Forget Words When Speaking English? Here Is Why!

If you think you know many words but when you want to speak you can't use them, then watch this video. Hello, my name is Matty from POC English. We all know that we need words to speak a language. If we don't learn words, how can we speak? If you don't have the ingredients, how can you cook? It's just not possible. However, sometimes we have a lot of ingredients in the fridge but we still don't know what to cook. Has this ever happened to you? It's the same in English language. You learn many words to expand your vocabulary but when you want to speak you don't You are lost for words. Why is that? Why does that happen? When you have the ingredients, why can't you cook? It's because you have the ingredients in the fridge. If you open the fridge, you can see the ingredients and then you can think of something to make. However, if you don't see them, although they are in the fridge, you don't know what you have. So, you don't know what to make. The fridge here is an example of your brain. You have many many words in your brain. If you see them in a text or if you hear them, you recognize them. You know what they mean. However, when you want to speak and when you want to write, in general, when you want to communicate, you can't. They are in your brain but you don't know what you have. So, you can't use them when you want to speak. But what is the problem here? The problem is that those words are passive in your head. They are not active. What is a passive word and what is an active word? In general, there are two different categories for all the words we learn. They are either active or passive. Now, what is an active word or an active vocabulary? Your active vocabulary are all the words that you know and when you want to communicate, you can use. For example, if you want to speak or if you want to write something, you can use them. They are in your brain and they are active. So, you can use them to communicate. But on the other hand, passive vocabulary are all the words that you have learned before. If you read them somewhere or if you hear them on the radio or if you're listening to a podcast or if someone is talking to you, when you hear them, you know what they mean and you can recognize them. However, when you want to communicate, when you want to say something or when you want to write something, you don't use them. Although they are in your brain, you don't use them and you can't use them when you want to communicate. They are passive. The problem is many language learners focus on learning more and more and more new words. If they want to buy a book, they ask, how many words can we learn at the end of this book? Or if it's a course, they would say, how many words can we learn by the end of the course? But you know what? It's not about the number of words that you learn. It's about whether they are active or passive. You might already know a lot of words which are passive in your head. So, here's a question for you. Which one do you think is more important for your speaking? Learning new passive vocabulary or learning how to activate and make active the passive vocabulary you already have in your head? The answer is clear. Of course, it's more important to have active vocabulary if you want to speak or write or in general communicate. But how can we do that? How can we activate the passive vocabulary that we have in our head? Don't worry, I'm here to help and I'm going to show you four steps that you need to take in order to learn new words and add them to the list of the active vocabulary in your head. To do this, you will need to have your own personal dictionary. Now, this is a notebook. So, you take a notebook and next time you see a new word or you hear a new word, write it down. Many students would stop here and make a list, a long, long list of many new words with their meanings. But will this help? Of course, if you want to learn passive vocabulary. But if you want to make it active, you shouldn't stop here. Step two is to write two or three sentences with that new word because it's important to learn new words in context. Why? Because one word in English language can have several meanings and different uses. For example, imagine the new word is shift. Now, what does it mean? Look at these three sentences. Can you shift the table to the other side? She shifted to fourth gear and drove faster. She was on the night shift. In the first sentence, shift means to move, to move the table from one side to the other side. Can you shift the table? In the second example, does it mean to move? No, it means to change, shift the gear. When you're driving and you want to go faster, you need to shift the gear. Shift to one, shift to two, shift to three, and then you go fast. You might also want to slow down and shift to two, shift to one. And in the third one, she was on the night shift, meaning a period of work. During the day, workers might work in the night shift or in the morning shift. So you see that in three different sentences, the same word has three different meanings. And that's why it's very important to see the word in context and to see how the word is being used in different sentences. Okay, so we have written the word down. We have written two or three sentences with the meaning of that word to see the word in context. What's the third step? The third step is to write down some collocations with that word. But whoa, what are collocations? Collocations are a group of words that often go together. For example, in the case of the word shift, meaning a period of work, now during the or at night, we use this sentence, she was on the night shift, right? Now, what collocations, what words can we use that usually go with shift? We can use adjectives such as a day shift, or night shift, we can say an early shift, or late shift. You see, these are some adjectives that we can use to describe the word shift. You can also use some verbs saying to work in shifts, or to do shifts, then you can make some sentences by playing with the adjectives and the verbs and the noun shift. For example, if I want to use do shift, and then the adjective early, I can say, I'm doing the early shift this week. I'm doing the early shift this week. So I'm using do early and the word shift. I'm using the word with an adjective and a verb. I'm using collocations now. Or another example with the work in shifts, you know, doctors usually have to work in shifts. Some doctors work in a night shift, others work in a morning shift. So you see, working shifts, do shifts, early shift, late shift, morning shift, night shift. But how can we find these collocations? I'm going to show you an online tool. There are many online dictionaries, but this one is one of the best. It's Ozdick.com, or Ozdick, if it's easier to remember. And you see, it has written collocation dictionary. Using this website is very, very easy and straightforward. For example, the word shift. When you search the word, you can see the different meanings that this word has, right? Shift meaning change, or shift meaning division of the working day. Now this is the meaning that I want to show you the collocations for. We have adjective collocations, verb plus shift collocations, shift plus noun collocations, and prepositions that often collocate with this word. Now, starting with the adjectives, you can say double shift, long shift, or split shifts, right? I agreed to work double shifts for a few weeks. Or we can also say a day shift, early shift, late shift, night shift, eight hour shift, 10 hour shift, afternoon, evening, morning, weekend shifts. In terms of verbs that collocate with shift, you can see be, come, or go on a shift, do a shift, work in shifts. I'm doing the early shift this week. I didn't realize that I'd have to work shifts. The clinic is staffed by 10 doctors who work in shifts. You can also say, change your shift. It was 8 a.m. and the nurses were changing shifts. My husband has changed his shifts from the afternoon shift to the night one. Or be, or go, or come off, right? Okay, and that was with the collocations. Now, the last step, step four. Before we get to the fourth step, I want you to give this video a thumbs up. If you're new to my channel, don't forget to click subscribe and turn on notifications. Step number four is to write a paragraph with the word that you have learned and its collocations. This step is very important in order to activate this word in your head. Here is a short paragraph that I have written using the word shift and its adjective and verb collocations. Let's take a look. There is a clinic near my house. In this clinic, doctors work in shifts.