You might have observed, you learned some words a day before but you forgot their meanings next day. Have you ever noticed why it happens? There is a critical-period to start learning a second-language. Between the age of 8-14 years, kids learn hundreds of words but for a person like me in the age of 30 or 40 it becomes very hard to memorize even 5 to 10 new words. But we easily learn some new ideas, healthy discussion of hours easily. Actually vocabulary has different philosophy, totally opposite learning an idea. Now, what about those words which we learnt in our Childhood? The issue here is, we never practiced them in our daily communication that’s why we forgot them. The same problem is going to happen with those kids who are learning hundreds of the words today. They will surely forget them until they start using them in practical examples.

In Applied Linguistics, we use a term ”recycling” that is somehow similar to ”repetition”. The instructor must have a recycling plan twice or thrice a week, i.e. giving the memorized words to the kids and ask them on the white-board and write sentences, sharing a chart of vocabulary words, sentence-exchange-game etc. So, if you’re doing self-studies and wish not forget the learnt-words, you are supposed to bring them in practice repeatedly. I would say that again, REPEATEDLY.

Second important point is, unluckily, we keep learning irrelevant vocabulary. Lets suppose I joined an institute, the teacher gave me a list of 1000 words, and I am trying to memorize but around 900 words have nothing to do with my personal-use. On the other hand, Some students start cramming dictionary words, i.e. 100 words from each letter-A.B.C. That’s totally wrong idea. We must learn the relevant vocabulary which we may need in our daily life. I am a different person, you are different, we talk differently, we think differently then, why do we learn those words which are not part of our communication. At first we need to learn some common words, i.e. with, of, on, at, of, for, what, who or where etc. I would try to share a list of those words in my upcoming articles. Secondly, you need to design your own vocabulary list. If you are a doctor, writing an email to your senior and, stuck somewhere, you just open google and find out the word. One more thing you can do here is to write that word separately in your notebook so, next time you can do ”recycling” or rephrase some more structures on that word. You have to observe whole day, which are the words needed in your profession, try to learn only those words. Don’t take much burden of extra words, just feel easy!

-Khalid Doshi