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Steve's Language Learning Tips, To Learn Vocabulary We Must Forget Vocabulary

To Learn Vocabulary We Must Forget Vocabulary

Forgetting ... forgetting is a good thing.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann, and today I wanna talk about vocabulary

and the importance of forgetting.

Remember, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe.

Click on the bell to get notified when there's a new video.

And if you're on a podcast service, please leave a comment.

I really do appreciate it.

So when I wrote I should...

yeah, when I wrote my book, here is of course the English version.

Here's...

I just happen to have the Chinese version nearby.

A Personal Guide to Language Learning.

The linguist, I called it.

Linguist means someone who, you know, speaks many languages.

That's the original meaning of the word linguist.

Whenever I say that, I get attacked by people who study linguistics.

But if you open up a dictionary that in fact is the number one

meaning of the word linguist.

Most English speakers are not familiar with the word polyglot.

Anyway, when I wrote that book, I said the most important, sort of,

measure of how well we know a language is the number of words we know.

Vocabulary is key.

Words and phrases, but phrases consist of words, so you have to have words.

And to be fluent, you actually need a lot of words because the

native speaker has a lot of words.

So if you're exposing yourself to a native speaker, speakers in conversation

or watching a movie or listening to a podcast, all of which are tremendous ways

of improving in the language, you need a lot of words, and while I sometimes

hear people say, Well, I can be fluent with 500 words, because 500 words

accounts for 60% of most content, but in fact that's not true because the low

frequency words and frequency declines very quickly, as I've said before.

They're key to, you know, the gist of what any content is about.

The high frequency words are not a problem.

They repeat often and very quickly get to know them, but you need these other words.

You need a high sort of vocabulary level.

So, how do we achieve that?

I think one of the things that can help us is if we accept the

fact that we're gonna forget.

Not only accept the fact that we're gonna forget, but realize that forgetting is

a key part of the strategy of learning.

And, and there are a number of references and I did a bit of Googling, so.

You know, I, I, I Googled Proust, Marcel Proust, the, the

French, uh, you know, novelist.

And he has this term ... the creative effect of forgetting.

And sometimes those things that we don't deliberately try to

remember, they kind of stay there.

That was his intuition.

Now if you wanna see a more scientific, sort of, explanation of that concept,

I uh, uh, recommend that you Google for Robert Bjork uh, B J O R K and

the word forgetting, and you'll see a number of of videos that he has done,

which explains why forgetting is such an important part of learning that

in our memory we have the ability to retrieve something, but we also have

this issue of what we have in storage.

Okay.

And to some extent, if we try to train the ability to retrieve a limited set

of information, words, for example, we aren't building up that storage, larger

storage of material that we may not be able to retrieve right now, but it's there

potentially available for us to retrieve.

And he explains very clearly that once we forget something and we retrieve

it again and maybe we re-forget it again and we retrieve it again, we're

expanding that sort of reserve of things that we can uh, uh, retrieve.

We are developing a large vocabulary and to do well in languages,

we need a large vocabulary.

Even if our large passive vocabulary is not available to us to use or

gradually becomes available for us to use it is enabling us to understand,

to understand, you know, interesting conversations or interesting sources

of, of information in the language.

So I think sometimes in schools we are trained to not wanna forget.

We're trained, you know, the teacher teaches something and

we've now gotta try to remember it.

Or we have tests on what was said in the story and we're very much

oriented towards trying to get it right, trying to retrieve it.

And I sometimes think we would be better advised to accept that we're gonna forget.

And accept that the process of forgetting is, is building up this reserve

that our ability to retrieve that information is, is going to improve.

But in the meantime, we also have to build up that reserve of

words that we will eventually be able to access better and better.

Robert Bjork also, uh, has videos on interleaving.

Pointing out again how important it is to to learn things in different

environments and at different times and in different ways.

Read about the same subject matter in different books.

I've called this grazing in the past.

Not worrying too much about what we retain, but making sure

that we expose ourselves to this information in different ways.

He says, for example, people are sometimes advised to always learn

something in the same place.

So if you study, study in your library or study in your, I don't know, kitchen

or whatever, and if you study there and there is research to show that if people,

you know, having studied something, if they go back to the place where they

studied it, they'll remember it better.

However, you're better off to not do that, to study it here and then

somewhere else and somewhere else.

So your ability, ability to retrieve the information if you go to a

different setting may be less.

However, by studying that same material in different environments, even you are

building up your reserve of information.

And that will eventually give you more information.

Even though in the short run your ability to retrieve the information is reduced.

A good example of learning things in different environments, learning and

forgetting, building up our reserve is the way I use LingQ on my iPad.

Could be on your iPhone or Android as well, or on the web.

So if I look at our mini stories, for example, lesson 59, I can read it in

the full lesson mode or I can go, you know, uh, so here, for example, here's

page, the next page, but I can also look at it one sentence at a time.

So that's a different experience, varying the experience.

The way we do things is a good thing to do here.

For example, I have a number of words that I am trying to learn.

I, I don't spend a lot of time deliberately trying to remember

these words, but I can still go through some of the, you know,

exercises here right after the page.

So I might ... is accessible I hope.

... okay ... and I don't try too hard to remember these things.

I just kind of go through them.

... in other words, being no, being as seeing how...

so I get it wrong.

It doesn't matter if I get it wrong.

Continue, and then in what you will soon be seeing is the opportunity then

to, to reassemble this into a sentence.

I do it not for all the text, but I do it to some extent.

But the key thing is I don't worry about what I don't understand.

I don't worry about what I forget.

I vary how I do things.

Sometimes I do it in full text mode.

Sometimes I do, you know, a sentence at a time.

Sometimes I do easy content, such as the mini stories.

Sometimes I do more difficult content.

I never worry about what I forget because I know that

forgetting is the key to learning.

So I just wanted to mention that because a lot of people seem to get

frustrated when they forget things.

Forgetting is not a bad thing.

Forgetting ... forgetting is a good thing.

You wanna forget and relearn and hear it in another context

and read it in another context.

Trust the fact that eventually the vocabulary will stick, but expose yourself

to a variety of contexts and don't just try to learn one, sort of, limited group

of vocabulary items in one specific way, but rather build up your vocabulary

reserve becasue you're gonna need it.

So increase your vocabulary by forgetting.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.


To Learn Vocabulary We Must Forget Vocabulary Um Vokabeln zu lernen, müssen wir Vokabeln vergessen To Learn Vocabulary We Must Forget Vocabulary Para aprender vocabulario hay que olvidarlo Pour apprendre le vocabulaire, il faut oublier le vocabulaire Per imparare il vocabolario bisogna dimenticare il vocabolario 語彙を学ぶには語彙を忘れなければならない Para aprender vocabulário é preciso esquecer o vocabulário Kelime Öğrenmek İçin Kelime Dağarcığını Unutmalıyız Щоб вивчити лексику, ми повинні забути лексику 要学习词汇,我们必须忘记词汇 要學習詞彙,我們必須忘記詞彙

Forgetting ... forgetting is a good thing. 忘れる・・・忘れることはいいことです。

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann, and today I wanna talk about vocabulary

and the importance of forgetting. そして忘れることの大切さ。 ve unutmanın önemi.

Remember, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe. Unutmayın, bu videoları beğendiyseniz lütfen abone olun.

Click on the bell to get notified when there's a new video. Yeni bir video geldiğinde haberdar olmak için zile tıklayın.

And if you're on a podcast service, please leave a comment. А если вы пользуетесь подкаст-сервисом, пожалуйста, оставьте комментарий.

I really do appreciate it. 本当に感謝しています。 Bunu gerçekten takdir ediyorum.

So when I wrote I should... だから私が書いたとき、私はすべきです...

yeah, when I wrote my book, here is of course the English version. ええ、私が本を書いたとき、これはもちろん英語版です。

Here's...

I just happen to have the Chinese version nearby. たまたま近くに中国語版がありました。

A Personal Guide to Language Learning. 言語学習の個人ガイド。

The linguist, I called it. 言語学者、私はそれを呼んだ。

Linguist means someone who, you know, speaks many languages. リンギストとは、多くの言語を話す人を意味します。

That's the original meaning of the word linguist. それが言語学者という言葉の本来の意味です。

Whenever I say that, I get attacked by people who study linguistics. そんなことを言っていると、言語学を勉強している人たちに攻撃されます。

But if you open up a dictionary that in fact is the number one でも辞書を開いてみると実は1位なのです

meaning of the word linguist. 言語学者という言葉の意味.

Most English speakers are not familiar with the word polyglot. ほとんどの英語話者は、ポリグロットという言葉になじみがありません。 Большинство носителей английского языка не знакомы со словом "полиглот".

Anyway, when I wrote that book, I said the most important, sort of, とにかく、私がその本を書いたとき、私は最も重要な、一種の、

measure of how well we know a language is the number of words we know. 言語をどれだけよく知っているかの尺度は、私たちが知っている単語の数です。

Vocabulary is key. 語彙が鍵です。 Woordenschat is de sleutel.

Words and phrases, but phrases consist of words, so you have to have words. 単語とフレーズですが、フレーズは単語で構成されているため、単語が必要です。 Слова и фразы, но фразы состоят из слов, а значит, у вас должны быть слова.

And to be fluent, you actually need a lot of words because the And to be fluent, you actually need a lot of words because the 流暢に話すためには、実際にはたくさんの単語が必要です。

native speaker has a lot of words. ネイティブスピーカーはたくさんの単語を持っています。

So if you're exposing yourself to a native speaker, speakers in conversation ですから、ネイティブ スピーカーに自分をさらす場合、会話中のスピーカーは

or watching a movie or listening to a podcast, all of which are tremendous ways または映画を見たり、ポッドキャストを聴いたり、これらはすべて素晴らしい方法です

of improving in the language, you need a lot of words, and while I sometimes 言葉の上達にはたくさんの言葉が必要です。

hear people say, Well, I can be fluent with 500 words, because 500 words 人々が言うのを聞いて、まあ、私は500語で流暢に話すことができます.なぜなら500語だからです.

accounts for 60% of most content, but in fact that's not true because the low ほとんどのコンテンツの 60% を占めていますが、実際にはそうではありません。 é responsável por 60% da maior parte do conteúdo, mas na verdade isso não é verdade porque o baixo

frequency words and frequency declines very quickly, as I've said before. 前にも言ったように、頻度の高い単語と頻度は非常に急速に低下します。 palavras de freqüência e freqüência declina muito rapidamente, como eu disse antes. Частотные слова, а частотность снижается очень быстро, как я уже говорил.

They're key to, you know, the gist of what any content is about. それらは、ご存知のように、コンテンツの要点の鍵です。

The high frequency words are not a problem. 頻度の高い単語は問題ありません。

They repeat often and very quickly get to know them, but you need these other words. 彼らは頻繁に繰り返し、すぐに彼らを知るようになりますが、これらの他の言葉が必要です.

You need a high sort of vocabulary level. 高度な語彙力が必要です。

So, how do we achieve that? では、どうすればそれを達成できるでしょうか。

I think one of the things that can help us is if we accept the 私たちを助けることができることの1つは、

fact that we're gonna forget. 忘れてしまうという事実。

Not only accept the fact that we're gonna forget, but realize that forgetting is 忘れるという事実を受け入れるだけでなく、忘れるとは

a key part of the strategy of learning. 学習戦略の重要な部分。

And, and there are a number of references and I did a bit of Googling, so. そして、いくつかの参考文献があり、私は少しグーグルをしました。

You know, I, I, I Googled Proust, Marcel Proust, the, the ほら、私、私、プルースト、マルセル・プルースト、その、

French, uh, you know, novelist. フランス人、ええと、小説家。

And he has this term ... the creative effect of forgetting. そして彼はこの用語を持っています... 忘れることの創造的な効果.

And sometimes those things that we don't deliberately try to そして時には、私たちが意図的にしようとしないこともある

remember, they kind of stay there. 覚えておいてください、彼らはそこにとどまります。

That was his intuition. それが彼の直感でした。

Now if you wanna see a more scientific, sort of, explanation of that concept, その概念のより科学的な説明を見たい場合は

I uh, uh, recommend that you Google for Robert Bjork uh, B J O R K and ええと、ロバート・ビョークをグーグルで検索することをお勧めします。

the word forgetting, and you'll see a number of of videos that he has done, 忘れるという言葉で

which explains why forgetting is such an important part of learning that これは、忘れることが学習の重要な部分である理由を説明しています。

in our memory we have the ability to retrieve something, but we also have

this issue of what we have in storage.

Okay.

And to some extent, if we try to train the ability to retrieve a limited set

of information, words, for example, we aren't building up that storage, larger de informações, palavras, por exemplo, não estamos acumulando esse armazenamento, maiores

storage of material that we may not be able to retrieve right now, but it's there

potentially available for us to retrieve.

And he explains very clearly that once we forget something and we retrieve

it again and maybe we re-forget it again and we retrieve it again, we're

expanding that sort of reserve of things that we can uh, uh, retrieve. expandindo esse tipo de reserva de coisas que podemos recuperar.

We are developing a large vocabulary and to do well in languages,

we need a large vocabulary.

Even if our large passive vocabulary is not available to us to use or

gradually becomes available for us to use it is enabling us to understand, gradualmente se torna disponível para nós usá-lo está nos permitindo entender,

to understand, you know, interesting conversations or interesting sources

of, of information in the language.

So I think sometimes in schools we are trained to not wanna forget.

We're trained, you know, the teacher teaches something and

we've now gotta try to remember it.

Or we have tests on what was said in the story and we're very much

oriented towards trying to get it right, trying to retrieve it.

And I sometimes think we would be better advised to accept that we're gonna forget. E às vezes acho que seria melhor aceitarmos que vamos esquecer.

And accept that the process of forgetting is, is building up this reserve En accepteer dat het proces van vergeten is, deze reserve aan het opbouwen is

that our ability to retrieve that information is, is going to improve.

But in the meantime, we also have to build up that reserve of

words that we will eventually be able to access better and better.

Robert Bjork also, uh, has videos on interleaving. Robert Bjork heeft ook video's over interleaving.

Pointing out again how important it is to to learn things in different

environments and at different times and in different ways.

Read about the same subject matter in different books.

I've called this grazing in the past.

Not worrying too much about what we retain, but making sure

that we expose ourselves to this information in different ways.

He says, for example, people are sometimes advised to always learn

something in the same place.

So if you study, study in your library or study in your, I don't know, kitchen

or whatever, and if you study there and there is research to show that if people,

you know, having studied something, if they go back to the place where they

studied it, they'll remember it better.

However, you're better off to not do that, to study it here and then No entanto, é melhor não fazer isso, estudá-lo aqui e depois

somewhere else and somewhere else. em outro lugar e em outro lugar.

So your ability, ability to retrieve the information if you go to a

different setting may be less.

However, by studying that same material in different environments, even you are

building up your reserve of information.

And that will eventually give you more information.

Even though in the short run your ability to retrieve the information is reduced.

A good example of learning things in different environments, learning and

forgetting, building up our reserve is the way I use LingQ on my iPad.

Could be on your iPhone or Android as well, or on the web.

So if I look at our mini stories, for example, lesson 59, I can read it in

the full lesson mode or I can go, you know, uh, so here, for example, here's

page, the next page, but I can also look at it one sentence at a time.

So that's a different experience, varying the experience.

The way we do things is a good thing to do here.

For example, I have a number of words that I am trying to learn.

I, I don't spend a lot of time deliberately trying to remember

these words, but I can still go through some of the, you know,

exercises here right after the page.

So I might ... is accessible I hope.

... okay ... and I don't try too hard to remember these things.

I just kind of go through them.

... in other words, being no, being as seeing how...

so I get it wrong.

It doesn't matter if I get it wrong.

Continue, and then in what you will soon be seeing is the opportunity then

to, to reassemble this into a sentence.

I do it not for all the text, but I do it to some extent.

But the key thing is I don't worry about what I don't understand.

I don't worry about what I forget.

I vary how I do things.

Sometimes I do it in full text mode.

Sometimes I do, you know, a sentence at a time.

Sometimes I do easy content, such as the mini stories.

Sometimes I do more difficult content.

I never worry about what I forget because I know that

forgetting is the key to learning.

So I just wanted to mention that because a lot of people seem to get

frustrated when they forget things.

Forgetting is not a bad thing.

Forgetting ... forgetting is a good thing.

You wanna forget and relearn and hear it in another context

and read it in another context.

Trust the fact that eventually the vocabulary will stick, but expose yourself Confie no fato de que eventualmente o vocabulário vai ficar, mas exponha-se

to a variety of contexts and don't just try to learn one, sort of, limited group

of vocabulary items in one specific way, but rather build up your vocabulary

reserve becasue you're gonna need it.

So increase your vocabulary by forgetting.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.