Tips for learning vocabulary?

[Hegs]

New words *are* sinking in, but "au naturel" is so very slow (and sometimes expensive, such as "grue"!)

Even worse, I look back at the lists of words I tried to force learn six months ago, most of those no longer ring a bell...

Has anyone got any killer tips?

[Dick Smith]

The Paul Daniels method (I kid you not).
Take a French word, and make a mental image of some aspect of its meaning. Then link an English word which sounds a bit like it and add that in. You will then associate the picture with the sound with the word.
An example - to remember the French for Chimpanzee, imagine a monkey with its bum on fire, jumping around beating at the smouldering fur, and then add the English word 'singe'.

I did this with a class of 11 - year olds and over 50% could recall the word instantly 3 years later.

PS P Daniels charges 300 for this method (or at least he did).

Regards

Dick
BONO ANIMO ES

[Teamedup]

I shall watch this thread with interest.

I am now completely semi lingual. I'll never know french like the french do and have lost lots of my english. So yes, I'd love some good tips as to how to keep any vocabulary.

[Sue Smith]

Sorry,
No wonderful tips. You've just got to knuckle down and learn the b*****s I find!!! However, listen to French TV and choose a word that occurs regularly - then learn it. That's how I got "selon" and "malgre" for instance. Also, listen to your French neighbours and do the same thing. This way I learned "tantot" and that you can't use "visiter" for visiting people. Slow, but it works for me.
Bonne chance.
Regards,
Sue.

[Hegs]

I do have one "slow but steady" myself, if you are a couple and drive a lot, keep a compact English-French dictionary in the car, the non-driver is responsible for looking up any new words on advertisments, road signs, radio adverts etc. On regular routes the words used become engraved on the old grey cells!

[Gooliegumdrop]

Re tips for learning vocabulary. Learning and retaining vocab is always difficult due to the sheer tedium of the task. In my experience as a language tutor (and previously a student), you need to put all that vocab in context before it will sink in effectively. That is to say, you should practice using it (both orally and in written form) where possible, and on a regular basis, as this is likely to be why you are forgetting what you have previously learnt. People even report losing their English language skills after years of living in a foreign speaking country!

I have to say that I am not entirely convinced by the Paul Daniels method, as this seems to me to be a very long winded way of simply learning a few nouns, which I feel may in fact detract from the task in hand, i.e. learning an authentic language; since it has to be remembered that language consists of a lot more than basic nouns such as 'monkey', 'dog', 'cow' etc. However, I could dedicate a whole forum to the clever marketing strategies used by Mr Daniels and others like him when it comes to selling their 'effective' language learning merchandise to oblivious learners, so I will leave that topic for another time.

Anyway, in the opinion of someone who has spent many years researching second language acquisition; the best way to learn and retain vocabulary is to revise, revise, revise, and when you've done that revise some more, since regular study and practice really is the road to fluency.

Sorry I am not able to offer a magic formula, but that really is how it is.

Julie
www.francoservices.com

[letrangere]

I used to swear by my card index system but I can't find replacement cards these days. Small card index box with dividers separating nouns, verbs, adjs, adverbs, useful phrases all colour coded. (Whenever I think of an adjective I still see yellow.) As you come across new words (especially when reading) write them down in the appropriate place, perhaps making a separate card for certain subjects such as "furniture" or "verbs of movement" or "describing people" in the adjs section. I guess today you could easily set up a similar system on the computer.

However, no matter how you do it, the biggest problem is learning the bloody things. I used to try to learn a dozen or so before going to sleep every night after reading somewhere that that's the time when the brain retains most. I'm not totally convinced though for no matter how many words you initially learn, you easily forget them if you don't use them all the time. Read, read, read and also try to talk as much as you can.

Margaret

[Keith]

I have the Collin french dictionary on my pocket pc (an IPAQ 2210). When reading or listening to the radio and coming across unknown words you can tag them in the dictionary. The program then allows you to look at the tagged words only. The problem is I now have so many tagged words that it is like a dictionary within a dictionary. I do find it helpful to test myself on the list, since a few more words sink in each time.

Like one of the other contributers I think the Simenon/Maigret books are excellent for learning and also could I suggest the Poirot or Miss Marple books in French which have limited vocabulary and page turning stories.

Keith

[SaligoBay]

>Has anyone got any killer tips?

Gauloises, Benson&Hedges.....


But tips for learning French? Apart from a dictionary, the most effective way is definitely Experience.

Take a guitar, place yourself in front of 80 people. Nervous at all? Suddenly those pretty tunes that were flying happily around your head have disappeared? You have....le trac !!! I'd never heard this word before until a couple of weeks ago, and now I'll never forget it, even if it's years till I use it again.

I have lots of vocab now that's indelibly associated with the first time I heard it.

My neighbour said one day "Ma fille ne supporte PAS les chats", et voila, I thought ah so that's how to say you can't stand something. And now if I see a picture with lots of cats, I think of her saying that.

Minds work in mysterious ways. Bonne chance

[GRT17]

When in France, listen to French radio, eventually the words will start to sink in. Buy your local daily paper, attempt to read it and when you continually come up against a word you don't know then look it up and write it on a small blackboard in the kitchen. Somewhere along the line it will all begin to fall into place.
As others have said, listen to your French neighbours and associate expressions with their conversations.
bonne chance

Gill

[Richardrawlings]

Hi

Something that I am trying now is getting one of my uk collegues to give me a random weekly topic to write about then faxing to my opposite numbers in France and Belgium and getting them to "mark" it for me I find that this helps with the Vocab as well as the grammar

Richard

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Did you find the answers helpful?
You don't give much clue as to what you are trying to learn and why - which makes a great deal of difference. When I sat exams I learned the technical vocabulary by rote, as did the French people... I'm pretty sure we all forgot it equally quickly.
For words to be retained they have to be used, and used often. So constructing and repeating sentences including the words can be useful, and slipping them into your conversation invaluable.
It is not a good idea to learn words with their English equivalents - so for example if you were learning the names of flowers it should be with the pictures of the flowers, not their English (or even latin) names. That way you can continue thinking in French.
Asking people to repeat and clarify the exact meaning of new words helps them to stick in the mind - and asking apologetically three or more times what the name of something is usually embarrasses me enough to make it stick.
How do you expand your English vocabulary?

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LAST EDITED ON 06-Aug-04 AT 06:55 PM (BST)

Once upon a time (when I lived in London) I took out a subscription for a book of (French) arrow words; it was a small format so it fitted in my handbag (and wasn't too daunting). It was of a level that I could do some but not all of without looking at the answers (I tried the odd issue of a few, I used to bring two or three back every time I went to France). The answers to the first half were in the back, the answers to the second half came in the next issue. Over a few issues a lot of words repeated.
I'm not sure how much it enriched my vocabulary but... it felt like it was doing me good and killed the dead time in the Underground or worse.
I think you are probably well beyond this site, but some might like this on-line hunt-the-word game, you can choose the theme:
http://users.skynet.be/bd/mots/

[Pucette<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Pucette<FONT><P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">"Qui ne connaît pas la campagne lhiver, ne connaît pas la campagne et ne connaît pas]

There are a lot of books on the market for expanding and enriching French vocabulary; has anyone seen or used any? Are they useful or interesting?