Frustrations of language learning – And how to avoid them – Episode 28

Frustrations of language learning – And how to avoid them

Podcast episode 28 – SEE ALL EPISODES

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Today I’m going to give you some very useful and practical vocabulary learning tips. We’ve got a question from Daniel, one of my newsletter subscribers.

Daniel asked me: “What do you find most frustrating about language learning, and what do you do about it? You said you’ve been learning languages for a while now, so you must have some good tips.”

See also: Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses.

I have indeed been learning languages most of my life. I first started learning English as a very young teenager. And I made every learning mistake in the book.

Frustrations of language learning: my personal experience

Over the years, I’ve perfected my language learning technique, especially the most frustrating part it, which is forgetting the vocabulary I’ve learned.

I guess I’m not the only one that finds it excruciating to see that the words I learned last week are nowhere to be found in my head.

You spend hours trying to expand your vocabulary, only to see that it shrinks when you’re not looking. It’s like someone gets into your brain and sweeps the words away.

It doesn’t matter how young or old you are, how good your memory is, or how many language your know, learning new vocabulary, and remembering it, is the biggest challenge.

So, what can you do to stop wasting your time, and getting so demotivated?

Frustrations of language learning: my technique

The technique I’ve developed over the years has taken away a lot of the frustration. This is what I do:

First, I always learn in context, preferably with everyday conversations. I always study with courses that have real-life conversations, recorded by native speakers. I listen to them over and over, until I’m familiar with all the words.

Have a look at
Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses

Second, I use vocabulary flashcards. I particularly like courses with audio or video flashcards. Those are not random flashcards, but words from the conversations in my lessons. The main purpose of the flashcards is to reinforce the words you’ve heard somewhere else in your course. If you can get hold of flashcards with audio, you’ll learn a lot faster.

The third thing I do is to find connections between words I already know, and the new words I’m learning. For example, in episode 13 of this podcast, we went through some Spanish numbers. There, we saw the similarity between those Spanish numbers and some English words. For instance, number twelve ‘doce’ and the English word ‘dozen’. Or number three ‘tres’ and the word ‘triangle’. Finding similarities like those will help you learn Spanish vocabulary a lot faster.

And finally, another thing I do to avoid forgetting the words I’ve learned, is to review my lessons and flashcards regularly. I listen to the recordings on my language courses many, many times. I repeat the drills every few days, and I go back, even to the first few lessons of my courses, very regularly.

Have a look at
Maria’s step-by-step Spanish courses

Try those ideas, and let me know if they work for you.

Frustrations of language learning: let’s recap

To recap, the four things you need to do to avoid forgetting your Spanish vocabulary is:

1. To learn in context
2. To use flashcards with audio
3. To make connections between words
4. And to review regularly

One last point. To avoid wasting your time, you must never make lists of words. Trust your Spanish course to introduce you to new vocabulary in context.

Find out more about my Spanish courses.