Ensure that all new words A.R.E learnt by Attaching an Anchor, Rehearsing the Rhythm, and Envisioning an Endpoint!
37 days after the start of my German language learning challenge I was faced with an intimidating sight when I opened Anki. 131 cards due. The number of reps (flashcards) for me to revise each day had been gradually building throughout my project up till that point, but had never exceeded 85. 131 was a huge increase, and I looked at the number with dread! (See my post on How to deal with an overwhelming number of flashcards to review in Anki if you’re facing the same problem!)
I knew what it meant. It meant that whatever I was doing to try to remember these words wasn’t working well enough. I needed to change my approach.
Over the next few days and weeks I thought about what I already knew about effective learning, and also experimented with a few different approaches. I finally devised a way to ensure that all new words ARE mastered: Attach an Anchor, Rehearse the Rhythm, Envision an Endpoint
Attach an Anchor
The first idea is to ensure that you have an anchor for your new word. What I mean by ‘anchor’ is simply that you must find some way to anchor the new word to something that you already know. Ideally, you’ll link it to words that you already know in the language based upon how the new word is made up, or based upon etymology (the word’s origin). Failing this, a mnemonic is a good option too.
Here are five examples from the six words that I learnt yesterday.
| German word | English meaning | Anchor |
| auseinandernehmen | disassemble | I already knew one word that sounded similar, ‘auseinandersetzen’, which means ‘to deal with’. The only difference for this one was that the ending was ‘nehmen’ rather than ‘setzen’. This was great because ‘nehmen’ means ‘to take’ in German. So instead of thinking of this as meaning ‘dissasemble’ I just remember it’s like ‘to take apart’ and that helps me remember the ‘nehmen’ part! |
| gekratzt | scratched | This one is quite easy as ‘kratzt’ sounds like ‘scratched’ |
| kapiert | got it | To remember this one I realised it sounds a bit like when Italian gangsters say, ‘Capisce?’ (meaning, ‘understand?’). |
| steinreich | filthy rich | I already knew ‘reich’ to mean ‘rich’ in German, and I knew that ‘stein’ means stone. So I just had to link stones with being rich (e.g., jem stones) |
| zugehört | listened | hört means ‘hear’ (already kind of knew this) and I looked up the parts of the word and found that ‘gehört’ means, ‘heard’. So ‘zu – gehört’ means ‘to have heard’. So easy to remember too. |
| kahlen | bald | As a kid I knew a guy with curly hair called Carl. Here I just imagined that his head had been shaved and he was bald. |
As you can see, some of these are based upon the true meanings of the words, and some are based upon silly mnemonics (Carl is bald). Where possible, it’s best to go for meaning-based, but where that isn’t possible, mnemonics are ok.
Having an anchor means that when you look at a flaschcard, you aren’t left with a completely empty mind. You’ve got something to ‘hook’ into to get you started.
Rehearse the Rhythm
A hook is great, but it often isn’t enough to get the word completely correct. I might see the word ‘bald’ on a flashcard and think, ‘I know it’s something about Carl, or Karl, but that’s it’. To remember the full ‘kahlen’, I’ve found the best way is to rehearse the rhythm.
Rehearse the Rhythm simply means saying the sentence over and over again, out loud where possible*. First I repeat it along with the voice that reads it out for me (which I auto-generate with the Anki plugin AwesomeTTS), then I try to say it a couple of times without the sound.
Saying it out loud helps me to get the pattern and rhythm of the sentence and really helps it to stick. There’s something also about physically producing the sound that seems to make it stick also. For some words, I also create an action, and I’ve found that helpful too. It turns out that this method of learning/instruction is referred to in the literature as Multisensory Structured Language learning, and there’s good research backing it up!
I can’t emphasise strongly enough how much rehearsing the rhythm has been a game changer for me. The anchor helps me know where to start, and the rhythm helps the sentence to just flow off my tongue!
Envision an Endpoint
The ultimate goal of using flashcards is to be able to use your target language in real life. However, one of the limitations of learning with flashcards is that often they help us to get the flashcard right, but they don’t guarantee that we’ll be able to use the new in context. This challenge relates to the illusive holy grail of teaching and learning, transfer. It’s only when we are able to transfer what we’ve learnt to a new and authentic situation that we’re able to truly say that it’s been learnt, and mastered.
This is why envisioning an endpoint is important. Envisioning an endpoint aims to stimulate transfer, and you do this by imagining yourself in the context in which you would like to use a word or phrase, at the same time as you use that word or phrase.
From rehearse the rhythm, we know to do steps 1 and 2 below. Envision your endpoint prompts step 3:
- Repeat the phrase we’re practicing at the same time as playing the audio in order to initiate fluency
- Repeat the phrase independently, without the aid of the audio
- Repeat the phrase independently, but also imagine yourself in an authentic context in which you’d use that phrase. Try to embody the emotions of the moment too, and even physicalise and gesticulate in the way you would if you were using that phrase in context.
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The A.R.E method is a recipe for you to use as a starting point for your vocab learning. But remember, no formula is foolproof! Take the advice herein, plan to try it out, monitor how it works for you, then reflect on how you can adapt it to better serve your needs. This is how I came up with the A.R.E method in the first place, and it’s how I’ll continue to refine it for myself over time too.
Good luck with your own language learning journey, and please let me know how you go with A.R.E method!