example create flashcards with the word on one side and its definition usage or a related image on the other by actively engaging with the words you learn you reinforce your memory and increase the likelihood of retention

so let's now look for some vocabulary in there right and and you know bear in mind this this talk is not I'm not here to teach you specific vocab exactly but just to show you the process that that you could use so in fact the very first word let's

just let's go with that the very first word in the paragraph which is bear that's bear right so let's use this word as an example here's the word on its own now when you see this word on its own what do you think what do you think when you

just see that word on your own on its own bear do you think of this guy maybe that might be the first association you have when you see the word on its own but then the context will tell you a lot about the word so if you just take

the word away and look at the rest of it in mind the importance of active engagement with the words you encounter okay so look at look at the word itself but also look at the other words around it now let's imagine now that we're adding this word word to our

vocabulary notebook now even if you don't keep a vocab notebook this is sort of like the thought process that you can take when you encounter new words so for the word bear what should we write in our notebook now our friend from the previous slide would probably

write a translation but a translation doesn't give us the full story so this is a this is from deepl translator and I've got English bear on one side and French uh and it's come up with o probably my pronunciation isn't great I don't know but anyway here he is it's

this guy again um so it was a text about remembering vocabulary what is this guy doing here anyway so the point is that a translation isn't the right way to to go about this because a word has many more dimensions than just its translation you can see how you'd be led in the wrong

direction just by relying on translation so here are the different dimensions of a word right here are things that you can note about a word beyond just its translation so you've got the definition of course the part of speech is it a noun a verb an adjective an adverb the

word family, so what are the other related words, the related noun, verb, adjective, and so on, the pronunciation, if it's a verb, the past or past participle form, synonyms of this word or phrase, as I said before, opposites, the grammar, how it fits into a sentence

the register, is it like formal, informal, is it slang, mnemonics to help you remember it, and example sentences, which is really important, so I mean this is all the stuff I just said, da da da da da, pronunciation, synonyms, collocations, blah blah blah, okay, so of course this takes

time, of course it does, but if you look at words in more depth and detail, you will probably understand, remember, and use them more effectively, so just choose the way that works for you, obviously this is always important, you've got to try different methods and approaches and find the way

that works for you, but try to be a bit more thorough than just looking at lists, find a balance between the number of words or phrases you learn and how much research, how much you research each one, obviously you can't go into all this depth for all of them, so you might, you

know, this is obviously an important question, which words are the ones you prioritize? There are lists, actually Oxford and Longman dictionaries publish lists of 2,000 words, 3,000 words, 5,000 words, which are the sort of like base

most important words that you need to learn for a B2 level or a C1 level, I'll show you those lists in a bit, so you can use those as a sort of guide, guideline for you if you want, you don't have to research every

single detail of every single word, but the more you do, the better ultimately, right? So let me show you an example, then uh, let's use the word "bear" as an example again here. It is so not him again. No, because of course looking at the context of the word shows us that we're not

talking about an animal, because it's "bear in mind" the importance of engagement. So sorry, sorry "bear", that's not you this time. Um, guessing the meaning of words is a very important skill which you should practice always. Guess what new words mean when you find

them. This is like your first, the first thing you should do, um, and it's an important exam skill as well, guessing the meaning of words. So I mean, we've done this already, we know what the word is now, but still, this is how you can do

it. You look at the phrase and take the word out and just imagine what else could go in that space that would make the sentence meaningful. So you might have like "keep in mind" the importance or "hold in mind", maybe "remember" could be the whole thing. "Bear in mind" could also mean "remember",

and I think you would understand that from the context. So now we need to consider what to write in our notebook. Here we go. So remember this list, this is the list I showed you before, all the stuff around this pie chart, this is all the stuff you

can write in your, in your notebook right now. How do you find out all of this stuff that's, that can be tricky, right? How do you find all this information? Well, if only there was a free tool that could tell you everything you need to know about new words. What

Could that possibly be everybody? Well, it's dictionaries, of course. All right, now dictionaries are cool. You might look at this picture of dictionaries and think, 'Oh God, how boring.' But no, dictionaries are cool. Look, just in case you weren't convinced, look here's a - here are a few pictures to - to

show you how cool dictionaries are. Look at these very cool people holding dictionaries. Look at him, he's wearing aviator sunglasses and he's got his cut turned up. These are - this is what I put into Microsoft Copilot when I was preparing this. I

wrote, 'Can you create an image of a very cool guy holding a dictionary?' and it came up with him. And then it came up with him and I said, 'All right, can you make it an image of a very cool girl holding a dictionary?' and it showed us her. So these are this

obviously very cool people, even though Microsoft Copilot can't spell the word 'dictionary' apparently, which is not a good sign. Anyway, so um this is the Longman Dictionary, which I talked about with CLA in my recent conversation, which you might have heard. Other dictionaries are available um

Longman Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English online, LDOCE online, it's a really good dictionary. Other ones I use include the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries and Collins Dictionaries.com. Uh, but here is the entry for the word 'bear.' Okay, this is what you get. This is

actually just the first part of the page. I could scroll down, uh, but this is the entry and we can see all of the things I mentioned are all written here and more. Um, in fact, it's probably worth looking at the dictionary entry in more detail if we

actually have a look at the website page for that on the dictionary uh website uh we can see you know the word family across the top okay we have the noun a bearer someone who carries something um the adjective bearable or unbearable the verb to bear the adverb bearably or

unbearably which you might have heard it was for example Luke's presentation was unbearably what hopefully not unbearably boring but unbearably exciting I just couldn't contain myself um then a number of different definitions right we've got the first

one up there which is bear as a verb and we scroll down and down and down and there's more and more more and more details of just bear as a verb all the way down here and we keep going and then finally we get to the bear as a noun so

we have to scroll all the way down before we get to this guy so in fact we see I should also point out I mentioned those word lists before right of the most common or frequently occurring words here you can see that the S2 symbol this means that this word as a

verb is in the 2,000 most commonly spoken words in English so it's definitely one that you should learn if we go down to the noun the bear the animal that's not in the list it's not one of the most you know one of the 200

most common words used I mean unless maybe unless you live in Canada or something and you know you're constantly talking about bears all the time but um it's much more commonly used as a verb and we have the phonetic transcription be in American English bear right you can hear

It's that British English, American English, uh, past tense bore, past participle born. Um, that's born, not I was born, but b-o-r-n-e, so you know different definitions to deal with something, and you can notice also it's basically to deal with something painful or difficult

or upsetting, like stand, and you should also notice that the examples are really useful, that often it's negative, it's something negative, and as we see it's often can't bear or couldn't bear, right? Um, it was hard overcrowding makes prison life even harder to bear.

Make the water as hot as you can bear, the humiliation was more than he could bear. Okay, you can hear those sentences and it's spoken in connected speech, so can't bear something, to bear something in mind, for example, I can't bear the uh heat in the summer in in

Paris, where I live in in July and August, it gets unbearably hot and I just can't bear it, uh because I'm English, I'm not used to that kind of hot weather. Uh, to bear something in mind meaning sort of that's the example we had, right? Um,

bear the burden and bear the cost. I could go on. I mean, I'm not just going to explain all the uses of the word bear there as a verb, but it just goes to show all of the things I mentioned are all included here. Okay, let me go back to

my um, let me go back to my talk if I can actually find it, where where is that up here? Okay, um, so moving on, so this is an example of something you could write in your vocab notebook, the word, pronunciations, uh, the past form and

stuff um definitions just three I've just gone with the first three which would be the the the most commonly occurring ones uh bravely accept a difficult situation some examples she couldn't bear the pain life in prison is hard to bear I can't bear the pressure I

can't bear the stress I can't bear the heat it's more than I can bear I can't stand it which is the synonym right grin and bear it just grin and bear it like a difficult thing we say just grin and bear it bear in mind which is the one we

saw in the article meaning keep in mind consider and so on formal bear the costs burden or responsibility of something we've got the bear up here as well here he is but this is the noun the animal and pronunciation is worth noting a bear and a beer right this is a beer that you

drink and that's a bear that uh you try to escape from if it's chasing you right um so instead of making lists try to write pages for your for your new vocabulary the more detail that you write the more likely you are to remember quality rather than quantity it

might be better to do this digitally with Google Docs for example um so there you go now that's noticing understanding recording words the next challenge is how to remember words and then how to use them again in the future right so let's go back to this

guy so he's trying to remember words he wrote down earlier as we saw but what is he actually doing as far as I can tell it looks like he's just reading the lists expecting the words to just magically drift from the page into

his brain and stay there, that seems to be what he's doing. Um, when trying to remember words, it's important to do these things. Um, let's have a look, here's another list for you. So we've got remember words in meaningful context, as I said before.

Don't just look at words in isolation, include your words in meaningful sentences. Um, use spaced repetition to review language at increasing intervals, so this would be, I'm going to show you what this is like in a second, but um, this involves flash card apps for example, Anki or

Quizlet, that you can use on your phone or your computer. Right, here's an example of one. So I was H, there's the, there's the target word. I was something when I got into the college, I wanted it means extremely happy, the word is ecstatic. Right, so this is just an

example of a flashcard, and we can see here, this is the clue or question that you created. So you can create your own flashcard decks um, and you put a clue in to help you remember. It could include a definition, certainly an example sentence is really useful. You've got the answer.

You'd actually write the answer in once you remember what it is, and then here is a little thing you can, you can click one of these buttons to show how easy it was to remember. So if it was easy to remember, uh, the flash card app will show

you this card again in four days time. If it was, you know, if, if you found it pretty good, then it'll show you again in about 10 minutes. If you keep using it, and if you need to remember it again, if you didn't get it right, click this one.

it'll show you that card again in a minute, right? So the ones you remember, it then gives you a lot more time before it shows them to you again and reminds you what they are again. This is spaced repetition, right? Uh, words you get right,

it then, you know, takes a lot more time before it actually shows them to you again. And this is a tried and tested system that many people use to remember things. So yeah, you can create your own decks of cards. I think I don't need to

go through all that. So that's the the the flashcards. You you must try to practice active recall. This is one of the most important things, actually. Active recall meaning um retrieve new words from memory and test yourself. So force yourself to produce the words. Use prompts or clues to help. So to keep it

simple, this just means cover up the word that you're trying to remember and force yourself to actually produce that word and then check that you've got it right instead of just looking at it, staring at it expecting it to leave an imprint on your brain. You actually cover up the

word or part of the word and make yourself produce that word again. Um, for example, you can copy and paste example sentences into a Google Document and then replace the target words with gaps, including including the first letter. Can help. I haven't done that here, but it

would be like this. Sorry, I'm just having a few technical issues with my computer. Just with me for a moment. Now, of course, the word is 'be' because that's the word that we're using as an example, but that's what you would do. You'd look

at that and you'd say it out loud and try to remember what the word is and say that word out loud I think we should keep in mind that we don't have a lot of time to complete this project there it is again bear in mind if you can't remember you

check you just check the complete sentences and then go back to your your list again and you keep going going keep going back through your list keep going back through your your example sentences until you can just come out with them without thinking about it it too much

the flashcard app to be honest helps this process it makes it a bit more automatic so that's active recall uh pneumonic tricks can help I mentioned this before these like little memory tricks to help you remember things um create word associations so connect new

words to things you already know this is a really important principle in memorizing things that you attach new things to things that are already in your brain so I think this is how I remember the words for shoe sock and slipper in French right I live in France

and you know I have to try and learn French and the problem is that the words for sock slipper and shoe are very similar to me so sh so French people you can tell me if my pronunciation isn't right but anyway sh this is this is

shoes Chet is socks and CH is slippers right pretty similar and I often get them mixed up but I've come up with my own little pneumonic to remember what they are so sh you feel sure when they're on you see sh you feel sure it's

kind of it's not perfect but it works it helps me me remember that you feel sure when you got your shoes on so sure that actually works for me it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to work Chet is a diminutive form so

they're the smallest right they're the smallest of the three and shoe is basically not the other two if it's not shoe or a Chet then it's slippers um and also shoe they slip on slippers slip on your feet and that's the on part so

that's my trick for remembering shoe and and it actually works it you know pneumonics don't have to be perfect they can be a bit kind of stupid you know a bit ridiculous a bit silly uh in fact whatever works for you personally just

just go for it um absurd and Vivid absurd and Vivid images help you remember so for this you can think outside the box and imagine specific image images which resonate with you so if we go back to uh the the phrase bear or bear with me in this case

898. How to Learn Vocabulary 📚(and not just stare at word lists) Workshop

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Luke's English Podcast

Effective Vocabulary Learning: Introduction and Goals

Introduction to the talk "How to Really Learn Vocabulary and Not Just Stare at Word Lists" by Luke Thompson.

The talk aims to improve vocabulary learning effectiveness through various methods and resources.

Focus on understanding, recording, remembering, and using new words and phrases.

Emphasizes the importance of a wide vocabulary range for advanced English.

Cambridge Advanced English exam criteria highlighting lexical resource as a key element.

Analysis of a common mistake: simply listing words with translations without context.

Critique of single-word lists with direct translations, lacking context and details.

Highlighting the need for grammatical context, definitions, pronunciation, collocations, synonyms, and antonyms.

Importance of mnemonics and avoiding direct translations due to language differences.

Recommendation to operate exclusively in English to improve thinking and natural language production.

Importance of finding words in context while reading or listening.

Learning phrases, not just individual words, and understanding their nuances.

Mention of the comprehensible input hypothesis and a considered approach to vocabulary learning.

Suggestion to keep a vocabulary notebook but avoid only writing translations.

Example of finding, noticing, understanding, recording, and remembering a word ('bear').

Discussion of various dimensions of a word beyond translation: definition, part of speech, word family, pronunciation, grammar, register, mnemonics, and example sentences.

Advice to find a balance between the number of words learned and the depth of research for each.

Mention of word lists from Oxford and Longman dictionaries for different English levels.

Importance of guessing word meanings from context.

Recap of the list of details to include in a vocabulary notebook.

Recommendation to use dictionaries as a valuable resource for detailed word information.

Critique of passively reading lists without active engagement.

Importance of remembering words in context and using spaced repetition.

Recommendation to use flashcard apps like Anki or Quizlet.

Importance of active recall and self-testing.

Use of pneumonic tricks, word associations, and vivid images to aid memory.

Summary of key points: read and listen actively, notice and study words in context, record details, practice active recall, use vivid examples, speak out loud, and stay positive.

Mention of resources: online dictionaries (Longman, Oxford, Collins), flashcard apps (Anki, Quizlet), generative AI (ChatGPT, Copilot), and uWish (for authentic spoken examples).

Reference to word lists (Longman Communication 3000, Oxford 3000/5000).

Recommendation to listen to Luke's English Podcast Premium.