Clearing these out gives you more room for taking in new information, and improves your ability to learn. By consolidating your memories, sleep essentially clears out the 'inbox' of your brain-all the short-term memories you gathered throughout the day. It's also important to get plenty of sleep before learning something new. If we don't go to sleep, this process can't take place, and we're more likely to lose the information we just learned. It seems that during sleep our short-term memories (including things we've just learned) are consolidated into our long-term memory. If you learn something new and have a nap before being tested on it, you'll be more likely to remember it than if you were tested after an interval that didn't include any sleep. Get Some SleepĪlthough scientists are still working out what happens in our bodies when we're asleep, it's clear that sleep plays a big role in learning. Try using image-based flashcards or adding pictures to your vocabulary definitions to speed up the learning process. Compared to looking at one image, it's much less efficient to rely on text for learning. In fact, we even treat text as images: our brains see lots of tiny pictures on the page. If you use visual aids to remind yourself what new words mean, you'll be more likely to take that information in the first time around, and to remember it later. Our eyes are not only power-hungry, they're also sponges for information. Use Visualsĭid you know 50% of the brain's resources are used up on vision alone? We spend half our brain power on noticing motion, shapes, and colors around us.

Over time you'll continue reviewing words you've learned, as well as improving your ability to pick up new words by interleaving them. Interleaving plays into our natural tendencies to spot patterns and outliers, according to UCLA researcher Bob Bjork.Īs you learn new words, keep adding them to your study list. For instance, if you're learning two new words, try testing yourself on a set of words you already know and add these new words in-between the familiar ones. If you get it right, you make the rest period a little longer next time.Ī related effective learning method is to interleave information you already know with what you're learning.

If you fail the test, you condense the rest period before testing again. Then you might test yourself after a week, after two weeks, and after a month. Then you might remind yourself again tomorrow, and then wait two days before testing yourself. As you continue to study the new information, you get better at recognizing it and remembering what it means, so you can take a longer rest before testing yourself again.įor instance, you might learn a new word today and remind yourself of what it means again tonight before you go to bed. One of the best approaches to learning new vocabulary words is to employ spaced repetition, studying the new words using longer and longer intervals. Understanding how your brain learns can help you make better use of learning time-even if it just means playing word games before bed instead of first thing in the morning. But there's one more part of the puzzle that's important for effective learning (even though it's less fun than word games). I'm sure you're already downloading a bunch of apps to kick off your vocabulary learning. My favorite at the moment is Qiktionary, which is a relaxing guessing game that rewards you with fascinating facts. Qiktionary (iOS solo) - Solve words puzzles to earn interesting fact cards.ħ Little Words (iOS, Android, Web) - Solve daily puzzles with multi-letter tiles and a list of words to find. Lexology (iOS solo) - Enter words based on a letter you're supplied in order to collect letters and advance in the game. SpellUp (iOS solo) - Another game in which you connect letters to form words, this time with an astrological twist. Words with Friends - The classic, Scrabble-like game pits you against your Facebook friends to see who can create the highest-scoring words. Word Pickle (iOS solo) - Construct as many words as you can from a 20-letter grid. Letterpress (iOS head-to-head) - Play against a friend in a word game like none other that has you stealing letters to create new words.Ĭatena (iOS head-to-head) - Use the last letters of your opponent's word to make a new one. Here are a few that I've enjoyed playing, which have improved my vocabulary along the way. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of word games, each with their own twist.

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