Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English podcast.
How are you doing today?
I hope you're doing fine.
So here's a new episode for you.
Normally with my podcast these days, I do an audio version and a video version, right?
The audio version you can get through the usual ways, right?
Podcast apps like Spotify or Apple podcasts, pocket casts or whichever podcast app you choose.
And then the video version, which is normally more or less the same, maybe slightly shorter, is also available to watch on YouTube.
Now this episode today is slightly different because this is a recording of the vocabulary workshop I did earlier this year.
Now, do you remember in the springtime I was telling everyone in my episodes about this Zoom workshop that I was doing all about how to learn vocabulary.
I did the workshop and there were quite a lot of people there.
Maybe you're one of those people, maybe you attended the workshop.
So I did the workshop, fine.
And now I'm actually publishing it.
Okay. Now that on video on YouTube, I'll be publishing the recording of the workshop itself, at least my presentation part.
That's what's going to go up on YouTube for this episode.
But the thing is the audio track from that Zoom recording doesn't quite work as an audio episode in its own right.
The reason for that is that I was using slides during the workshop and I think it won't work without the visual elements.
Just listening to the audio on its own won't really work because I make so many references to the visual slides that I was presenting.
So what I'm doing with this audio episode is I'm going to record an episode now based on the content of my slides, but hopefully it will work as an audio episode without any visual elements.
Now, if you'd like to see the slides that I prepared for my talk, you can do that.
You'll find them on the website page for this episode on my website.
Okay. But otherwise, let's now get started.
So I'm now going to do a version, a kind of audio version of the vocabulary workshop I did in April this year.
Okay. So this workshop is all about how to really learn vocabulary and not just stare at word lists.
Okay. That's the title of my talk.
So let's get started.
Now, what's the aim of this talk?
Well, really I want to help you to learn vocabulary more effectively because obviously this is really important.
So I want to help you to do that.
And I want to show you different methods and resources for learning vocabulary.
So hopefully this will be a really useful episode for you in learning how to learn vocabulary, right?
So I want to help you to understand words when you find them, to be able to record them, like keep a record of new words and phrases, to remember words and phrases that you have discovered, and also use them as well.
Okay. So this is the kind of the process.
You meet new words, you understand what they mean, you keep a record of them, you remember them, and that's a process in itself, which you can really work on.
You know, there's ways of doing it.
And then ultimately how to use new words.
You could kind of see it as a process where you discover new words, you understand them, you use them.
And then once you've got to know words and phrases, you will probably notice them a lot more in the future.
I kind of think of it like this, right?
You know, when you play a computer game like Grand Theft Auto, okay?
Now, when you start Grand Theft Auto, you've got the map of the world that the game is based in.
And you've only visited a few parts of that world.
And so those are the areas on the map that are visible to you.
If you've never sort of actually visited the other parts of the map, then you can't actually see those areas on the map.
They're kind of clouded or obscured.
And it's a similar case with words, I think, with English, that the words that you don't know, the words that you don't use, the words that you haven't studied, the words that you haven't recorded, right?
The words that you haven't really met before, these are the sort of unknown areas of the map.
And because you're not aware of them, you actually don't really notice them when they arrive.
So for example, when you're listening to someone speaking, I think you know this experience, you'll be listening to someone speaking in English, and you're only catching some of it.
Maybe you're catching most of what they say, but there are certain gaps, there are bits that you're missing.
And you sort of use the words and phrases that you know, in order to help you get by.
You use those bits to help you survive.
And you don't worry too much about the bits you don't know, right?
Do you know what I mean?
This is how it is for me when I'm listening to people speaking French.
I kind of hold on to the bits I understand and use those bits to piece together the whole picture.
But the missing parts, the parts that I'm not really aware of, the parts I'm skipping over, or the parts that I'm sort of guessing, this stuff, you don't even notice what these words are.
And so by actively exploring those unknown areas, you essentially reveal much more of the language, you reveal much more of the map of the world that you're exploring.
And that gives you a certain mastery over that world.
Do you know what I mean?
Hopefully you do. Anyway, let's carry on.
So a wide range of vocabulary is vital for an advanced level of English, right?
If advanced is what you're going for, a good wide range of vocab is vital for that level.
Okay. And if we talk about the official Cambridge advanced English certificate exam assessment criteria, okay, for example, if we think of speaking, the speaking part of a Cambridge exam, and think of the criteria that they use to judge your level at a C1 level.
So let's just talk about that.
So if you want to get a five, five out of five at a C1 level, you've obviously got grammatical resource, basically, which means that you can control and use a wide range of grammatical forms.
There's discourse management, which allows you to essentially produce extended sections of language easily and without hesitation.
You can just produce these large pieces of English quite easily without hesitation.
The things you say are relevant, coherent, and varied.
You use a wide range of different devices to make the things you say link up together and make sense.
In terms of pronunciation, what you're saying is intelligible.
This is the most important thing.
People can actually understand exactly what you're saying and that you use a variety of phonological features to effectively convey and enhance meaning.
For example, you're able to use intonation to emphasize.
You're able to use sentence stress and pausing to emphasize what you're saying.
That's pronunciation.
And then there's another category called interactive communication, which means that, you know, if you get a five, if you definitely get C1 in this area in your speaking, it shows that you can interact with people easily, comfortably.
You can take contributions of other people and interpret what they say and add to what they say.
You're able to essentially broaden the scope or range of interaction that you have with other people.
You're able to negotiate a sort of spoken communication situation together and reach an outcome successfully.
So that's kind of how to manage the dynamics of social conversations or meetings.
And then there is the lexical resource, which is the criteria that relates to vocabulary.
And if you get a five at C1 level in a Cambridge advanced English exam, then you need to use a wide range of appropriate vocabulary to give an exchange views on familiar and unfamiliar topics.
So it's definitely one of the five main areas of English that are important to get a truly advanced level of English.
You need a wide range of vocab.
You need to be able to, you know, call upon many different words and phrases in English and use the right one at the right time in the right way.
Okay. So obviously a wide range of vocabulary is very, very important.
And certainly for English, this is true because English, as you know, probably has a lot of vocabulary, right?
It's a very diverse language with many different synonyms, right?
Often we have words that mean the same thing, but they have slight differences in terms of maybe the style, the register, you know, some words can mean the same thing as other words, but they're just slightly more formal or less formal and things like that.
But the point is a wide range of vocabulary is vital for an advanced level of English.
So it's worth, you know, thinking about it carefully and doing it the right way.
So yeah, expanding your vocabulary is obviously very important, but how can we do it effectively?
Now there's a common mistake, which I've seen many times as a teacher observing my students learning English.
I've seen this common mistake many times.
So let's say there's a student in my class and I have a look at their notebook, which they're using to try to improve their vocabulary.
They're keeping a notebook.
Now this is great. This is actually not a mistake at all.
This is a brilliant thing.
It's just the way that the words are being recorded and the way that the student is attempting to use their vocabulary record to help develop their English, right?
So what I often see is someone essentially writing a list of words.
Okay. So let's say they've got the English words on the left and on the right hand side, they've just got a direct translation of that word in their first language.
And often it's just single words in English, individual single words with a direct translation into the first language and that's it.
And then what the student does in order to study this is they just look at the list and just kind of stare at it and look at the English word on the left and the translation on the right and just kind of like keep staring at these lists, right?
So I've seen it time and again.
I don't think that's the most effective way to work on your vocabulary, right?
So what's wrong with this approach?
Well, first of all, it's just single words with direct translations.
The single words thing is that in English and in every language really, words don't exist on their own, right?
They have to go with others.
They have to go with other words.
You have to try to learn them in context.
It's the context in which words are used that really gives them their meaning.
Obviously, words mean things on their own, but really they come to life when they're used in combination with other words.
And also in terms of usage, in terms of the way that words are used, you will find that they are often used with other words.
For example, if you're dealing with nouns, what's the most common verb that it goes with?
It could just be things like does it go with do, does it go with have, does it go with make?
You know what I mean?
So individual words on their own, you've got to try to find ways to show the other words that they often go together with.
So adding examples, adding little notes about collocations can help.
But anyway, single words and then direct translations.
So the direct translation, it's a short, efficient way of doing it, right?
But the problem is that often words and phrases, basically English, often doesn't translate directly into other languages in the same way.
So there might be shades of meaning that are different.
You might end up making little mistakes with that where you assume that one thing is the same as another thing, where you assume that an English word is the same as an equivalent word in your language, but it doesn't always work.
Sometimes you lose shades of meaning, you make mistakes in terms of false friends and so on.
So there you go, single words and direct translations.
Also with this method, there's no meaningful context.
I've just talked about the importance of meaningful context, but I'll mention it again.
It's also really important to help you remember words because words really are attached to other words.
Words are attached to meaningful contexts.
And for you to really remember new words, they have to be linked to meanings, meaningful things, meaningful situations, meaningful statements.
Otherwise, if you're just trying to replace every word in your first language with an English word one by one, that's not really how language works.
So yeah, another issue with this approach is that there's no grammatical context.
And this is really important too.
It's not just in terms of meaning that we need context, but also in terms of the way that the words work grammatically.
Are they followed by gerunds or infinitives?
Are they typically parts of passive structures?
So grammatical context, definitions obviously, parts of speech.
Is it a noun? Is it verb?
Is it adjective? Is it an adverb?
Collocations, as I mentioned before, pronunciation, just noting down where the word stress is, or maybe noting down little details like what the vowel sound is in the stressed syllable.
Synonyms, antonyms, that's similar words or opposite words, formality level or other details.
For example, is this a phrase that's often used in business?
Is this a formal sounding word?
Is this a slang word?
Also, there are no mnemonics to help this student remember the words.
Mnemonics are just like those little tricks that you can use to help you remember things.
I'll talk about those in a moment.
Direct translations, as I've mentioned, can result in weird English.
This is where either you get false friends, assuming that one word means the same as it does in another language.
And there are lots of examples of false friends, but also doing it individual word by word, you can end up missing out on the sort of grammatical differences as well, structural differences.
So try to operate only in English as well.
I recommend certainly at an intermediate level and above, you should try as much as possible to do everything in English.
Okay, the more you do in English, the better it is for your English.
So try not to just translate everything.
And the student I was talking about just was just staring at the list, not doing anything else, not testing herself, not trying to use the new language to express ideas, not trying to force herself to actually produce the words and phrases from memory in meaningful ways.
Okay, so that was an idea of what's wrong with that basic approach that I've seen so many times of just a list of English words with direct translations.
So let's go through a process.
Let's talk about the process, as I said before, of noticing, recording, you know, noticing, understanding, recording, remembering and using words.
So let's talk about how to notice and record new vocabulary.
Here are some things to consider.
So you should be looking for words in context, right?
How do you discover new words?
I think you should be discovering them in context while you are reading or while you're listening.
Let's say you're reading a book or you're reading an article that you found or a blog post or something and you come across some new words or phrases, or you're listening to something, you're listening to a podcast or listening to a TV series or whatever it is, okay?
And you discover new words and phrases this way.
Now, this gives us a deeper, richer, more intuitive sense of what a word means when we discover it in a meaningful context.
