Images Can Help You Retain Vocabulary

2020 · VOA Learning English

This speaker is a general-american model. Each line below can be recorded and scored against it.

Transcript

1. Suppose you are listening to a program in English and hear the word “borrow.” You have heard this word many times but forget its meaning.

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2. So, you look up the equivalent word in your own language. Ahh, yes, now you remember!

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3. A few days later, you see the word again, but again cannot remember its meaning. Why?

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4. It is easy to blame yourself or think, “I have a terrible memory!” But your memory is not the problem.

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5. The problem is that translating a word to its equivalent word in your language is not an effective way to learn vocabulary

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6. This is because it does not create strong connections in the brain, something critical for remembering information.

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7. To really learn words, you have to bring attention to them and connect them with mental images or your existing knowledge.

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8. This helps your brain recall words quickly and easily when you need them.

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9. On today’s Education Tips, we will discuss three methods that use images to retain vocabulary.

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10. Danielle Zelin is an English teacher and teacher trainer.

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11. She has taught for nearly 25 years, including in South Africa, Latvia and Mauritius, her homeland.

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12. Zelin says visual aids are important for language learners because humans think in images. “When we hear a sentence...[when] somebody is talking to us, we see the pictures.

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13. We don’t see the words. We don’t see the sentence in our brain. Like ‘Yesterday, I went to the beach.’

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14. If I tell you that, you will see me on the beach. You will not see the sentence in written form.”

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15. She uses pictures or images with her beginning students and some of her mid-level students.

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16. Cristiane Galvão has used pictures to teach vocabulary to students of every level, from grade school to the university level.

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17. Galvão, who is based in California, has taught English for 20 years, including in the United States and Brazil.

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18. She suggests learners make visual dictionaries with pictures from the internet, for example.

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19. This would involve writing an English word next to its image. Before you make the dictionary, think about your goals, she says.

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20. If the goal is to reinforce what you already learned about, put the words in alphabetical order. And organize them into related groups.

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21. But if the goal is to write a sentence using each new word, then you probably do not need to put the words into groups.

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22. These are mental tools you can use to recall information better. Most mnemonics tools involve creating mental imagery to trigger your memory.

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23. Some of you have probably already done this without realizing there is a name for it. One great mnemonics tool is keywords.

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24. This involves making a mental image that ties two similar-sounding words together. Take the word “bald” as an example.

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25. It means having little or no hair. The word “ball” sounds like “bald” and can help us remember the target word.

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26. In your mind, make a mental picture of a ball with a face on it. Then, picture it with no hair on top, maybe a little on the sides.

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27. Keep this image in your mind for maybe 15 seconds.

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28. The next time you try to recall “bald,” it will be easier because of the keyword and connected imagery.

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29. Alex Mullen is a biomedical engineer and one of the world’s top memory competitors. In 2016, he was the USA Memory Champion.

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30. Mullen calls the mnemonics keywords tool “the art of memory” because your mind makes a kind of picture stories.

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31. In his video on mnemonics keywords, he talks about remembering the target word corral by joining its imagery with an image of a sea coral

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32. He draws a group of stick figures trapped -- or corralled in a coral. In real life, you would probably make a mental image rather than a drawing.

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33. But Mullen’s drawing demonstrates the idea of connecting a mental image of the target word with its keyword.

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34. In a word map, you write a central word or idea in the middle and connect it with lines to related words.

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35. This helps to build mental associations between related ideas. Danielle Zelin gives the example of the word “sharp.”

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36. If you center that word, you can connect it to words of things that are sharp, such as knife, paper and scissors.

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37. Zelin says words are much easier to remember when they have meaning in your own life. For instance, one of her French students has an English-speaking dentist.

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38. So, she learned words that she needed for her recent dental visit. Cristiane Galvão also says that context is important.

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39. She uses word maps in the classroom only after she has already discussed a subject and shown pictures.

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40. This makes the words meaningful before putting them into map form. Otherwise, she says, you are just reading and memorizing words, which is a bad idea.

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41. “Vocabulary is a big part of language learning. So, the more meaningful it is, the easier it is for the student to absorb

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42. Galvão says not every student will learn through a word map. But the maps can help you visualize and create a method that works for you.

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