Refresh Your Memory: 7 Effective Memorization Techniques For Language Learning

What is the most powerful tool for learning a foreign language?

It is our memory. 

If you want to do something with your memory, we suggest these 7 effective memorization techniques for learning languages.

With these techniques, your foreign language memory will be better and stronger.

And now, let’s dive in.

Learn By Categories

When you start learning new words and phrases, if you learn them randomly, it’s unlikely that you'll remember them. Instead, categorize new words and expressions.

For example, create a list of vocabulary for colors, directions, food, verbs for physical action, weather, etc. This way of creating categories is easier to remember because all these words and phrases are associations and they create connections in your brain.

You can make your own list of categories where you will write down words and phrases in your target language and meanings in your native language or in English.

If you aren’t so handy with making lists, there are thousands of vocabulary lists you can find on the internet.

Use Mnemonics Technique

Do you know what mnemonics are? It is one of the powerful techniques with specific systems that help improve your memory. When it comes to language learning, it is widely used for improving vocabulary.

To understand better how mnemonics work in learning a foreign language, let’s take a look at the following example.

To some English students, memorizing adjective placement is a constant struggle. With mnemonics, they can change that by using acronyms for Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size, that is, BAGS. Can you remember this? Yes, you’ve surely remembered it correctly.

Do Exercises With Flashcards

Even though some of you might think that flashcards are old-fashioned, they are actually very useful. All you need is a pen and paper. You can also use pens in two different colors so that you can use one color for target, and another for native language words.

So, on one side, write down words and expressions in your target language and on the other the meaning in your native.

If you speak two or more foreign languages, you can use the advantage and write down on the other side the equivalents in another target language. Besides improving your vocabulary, they are suitable for improving pronunciation by saying words out loud.

In case you prefer more digital language learning tools, there are plenty of flashcard apps you can use wherever you go and whenever you want, and not only at home.

Real-Life Situations

Learning new words and phrases, grammar rules and their exceptions, and pronunciation aren’t helpful if they stay in the passive part of your brain.

If you want for everything new you’ve learned to be really efficient and to get more space in your memory for new things, you have to start using it in everyday conversations.

As we’ve mentioned, flashcards and learning by themes are one part of efficient techniques but there is one that is particularly useful. It is practicing with Justlearn tutors. Not only will tutors help you if you make a mistake, or don’t know some specific word, mispronounce an expression, they, as native speakers, can help you boost your memory as well.

Besides, with 1-on-1 lessons with them, you can practice dialogues and different situations that can actually happen. This way, you practice the language on the whole plus learn many new things and boost your knowledge, and with it, your memory, too.

Immersion Approach

Have you heard about the immersive approach in learning a foreign language? This approach refers to learning and speaking the language in everyday situations and hearing it all the time around you.

One of the immersive examples is living in a country that speaks your target language. That way, whether you like it or not, you have to communicate with the locals in your target, and their native language.

In the beginning, it can be quite rough and you can struggle, but that is the most efficient way for becoming fluent and learning new things. After all, this is one of the effective tricks polyglots reveal in learning languages

Have Fun

Learning grammar from textbooks is useful, indeed, but you have to admit that it makes learning grammar patterns even more boring, especially if you study from old-fashioned ones. Besides, you are destined to passive learning, which means that you can’t apply the rules right after you learn them.

What else can you do to make learning grammar more entertaining?

By playing games.

There are many different and fun grammar games that are created especially to help language learners practice grammar. They are mainly interactive, with great graphics and learning opportunities to enforce students to repeat actions and memorize patterns and exceptions and they aren't even aware that they are actually learning, not only playing games.

With learning vocabulary, things are a little different but still not so easy. But even here playing vocabulary games can help you with your vocabulary and make your basket of active words and phrases bigger.

Take Care of Your Health

Even though at first sight it doesn’t seem so important, taking care of your health is essential.

By this, we don’t mean vocabulary or grammar exercises but the food you are eating and physical exercises you do.

A lot of nutrients, such as omega 3s, vitamin E, folic acid, etc you find in food are vital for the functioning and development of our brain. When we eat them regularly, it can help us with our memory. Therefore, using these foods helps you with language learning.

As for exercises, keep practicing the language with games, flashcards, and speaking with tutors, but there’s one more thing you should take care of. Doing physical exercises. Cardio exercises and aerobic exercise, for example, increase the size of the hippocampus, a part of the brain responsible for memory and learning. 

So, to keep your brain stimulated, take a walk, do aerobic and cardio exercises. Not only your brain will be thankful, but your body as well.

Helping your brain to memorize as much as possible is useful not only in real life but also in learning foreign languages.

When you find the technique that perfectly suits your learning style, it can be a connection between remembering language parts easily.

Once you successfully get the grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation, you’ll be more confident to speak with native speakers anything you want.