How do you learn new words?

For many learners, a lack of vocabulary is a big barrier to fluent communciation in English. Remembering new words, and calling them to mind when you need them, is hard to do.

But learning new words is not just a matter of grinding flashcards or buying vocabulary books. 

If you want to be good at learning new words, then you should understand how your vocabulary works and how you learn new words.

Vocabulary & your vocabulary

Let's first look at what the term "vocabulary" means. To native speakers, "vocabulary" can mean several different things depending on context:

1. All the words used in a language, e.g. "New words are constantly being added to the vocabulary of English."
2. The words used in a subject or activity, e.g. "the vocabulary of law".
3. All the words known by a person, e.g. "He has a huge vocbaulary."
4. A list of difficult or new words with their meanings, e.g. "There will be a vocabulary test next week."

We are most concerned with 3, which is your vocabulary in English. This is a subset of words that you know out of all the words in the language. The English dictionary you have in your head is also called your mental lexicon.

However, your vocabulary is not remembered in your head in an alphabetical list with definitions as in a dictionary. It is stored as a semantic network. Semantic networks are a web of ideas and relationships that help you understand and remember things—in this case, words. 

Below is an example that shows this idea. We can see that a whale is a mammal that lives in water.

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When you think of a thing, a whole network of relationships "lights up" in your brain. This means that the more relationships and connections you can make between a new thing and things you already know, the more likely you are to remember that new thing.

You can test this on yourself by thinking of an apple. You won't be thinking "apple" = 「りんご」. You will think of all the things you know about apples at once, which might be a list like this:

• fruit;
• red;
• eat;
• healthy; and
• 🍎

This means that to truly know a word, you need to know much more than just what it means in your native language. As well, you should know that there are different levels of knowing and understanding. 

Active & passive vocabulary

In both your native language and the language you are learning, there are two levels to the words you 'know':

• Passive (receptive) vocabulary: words you understand when you read or hear them.
• Active (productive) vocabulary: words you can use (correctly and without effort) when you speak and write.

In both your native language and languages you learn, your passive vocabulary is much bigger (often 2x or more) than your active vocabulary. This is normal and natural.

Words in your passive vocabulary have few, weak links to other ideas (they are "weakly encoded"). You might understand the translation when you see the word, but you can' t use that word in a sentence yet.

Words move from your passive vocabulary to your active vocabulary. To do this, you need to add more links and ideas. If you are writing a word, you need to know how to spell it. If you are speaking, then you need the knowledge of the pronunciation and the muscle memory and motor skills to say it.

As words move from passive to active, they become more automatic.

The vocabulary pipeline

Words go through 4 clear stages as you learn them.

How words move through these stages is up to you and your context. But it isi important to realise that learning words 'naturally' in your native language is not the same as acquiring words in the language you are learning. 

We learn most of the words we know in our first language through massive volume. We also learn things in different ways and in different orders in our first language. For example, you often learn the idea and the label at the same time (think about the kinds of vocabulary you learn at high school, for example, in science class).

In order to learn a word without studying it (as you might a word in your first language), studies suggest you need to see or hear that word up to 50 times. This is how you might learn a word by accident in your native language. 

As an adult learner acquiring words in a new language, research suggests that you need to see and/or hear a word up to 20 times to recognise it. However, for a word to enter your active vocabulary, you might need to see or hear it more than 50 times. This is because using a word requires much more information (spelling, collocations, pronuciation, grammar etc).

How to learn new words

For most of us, when we learn a new word in our second language, we already know and understand the idea. We just need to learn a new label. For example, you know what a "bridge" is. You just need to learn that word in English. Usually, we start by translating that word into our first language ("bridge" = 「橋」). 

Translation is slow and often using our first language to understand words in a foreign language can make things much harder ("L1 interference").

Recent research shows there are much better ways to learn new words. If you take an input-only approach, then the required time to learn new things increases very, very fast.  One study (Zahar et al., 2001) showed that if you naturally meet a word by hearing or reading it 8 times, your chance of remembering it was only 25%! 

If you are intentional and use good, personal strategies, you will learn more words faster. And you will be able to use those words to express yourself. This is the key to efficient learning. You need to be deliberate. 

Make an effort

How well and quickly you learn a new word depends on how much effort you make.

The critical thing to move words from your passive to active vocabulary is retrieval practice. You have to practice pulling the word out when you need to write or speak. The struggle to find the right word fast enough is where the best learning happens. That means that output of new words is the most powerful and effective way for new words to enter your active vocabulary. It means that anything (apps, teachers, books) that makes it "easy" is bad for you.

That's because learning is work. Lean into it, and you will learn faster. The effort is what strenthens neural pathways; just like physcial exercise—no pain, no gain! So, get rid of the apps and get a vocabulary notebook. Write new words and sentences by hand. With a pen. Like you are living in the 1900s!

The psychology literature calls this "desirable difficulty". If something is too easy (e.g. Duolingo or similar apps; reading vocabulary lists), then your brain decides it is not important and the informaiton is not saved. However, by making an effort, your brain realises that it's hard and saves the information for next time. The effort you make is the signal for your brain to remember. And every time you do that, it gets just a little easier. If it hurts, keep doing it till it stops hurting!

Your secret weapon(s)—sentence mining & spaced repetition (SRS)

In order to effectively learn words, you need to know about sentence mining and spaced repetition. 

Briefly, sentence mining is a process of discovering new words in context. Spaced repetition (SRS) is how you better remember these new words by reviewing them after a day, then three days, then a week and then a month, instead of reviewing the same word 50 times in one afternoon.

Putting these two ideas together gives you a powerful engine for enriching your vocabulary. The key is to develop a strategy and workflow that works for you. Nevertheless, it should make use of the following 4-stage process:

1. Discovery: You need to find new words to learn;
2. Capture: You need to save those words;
3. Effort: You need to do some work with those words; &
4. Recall: You have to push yourself to remember and use those new words.

The critical first step here is consuming content in your target language. If you are not already watching shows or reading in your target language, then start today. Create an immersive language environment at home. That way, you will be sure to grow your vocabulary every day. 

PRO TIP: When sentence mining, follow the 1T (One Target) Rule. Only mine a sentence if you understand everything EXCEPT 1 thing (a word or grammar point). If a sentence has a difficult grammar point and five new words, it's too much and you won't remember it. 

 The exact details about how you do sentence mining is up to you, but here is an example of how I learn new words in Japanese.

1. Discovery: First of all, you need to find new words that are worth learning. That means you need to be consuming content. If you are watching shows or reading books and articles, then you will encounter new words all the time. I want anime in Japanese (currently Vinland Saga & Demon Slayer) every day. That's because I like the stories and that enjoyment motivates me to learn and engage with Japanese. The topic of the content doesn't matter. There is gold in anything you watch, listen to or read.
2. Capture: I have been learning Japanese since 1990. When I moved to Japan in 2004, I started recording every new word I met in notebooks, which I still have today (see the picture below).
3. Effort: My process has always been the same. Write down the word I have learned, and (if I can) an example sentence. I either get that sentence from the original source, find one in the dictionary, or make one up and get a native speaker to check it for me.
4. Recall: Since I am an old dude, I do this by reviewing my notebooks from time to time. I do this by testing myself, making new sentences or reading the examples out loud.

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The reason that this process works is because it takes advantage of the science and psychology we talked about above:

1. You met the new word in context. You have the "hook" from the show or the book to coneect the new word to. The side benefit of this is you learn a whole sentence, and that builds up grammar and fluency. This makes the new thing more sticky!
2. It makes use of the i+1 principle, where "i" is what you know and "+1" is the new word. This means you are not trying to pack too much into your brain at once.
3. You create a semantic network of connections naturally from the context and the examples you choose.

But now we live in the future, so technology can help with all of this!

Tools

There are lots of tools available to help you with sentence mining and spaced repetition if you don't want to use pen and paper.

• Anki—flashcards for learning whatever you need to, and a huge database of decks to learn from, but remember the best results come from you making the effort to build a deck of sentences and words that are interesting and relevant to you! It can be a bit tricky to set up and use.
• Migaku—a browser extension that creates flashcards from content (Netflix, YouTube, Disney+. Reddit) and automatically captures the context. This requires a monthly subscription.
• Language Reactor—a free tool that does much the same thing as Migaku. You can watch Netflix & YouTube with subtitles in your native language and target language side-by-side.
• FluentAI—Another browser extension that works with Netflix, YouTube and Disney+ like Migaku, but also has Amazon Prime. It's a slick app and has a built in SRS function.
• Sabi—Another version of the watch-and-learn apps like Migaku, Language Reactor & FluentAI. Sabi will create minigames and side quests based on the video you watched to help you retain new words.
• Clozemaster—fill-in-the-gap games to help you learn new words faster. It's a fun way to learn lots of new words fast. But hte sentences are already there, so it's not as personal or relevant.

Personally, I think that removing the effort from capturing and remembering words comes with a cost, and I suspect that it will be less effective, the more work the tool does for you. But that is less important than finding something that works for you and that you can stick with.

You don't need to do this with every word you see. I tend to capture new words or expressions if and if the following things are true about the word:

1. It's a word I should know—The test I use here is if I know the word in English, I should learn it in Japanese. But this depends on your goals. It might be a word you use all the time at work or in your hobby. You have to use some judgement here to decide if it is worth the effort. If I am not sure it is useful, then I will ignore it. If it is useful, I will hear it again (see point 2 below)!
2. It's a word that is familiar to me—If I have a feeling I have heard the word before, then I will write it down and make an effort to learn it. If it's come up more than once, and I have noticed it, then that is a sign to me that I've already got some memory of the word. It should be a little bit easier for me to learn it then.

Ultimately, not knowing enough words can be a real hinderance to expressing yourself naturally and fluently in your target language. By building the habit of capturing, and then making an effort to store, remember and recall those words, you will build your vocabulary over time. Just know that it is a marathon, not a sprint. And the best time to start was yesterday!