Several years ago I realised that although I was teaching a lot and preparing for classes a lot (all in English), I would switch to Russian when doing general search on the Internet. I understood that actually searching in English… Read More »Browsing in English
So you’ve prepared for the video and watched it once . You found it interesting and decided that it’s worth a little bit more of your time and effort. What can you do then? Ideally, I’d recommend watching the video as many times as you… Read More »How to learn more from short videos. Part 3 – Watching again and working with vocab
Now it’s time to watch. Do it in one go without subtitles or pausing for checking new words. This, indeed, is to help you develop the skills of I believe these skills are crucial for learning any language. And I think it makes sense… Read More »How to learn more from short videos. Part 2 – Watching for the first time
Short videos can help you practise implementing the top-down approach and develop your listening skills relatively fast. Unlike longer videos (like TedTalks or series), the shorter ones don’t overload your working memory. It’s easier to stay focused, grasp the main… Read More »How to learn more from short videos. Part 1 – Preparation.
Receptive skills are Reading and Listening, so the big question here is how you actually process information. From cognitive psychology we know about two types of processing: bottom-up and top-down . Bottom-up processing relies on perception or data/ stimuli available around. In this… Read More »What is your approach to learning receptive skills?
Mind maps are an excellent way to help you process, structure and memorise new vocab. I’d say that the process of creating them is more important than the result. They are also very creative/ flexible in nature, so it doesn’t matter… Read More »Mind Maps
So, you’ve come across a new word/ phrase and found many associations for it. You’ve also noticed in which context it was used and how it fits in with other words. That’s great! That helps to better store it in your memory. Now it’s… Read More »How to learn vocabulary? Part 3. Active Recall
Let’s continue. In the previous part (part 1 here) we discussed how important it is to connect a new word to what you already know using associations, be them words, pictures, movements, feelings, experiences or other abstract concepts. Now it’s… Read More »How to learn vocabulary? Part 2. Noticing how and when to use new words/phrases
As one is learning a language, the amount of new vocab can easily get overwhelming. One of the strategies is to learn it by lists or cards using word translation or definition. It’s easy then to check yourself, easy to… Read More »How to learn new vocabulary? Part 1. Finding associations