The Unintuitive Secret to Remembering Words - Don't Try!

February 26, 2014

If you’re stuck looking for the right word, does it drive you crazy? Do you pound your head on the table trying to remember it? Do you swear you’ve learnt this before? If only your brain would work! Just think dammit! Think!

There are two problems with this:

It’s exhausting
It doesn’t work!

Learning a language is a long game, you need to learn thousands of words, so can you really afford to struggle over each one? To expend all that mental energy? Of course not! And the great news is that you don’t need to. Don’t stress, move on, and after seeing it a few times, on different occasions, and ideally in different contexts, it will stick.

I’m not saying you can’t pause a second or two to see if the word comes to you, but don’t struggle or beat yourself up, it’s not worth it.

You’ve surely had the experience of having a word on the tip of your tongue. No matter what you do, it just won’t come. You leave it, and 5 minutes later, your mind wanders and the word comes to you, completely effortlessly.

I wrote this after seeing a number of people, typically beginners, approaching the flashcards in Readlang with the wrong attitude, and beating themselves up for not knowing an answer. The best way is to stay relaxed and not worry when you get a card “wrong”, remember it’s a learning aid, not a test. It’s completely fine and expected to forget things a lot. The only truly “wrong” behaviour is not practising on a daily basis!

How to apply this in different situations:

If you don’t know a word…

…while talking

Find another way to say what you want to, no matter how convoluted it is.
Simplify what you want to say.
Change topics.
Only say the word in your native language as an absolute last resort! (The risk with switching to your native language even for a second is that your partner will then switch to that language too, killing your practice!)

…while practising with flashcards

Read the context around the word and the word may come to you (I’m assuming it’s a cloze flashcard, remember it’s always better to learn words in context).
Just check the answer, and speak the whole phrase out loud.
(Optional) Some people like to create little memory association tricks involving puns, images, etc. Personally, I find this unnecessary, but if it helps you, go ahead.

And the main thing to remember - don’t try!