Stop Forgetting Vocabulary! 5 Tips to Boost Your English Skills

Hey, everyone. It's Claire, your online English teacher. Today's video covers a topic that I know can be super challenging for a lot of English learners, and that's how to learn and remember vocabulary. We've all been there. You learn a new word, you use it maybe once or twice, and then poof, it's gone. Well, not anymore, because I'm going to give you five super effective tricks to help these words stick in your brain. Make sure to watch until the end of this video, because I have an exciting announcement about my YouTube channel. Ready to upgrade your English vocabulary game? Let's go. First tip, make the vocab personal to you. Trust me, this works. Don't just memorize random words from a textbook. Think about the words that you actually use in your everyday life that are relevant to your interests. For example, if you like cooking, focus on words about food or recipes or verbs that you use in the kitchen. An exercise to help you find out what those words are that you need to know is to tell a story out loud in English, and notice which words you can't think of on your own without looking them up online or using a dictionary. Write down those words that you didn't know in the moment, and there you have your list of new vocabulary words that are relevant to a story about your life or your hobby. Connecting vocabulary to your experiences makes it 100 times easier to remember. Okay, tip number two, use it or lose it. This is one of the most important strategies. After you learn a new word, be sure to use it as soon as possible and in different contexts. Don't just write it down once in your notebook. Say it out loud, put it in a sentence, use it in a conversation. If you don't have many opportunities to practice speaking your English, I highly recommend that you create opportunities for yourself to do so. For example, finding an online tutor on an app like Preply, you can filter through tutors on Preply based on where they're from, their availability, or to fit your budget. The link for that is in the description of this video. I even have an offer for you guys to get 50% off your first lesson with a tutor on Preply. Give that a try because the more you use your English and the new words that you learn, the more they will stick. Next, let's talk about visuals. Our brains love pictures. So if you can attach a new word to a mental image or even a drawing, it'll be way easier to remember. So let's say you're learning the word umbrella and you draw an umbrella on a flashcard with that word. Just the act of drawing the umbrella and writing the word next to it is going to help you remember that. You can even get apps to do this kind of thing for you to create flashcards to help engage your visual memory when learning new vocabulary. Tip number four, group words you learn together by theme. Don't just learn words randomly. If you're learning new words about travel, for example, try to learn several of them at the same time. So suitcase, passport, airplane, boarding pass, etc. This way, your brain can create connections between these new words and that makes it much easier to remember. And finally, the magic word, repetition. I know it sounds boring, but repeating words you've learned over time is key to keeping them in your long-term memory. Space this out, though. Don't try to cram a bunch of new words in one day. Instead, review your words the next day, after a few days, and then again a week later. This is called spaced repetition, and it's one of the most effective ways to make sure your vocabulary sticks for good. So there you have it. Five tips to help you learn new vocabulary and remember them. If you try these out, I guarantee you'll notice a difference in how well you remember new vocabulary. And if you have any other tips, please share them in the comments for our community here on YouTube. And if you are interested in more ways to support your English learning, you can join my online English community, where you can learn with fellow English learners and practice speaking with me. The link to join my online community is in the description of this video, and you'll get immediate access to all my course material and exclusive video lessons, as well as direct access to messaging me with your specific English questions. Thanks so much for making it this far in today's video. Please give it a like if you found it helpful, and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. These are great ways to support what I do here on my YouTube channel. If you'd like to support my channel in a more concrete way, I have just launched memberships on my channel. Right now, there's just one level to choose from. You can become a supporter of my YouTube channel, English Teacher Claire. And once you do, you can take part in the membership poll to decide what my next video will be, and also what the other membership options can be as well. That way, you can let me know what's important to you, and what you'd like to see from me in the future, and also give your support, which I would greatly appreciate. I want to continue to make my content even better for all of you, and continue to improve and upgrade here on my channel, and also give lessons that I know will benefit you. So the link to become a supporter and all future membership options is in the description of this video, or you can find it on my channel page. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you found this video useful. And again, let me know your tips in the comments. I'm so excited to welcome some of you as members on my channel, and I'm excited for the future of my English teaching journey. And that's thanks to you guys. So I'll see you in the next video, and happy learning.