How to learn English vocabulary | Canguro English

[Music] so every day I ride to work on on this on this scooter and riding a scooter has lots of disadvantages like it's cold and it's wet and it's just horrible generally right but it does have one advantage and that is the view look at that [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to kangaroo English I'm Christian and today I am going to teach you the best way to learn vocabulary so to start this class I am NOT going to mess around I'm going to write down immediately the best way to learn vocabulary okay there is no best way okay anybody anybody who tells you that they have the best technique for learning vocabulary or the best method for learning vocabulary okay is lying there is no best technique or best way everybody is different everybody learns in different ways so you need to find the technique or techniques that work for you so today I am going to talk a little bit about some techniques that are very common that probably you know already and maybe you use already but also I'm going to talk about some techniques that are a little bit more strange a little bit more abstract and hopefully some of these will help you today today I'm going to write write things down I feel I feel a right to you today basically I think that a lot of people look at learning vocabulary as um as a horrible thing you know like you have to write lists and you have to study and memorize and it's a this is a horrible horrible way of thinking about learning vocabulary so I think my first my first technique is basically to to get interested in vocabulary actually vocabulary is absolutely fascinating when you're reading a text and you see a word you can ask well why where did this word come from are there other related words okay so I'm going to give you an example so imagine that you are reading a book and for the first time you see the word wheel and you don't know what a wheel is so you look in the dictionary and you discover that this is a wheel right here we have lots of different types of wheels okay fine but now it's interesting because a wheel is a very important discovery for humans and a wheel exists in the world in lots of different places so now with this this word wheel as a base I can learn lots of new vocabulary for example what is this well this is a wheel chair because it's a chair with wheels and then of course when when you're driving your car you have this um which is yeah it's round um it's a wheel a steering wheel I have a some more vocabulary ok so what about this this is when a person um does a gymnastic thing like this this is called a cartwheel because it looks like the wheel of a cart and then of course we have all of the idioms in English relating to wheel for example if you are in control of something we say you are at the wheel because you're controlling the car you're controlling something and also of course sometimes in life you don't know what you are going to receive if you're going to get good things or bad things and we call this the wheel of fortune so basically using a word like like wheel a very simple word I can expand my vocabulary it's easy for me to remember hmm and it's interesting it's fun [Music] okay um I'm going to tell you about another technique okay this technique is called the method of low sigh also this technique is called the memory palace and basically what you're doing is you're combining your visual memory with your vocabulary memory together okay so how it works is in your mind you visualize a place which you are very familiar with a place which you know very well like maybe your bedroom or your house or your office so you visualize a place that you know and then you visualize specific places in this place so for example maybe in my office I remember my computer my printer my filing cabinet and my desk okay one two three four places now imagine I want to remember four new words in English so I want to remember um wheel and I want to remember chair and I want to remember car and I want to remember water so when I think about my computer I put a wheel in that position I visualize something with the computer related to a wheel like for example maybe my computer has a wheel stuck in the screen or maybe my computer has a wheel to control it so I visualize this and then I move to move to the printer and I want to remember a chair so now I visualize myself sitting on the printer using the printer like a chair then the filing cabinet I want to remember car so I can visualize um maybe a little a little toy car on the on top of the cabinet okay and then my desk I want to remember water so maybe I will visualize when I touch my desk my hands are wet with the water okay and then when I want to remember the vocabulary I just I can walk I can walk through my office walk through my office and remember these um these these words so I close my eyes and I think about the computer with the wheel okay wheel and then I go here sitting on the printer okay chair and then I go to the filing cabinet I can see the little car the car and then here are my desk is water okay so this is an interesting and fun way to remember new words and if you are a very visual person this can really help you a lot um also there are lots of games that you can buy very simple games that you can buy or that you can make at home to help you with vocabulary so one of them is a game like this so basically you have a you have a headband okay so and then you have cards with vocabulary like monkey so you put this on okay like this so now I am the monkey and you you play with a friend okay you play with a friend and you ask questions to try and discover what's on your card so am i brown hmm do I have four legs hmm do I live in trees I'm a monkey you could make this yourself you can you can ah this this is the simple technique okay this is if if you have no resources okay so we write monkey here's monkey okay I lick a back and then stick I got here this costs basically nothing or another game you could play is is this game here which is taboo so basically how it works is you have to describe this word here at the top without using any of these words which are related and this is actually quite difficult and it's really good to help you practice describing things in other ways and expanding your vocabulary like for example could you describe sad without unhappy and without cry and without tears and without miserable so another way to learn vocabulary and I think this is my favorite is etymology okay etymology is the study of where words came from the origin of words and I think that this is really fascinating and really helps me to remember vocabulary so have a look at an example so this is um eyeliner this is makeup for for women and this is called Kohl and this comes from the Arabic word alcohol because alcohol means basically the essence of something something pure and this is where we get the English word alcohol so there are lots of different types of alcohol for example we have vodka this comes from the Russian word voder which means water this is basically very strong water of course another type of alcohol is this which is champagne this comes from the French word companion which means country because this is wine from the country Campania comes from the Latin campus which means country and in the past what did we do in the country well normally we had wars in the country so battles were also called campaigns and if you won the battle then you were the Campion or the champion in English another thing of course that we do in the country is we camp now imagine that you are a soldier and you are in a tent for weeks and weeks and all you want is to go out and see some women so you would go XCOM party you would leave the camp and XCOM body is where we get the english verb to scamper so you can see that by by taking a simple object and thinking about the origins of this word it relates to lots of different vocabulary and we can expand our vocabulary in a fun and exciting way and and some of the stories about where English idioms came from are very funny so we have we have an idiom in English let the cat out of the bag and let the cat out of the bag means to reveal a secret okay reveal a secret and the origin is basically in medieval times people would go to the market and buy baby pigs and then they would feed the pigs and the pigs would be fat and they would eat the pigs but baby pigs were very expensive so sometimes you would a pig okay from from the market but then when you were distracted when you weren't looking the person selling the pig would substitute the bags and give you a bag with a cat not a pig and then you took your bag to your house and then you get to your house and you open the bag - to see a cat not a big and so you have let the cat out of the bag the secret has been revealed stories like this you know um are not only entertaining but they help me to remember things because it's not just vocabulary okay it's a whole part of the culture and and and part of the the the language the texture of the language also you can use a thesaurus which is basically a dictionary of synonyms and even this name thesaurus is interesting right because this comes from the Greek which means treasure this is a treasure of of words okay the treasure chest of words but also there are lots of dinosaurs with soros right like Tyrannosaurus but that's not related Soros in Greek meant lizard so a Tyrannosaurus is a lizard tyrant so there's a new word a tyrant a tyrant is a horrible person anyway you could use a printed for Soros like this but actually I like the online Soros so for example here is the word sad and we can see here all of the synonyms of sad like bitter heart broken melancholy and here we have two fantastic options we have common ones or informal ones so let's look at some informal ones okay so for example ooh wow that's fantastic I'm feeling blue and you know of course as always try to make your learning of vocabulary related to things that you are interested in you know every every subject if it's fishing or cars or sports they are rich in vocabulary that you can use for things so imagine that you are interested in boats okay so here here I have a picture of a boat and you can see that the top the top of the boat this is called the deck we have lots of vocabulary in English related to to deck like if somebody is throwing things at you you hit the deck oh you go down hit the deck or if you have to clean your house a lot we say you are scrubbing the deck and also if you need a lot of help you can say I need all hands on deck this this part of the boat here is called the keel the job of the keel is to stabilize the boat to stop the boat from moving like this so if you are a very calm person or it's a very calm situation you say we have an even keel an even keel and then there are there there is other vocabulary related to boats for example the ocean on the ocean you have waves wash waves and for example if you are very successful you can say I am riding a wave of success if you have a lot of something at once like maybe you have an online shop you can have a wave of orders or if there's a big event in your city there can be a wave of people every subject in the world has vocabulary linked that you can learn that's interesting to you so my final piece of advice is this use it use the vocabulary use it or lose it okay all of the scientific research shows us that if you don't use the vocabulary then you will forget it okay you can use all of these techniques to help you remember vocabulary but if you memorize it but you don't use it it will disappear okay so try to incorporate your new vocabulary in your conversations in your emails in your writing exams I have word of the day vulpine vulpine is from the latin vulcans fox so it's some things related to being like a fox very sneaky and suspicious so today I need to find an opportunity to use this word so that I will remember it for the future I hope that there are no Volpe and people watching this video today I really hope that in this video you have learnt some some new techniques for memorizing vocabulary if you would like to see any more videos about the English language then don't forget to subscribe thanks very much for watching I'll see you in class bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 264,765

Keywords: canguro, vocabulary, learn vocabulary, best way to learn vocabulary, memorise vocabulary, learn english vocabulary, memorise english vocabulary

Id: BSaVab9L1jw

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2016