Want to improve your speaking vocabulary? STOP LEARNING NEW WORDS✋

hey it's Hadar thank you for joining me and in this episode I'm going to talk about why if you want to improve your vocabulary and stop getting stuck in English you have to stop memorizing and learning new words here's the thing as a speaker of English as a second language you may have found yourself in the past or in the present speaking English and then you got stuck right you were looking for a specific word and that word was nowhere to be found word where are you worried word and then you ended up using a different word that didn't quite convey the message as you wanted it to convey the message or you just got stuck and you started getting all anxious and nervous and then you get stuck even more and started making stupid mistakes and then afterwards you felt like crap you thought oh my elissa so terrible I don't know words in English and then you say to yourself hey you know I just need to improve my vocabulary that is the problem I get stuck because I don't know enough words you compare to yourself to your abilities in your native Italian and your native tongue your words are just like laying there waiting for you to grab them right and in English it's just like you have to search for them with a flashlight now first of all stop comparing yourself to who you are in your native tongue because it's not productive it's only going to make you feel bad about yourself and it's just not fair these are two different circumstances it's kind of you're comparing apples and oranges you don't want to do that second you have to understand that the problem here is not your poor vocabulary is what you are doing with the words that you already know and to explain that even more I'm gonna have to take you to my whiteboard but before I want to share with you a quick story when I first started out teaching it was after a long period where I wouldn't speak English at all so just a quick reminder I moved to New York in 2000 and moved back to Israel in 2004 or five so I was there for almost five years and then for for two years here I haven't talked in English I haven't read anything in English I had no connection maybe I listen to TV shows but that's about it so when I first started teaching I wasn't very confident about my English abilities especially my fluency so I was pretty good with pronunciation still but my ability to communicate and the the the words that my knowledge of English was fairly limited especially comparison comparison to where I am right now and I remember the situation where I I was teaching this executive he was in my house back then I didn't have an office I was teaching in my apartment and he wanted to practice reading articles and I was just like okay sure so let's open the New York Times I wanted to sound sophisticated and read an article so he started reading an article and I was I my eyes went black because we started reading it and I was just like you know trying to show him how to pronounce every word and it was really great and then we came across a word that I have no idea what it meant like I could figure out how to say it but then he asked me what does that mean I'm like and then I would try to understand from the context what this word is and then I would make up something and then mind you it was like almost like it was ten years ago I was young and naive and kind of my ego was a lot bigger than what it is today and then I and then we came across another word and I had no idea what it meant and then another word and another and at some point I was just like okay let's go back to the beginning and read it again so I don't come across as completely stupid not knowing all of these words right and then I really felt horrible I was just like how is that even possible you know the imposter syndrome started rising up it's just how is it possible that you're a teacher and you don't know all of these words and this is ridiculous you shouldn't be even teaching he thinks that you are stupid and not intelligent and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla of course he loved the lesson and then he texted me oh it was such a great lesson thank you so much I learned so much but that doesn't matter right all everything that I thought to myself and then I got obsessed with learning all these fancy where it's from the New York Times so I invested a lot of time learning a lot of words that I came across in all of these academic articles and and business articles and as I started teaching I noticed that I'm not using these words I'm not using these words and all of a sudden I started forgetting about all these words right so I spent all this time learning these fancy words I never had a chance to use these words and then I started exploring it and I started talking to my students seeing what they are focusing on when they're learning new words and they were pretty much doing what I was doing learning all these fancy words but they never had a real opportunity to use them maybe I used them in my room academic writing because at the time I was also learning English literature at the university so yeah every now and then I used this one of those fancy words but in speaking in my lessons when I was talking to friends I I was never using them and then I started thinking about how we go about learning words and is the investment that we're making in learning all of these new fancy nice-to-haves words is really dancing us and where we want to be which is pretty much speaking fluently and being able to convey our message clearly with the right words with the right flow and of course with the right pronunciation and intonation I want you to imagine your vocabulary as a circle [Music] as a sort of a circle so it was never great at drawing okay anyway you get the point that's your vocabulary I'll even write it here now this is your overall vocabulary that means that these are words that you understand that you know that if you were to read them in a book or hear them when someone speaks you'd be like I know exactly what it means you wouldn't need to go to check them in the dictionary okay so here's the problem the words that you use in regular conversation are here it's a much more limited circle okay so these are that you use easily right these are the words that are retrieved easily where it's like house and on and chicken and and soup and ladies and gentlemen and maybe other words that you use on a regular basis may be words related to technology because you use them at work all of the time however there's still a gap here between the words that you know in the words that you actually use now the problem is that a lot of people don't even think about these words as a challenge they don't think they need to do anything with these words because they know these words so they go ahead and spend a lot of time expanding and extending the circle now since it's the outer circle it'll take a lot more energy and work to expend it and you'll do a lot of hard work to extend it just a bit right and here's the problem when you extend the outer circle it doesn't do much to the inner circle right so these words usually stay unaccessible I mean you may understand them better when you read so it definitely helps your comprehension and your listening skills but the question is is that helpful for your fluency and does it prevent you from getting stuck I don't think so so what I'm saying is that instead of investing in the outer circle and extending the outer circle focus on this inner circle I'm using gonna use a different color for it so you know that these are the words that you use easily start putting your focus on the words that you already know but you never use these are the words that are not available these are the words that get you frustrated because your subconscious mind knows that you know these words and you're like I know this word how come it's not available how come I can't use it and then you remember it right an hour later you're like oh that was the word I was looking for or when someone helps you you're like yes yes that's it right whether it's like words or phrases whatever but you know this and you are just limiting yourself or you haven't done something to make these words to turn them into active words right now they're only passive and passive doesn't help us with anything especially not with our fluency so as I'm suggesting instead of expanding your vocabulary with all these fancy words that are important don't get me wrong I mean it's great to know more words it really it really is helpful especially if you need to write academic articles and if you want to write books and if you want to understand better what it is that you're reading so of course invest more time in it I'm just saying don't expect it to be available right away without doing something if and what I'm also saying is these words or words that you hear around you all the time so maybe in the hierarchy of words in terms of what words are more important than others probably these words are more important because you constantly hear them you know them right that means that they're very very present in the language it's just that you don't use them and that's the problem okay so I'm gonna take you back to the table and there I'm going to share with you the steps that will help you start implementing those words into your day-to-day speech so the first thing I want you to have is a memo on your phone so you can use the Notes app you can use Evernote I'm gonna put a link to it below that's a really great app to keep track of your notes and there you're going to make a list of words now this list of words it needs to be super accessible where every time you come across a word that you know but you say to yourself I never use this word so you need to have this inquisitive listening where you constantly listen to words but you're also asking yourself is this is this a word I use okay especially words that you need and again remember these are not words that you need to go to the dictionary to look them up these are words that you know but you find yourself from never using them and then I want you to put it on that list now every now and then you'll come across a word that you don't know but you feel people are using it all of the time and you may think to yourself hey maybe I need to know that word you can put it on the list as well but remember the purpose the first stage is to get you to start using all the words that you already know it'll be a lot faster and a lot more effective and then you are going to start adding those words as you are listening to English so don't think about it and try to remember it because you'll forget the moment it happens the moment you come across that word you put it on your list and then once a day or once every other day I want you to go to that list and pull one of those words out the best way to make this word more available and more accessible is to first of all develop the muscle memory of the pronunciation let me tell you a secret a lot of times your subconscious mind know the word but will avoid using it because you are uncertain about its pronunciation there is this fear year that is preventing you from using that word even though you know when you need to use it so it keeps shoving it down until it's no longer available so for example let's say that on your list you have the word regurgitate now this is a word that I know but I never use and I know that I can use it more often so let's say that that's my word and I'm going to probably say it 20 30 times just like this regurgitate regurgitate regurgitate regurgitate regurgitate regurgitate then I might want to use another resource to help you me get it into my system so there then you can use our friend Google to Google for sentences with the word regurgitate and then I would probably say these words out loud a few times then I would want to invent some sentences with the word regurgitate so for example now I need to think about it the students regurgitate the materials they learned from their teachers okay so maybe at first I'll get stuck no wait is there a better way for me to say it the students keep regurgitating the material they learn from their teachers and then I say it again and I'll try to refine it and do it again and again and again until it comes out naturally with flow that's how I'm starting to connect all the dots together all the senses hearing it seeing it cuz it's written in my notebook you might want to write it phonetically feeling it in your mouth getting the muscles to work around this this sound reading it out loud using resources that someone else created and then creating my own sentences right and connecting all the dots there the word with context that's how you start remembering words now don't overwhelm yourself you don't need to do ten of those a day one word a day is enough expanding your vocabulary by 20 words within 20 days or 30 days one month is incredible it's more than what you've had before right so the other alternatives they don't work as well so start enhancing the words that you already know you will see that it's a skill it's an acquired skill the easier is start retrieving words that you know the easier it will be for you to store new words or to start using words that you actually don't know so what we're doing here will expand your vocabulary will help you feel more expressive but most importantly it'll give you the skill to know how to retrieve words easily and to integrate words into your day-to-day speech fast and effectively remember that understanding something gaining clarity without taking action right away is meaningless it's as if you haven't done anything so what I want you to do right now is take a piece of paper and a pen and write down ten words so you you'll need to do some mind searching right now brain searching and you'll need I want you to come up with a list of ten words that you know but you never use you find yourself never using because you're not sure how to say those words or maybe it's just they're not available and if you can't think of something then start a list of five words maybe words that you heard in this video may be the words that you have recently come across if not make a point that you'll get that list done by the end of today and then I want you to post those 10 words in the comments below because I really want you to commit to yourself to take action and also your words are going to be someone else's resource so this is a win-win situation ok that's it thank you so much for watching if you like this video I invite you to subscribe to my channel and come on over to my website to sign up for my email newsletter where you'll get a new lesson into your inbox every single week also if you felt that this episode was beneficial then share it with your friends your students your colleagues so they can all enjoy the knowledge of new and old words have a beautiful week and I'll see you next week in the next video bye

Channel: Accent's Way English with Hadar

Views: 980,938

Keywords: Want to improve your speaking vocabulary, improve your speaking vocabulary, want to improve your speaking vocabulary, improve speaking vocabulary, speaking vocabulary, build vocabulary, improve vocabulary english, increase vocabulary, increase vocabulary in english, how to increase active vocabulary, improve your vocabulary, improve vocabulary, how to increase your vocabulary fast, increase vocabulary skills, hadar shemesh vocabulary, hadar shemesh

Id: bd6iGLmUssQ

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019