Hello, everyone. My name is Hisanori.
I usually spend my life studying and researching English.
Today, I’d like to talk about how you can search for English words you can’t remember by using image search. Suddenly, how do you try to remember English words that you can’t remember? Some people write them down on a piece of paper, and I’m sure there are many others. Today, I’d like to introduce you to one way of memorizing English words: “image search.
Table of Contents
1- The problem of not being able to remember English words
By the way, this is a bit of a big question, but how many reasons can you think of for not being able to remember English words?
There are two reasons why you can’t remember English words: one is that you don’t memorize the vocabulary enough. One is that you don’t memorize the vocabulary enough times, and the other is that you don’t memorize the vocabulary enough times. I know this when I teach, but when people who are taking certification exams or students come to me and say, “I can’t memorize the vocabulary,” I ask them, “How many times have you repeated the vocabulary? When I ask them, they usually say something like two or three times.
When I ask, “How many times did you repeat it?
In my experience of teaching, no matter who you are, you need to repeat the part you want to memorize at least eight times in a month to be able to remember it.
Another thing is that they cannot visualize the words they are using. That’s the reason why you can’t suddenly think of the meaning in a long sentence even though you have memorized it.
The theme of today’s lesson is more about burning in the image rather than the number of times. As one of the themes, we will consider the means of “image search”.
2-What is an image search for English words?
Image search for English words is very easy. All you have to do is search for an English word you can’t remember on Google. That’s all you need to do. All you have to do is to search the image of the English word you can’t remember in the search field of Google Sensei. The image of the word will be clearly burned into your mind.
Let me give you a concrete example. I couldn’t remember the word “retrieve.
Now I know that it means “to get back”. At that time, I searched for the word “retrieve” on Google.
I found a picture of a dog coming back with a Frisbee. That’s when I realized that the image of “a dog retrieving a Frisbee” was the image of “retrieve.
Actually, if you read the romanized version of “retrieve” with an “er” behind it, it’s a retriever, right? That’s right, that “golden retriever” is going to “retrieve” the Frisbee.
3-Merit of Image Search 1 – You can remember the image of the word vividly.
By using image search, you can clearly remember the image of the word, as in the example of retrieve.
By the way, although the word “retrieve” happens to have the advantage of being able to be read in romaji with “er”, there are some words that are not.
For example, when I couldn’t remember the word impudent (which means brazen), I also did an image search and put it on the wall to remember it.
Screenshot 2020-06-22 16.56.27
No matter how many words are written, there will always be words that you cannot grasp the image of. At that time, using the technique of image search is very good and I recommend this study method.
4-Merit of Image Search 2 – Images are more burnable than text
Another advantage is related to reason #1 above, but as the saying goes, “Seeing is believing,” no matter how much you have memorized the meaning in Japanese, it is easier to remember it with images.
The more images you burn into your mind, the more you will remember the word. If you do all the word image searches, it will take a lot of time, so you may want to try “just the words you can’t remember.
5-Cautions for image search of English words
There is a caveat to the study method of image search though.
That is, the image search is useless unless you save it somewhere and look at it on a daily basis.
If possible, you should print them out and save them somewhere where you can see them in your room at home.
And if possible, write down the English words and their meanings instead of just printing out the image search. If you do that, you’re all set. One more thing. If you do too many image searches and print them out, you will end up with a lot of printouts, which can be inefficient.
Therefore, it is better to only do this for words that you cannot remember.
6 – By the way, a word of caution about learning English vocabulary in general
People tend to think that learning English vocabulary is something that you will quickly forget, but in fact, after a certain number of times, you will stop forgetting unless there is something wrong with you.
I call this the “English vocabulary threshold”.
You may forget a lot of English words in the beginning, but eventually you won’t forget them.
For example, you don’t forget the meaning of the English word “make” just because you haven’t been exposed to English for 10 days, do you?
In the same way, you will be able to remember difficult words (words you don’t come across often) by the same logic.
7 – Summary – You can use image search for English words
So far, I’ve talked about how image search for words is a recommended method. It is really a good idea to do image searches for words. However, it is just a way to help you remember.
After all, there is no end to learning English. Since there is no end, you cannot finish it forever unless you make an end for yourself.
And the more you make an end, the more motivated you will obviously be if you are learning English.
It might be a good idea to start with a goal, like a certification exam, and set an end. After all, learning English vocabulary is only for use in other skills such as reading, so it’s very inefficient to spend so much time learning English vocabulary in terms of study time.
If at all possible, English vocabulary study should be done in a short time. It may seem a bit contradictory, but image search was originally used for “words that are good to remember with images” such as prepositions.
If possible, print out the image search and post it on a wall at home or “anywhere you can see it”. Repeated exposure to them will greatly improve your English.
There has been a boom in adults re-learning English over the years, but the most important thing in learning English is to continue. Continuation is power, isn’t it?
If you don’t continue, no matter how hard you try, learning English will not be fruitful. And people who are learning English like that are wonderful. Let’s acquire the asset of English.
