If You’re Afraid to Speak, Write
Four methods to retain more vocabulary
One of the biggest challenges in learning a new language is vocabulary retention. There are several common recommendations to make this easier, some of them being to speak early and often and “immerse” yourself.
Speaking is challenging and immersion is often far too broadly applied, but there is one technique that can be applied in several ways to challenge yourself and better retain those tricky words: writing.
When it comes to learning a language, input is comfortable. It is much easier to read than it is to listen, but both of those are much easier than it is to write and even more so to speak.
Output is the most effective means of quickly cementing the things that you’re trying to learn, and writing is the least stressful of the two output methods.
Regardless of the method that you choose, context is always king. If what you’re practicing just doesn’t mean anything to you, then that’s as far as it’ll go. That said, let’s go over four different means of applying yourself in writing to further your goals in whatever language it is that you’re learning.
Journaling prompts and questions
The first is my personal favorite and that is to follow journal prompts and challenge yourself to be creative in how you answer these prompts.
What I did was I went to ChatGPT and I asked for 30 different prompts at levels in accordance with the CEFR. What I got was exactly that and I’ll give you some examples I’m using for Spanish below.
Regardless of where you get your prompts, just be sure that they are open-ended and that you take advantage of that. Do your best to answer in more than one sentence and do your best to make sure that you use words that are unfamiliar to you.
Recall is more challenging than recognition. It’s also more effective as a learning method. When you can recall, you can confidently say that you’ve retained it. So, make sure that you challenge yourself to recall nouns, verbs, adverbs, or whatever kind of words that you’re finding most difficult.
But now, those examples:
A2: What did you do this morning? What makes you happy?
B1: What did you do that made you proud last week? What do you want to accomplish in the next five years?
B2: What is your philosophy on life? How do you maintain a work/life balance?
Exploring fiction
This one will be more challenging, but it can also be the most rewarding. If there’s a particular genre of fiction that you enjoy, start by learning a few words that apply specifically to that genre, assuming there is special vocabulary, and practice the other regular parts of speech in crafting short stories in your preferred genre.
It’ll be a challenge to recall those regular, repetitive words that aren’t the most fun but may be the most important. At the same time, it should be entertaining and enjoyable to explore some of your creativity in an area that you particularly enjoy.
Write how-to’s
This is a practical challenge. It’s very easy to say that you like coffee or that you want to go somewhere. But how do you make coffee? How do you get to that place?
This one may be frustrating, as it is challenging because these aren’t things that you have to think about.
You inherently know how to make a pot of coffee and get your breakfast, whatever your normal daily tasks are. You likely never think about ever having to explain even a couple of smaller details about the things that you do so frequently.
How this will be rewarding is in cementing those words that are more useful than you might think. For example, how you press your coffee or how you pull the sheets up. These verbs may be used differently, or there may be multiple ways to say what, in English, is the same word.
And even if it is a one-to-one translation, it’s good to practice those words that are used in so many settings.
Calligraphy
This last one is something that I am also quite fond of. I didn’t start taking this up until I took on Mandarin, but I find this to be a very relaxing and enjoyable way to practice.
Practicing calligraphy forces you to slow down and be very intentional with each stroke that you make. You have to think hard about each letter or character that you’re putting on that paper.
Focusing on each letter or each stroke in the character draws special attention to the word that you are trying to create and often the meaning that you are trying to convey.
And of course, when you get better at it, you can make something that’s very pretty to look at.
Have you used any of these methods in your learning? Do you have any other recommendations? Let me know in a comment and don’t forget to check out more here at Language Lab and from my publication, Language House!
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