Retaining As You are Learning
I´ve been putting in a lot of work to learn Spanish in the last few months but I keep forgetting things I already learned (especially with verbs). How do people on here go about trying to remember all the new words and meanings encountered while learning?
For example, take (no pun intended) a word like "llevar". When you were first learning, did you try to remember it to mean "to carry" or "to take" and then, mentally, get accustomed to saying "She is carrying a hat" when discussing what someone is wearing. Or, is it better to just try to remember all the major meanings of "llevar" (including "to wear") and pick which meaning fits midstream as you are speaking?
The same goes for countless other words (e.g. manejar....conducir....tocar). What is translated into English as their root meaings (to handle/manage....to lead.....to touch) does not necessarily match well with their commonly used practical meanings (to drive....to drive....to play). Do people just try to remember all the major meanings for every word and then select from those meanings while speaking? Or, do people focus on memorizing the root meanings and acclimate themselves to thinking and speaking in a different way (e.g. "I handled my new car to work" = "Manejé mi carro nuevo al trabajo")?
I hope this is clear enough to understand. There have to be a lot of people who struggle with this same issue.
5 Answers
I try to visualize a picture to go with the Spanish word so that my brain associates the Spanish word with the image immediately, instead of Spanish word translating to English word and trying to hang it on another English word.
As a matter of fact, almost everyone goes through that process, so you are not alone. If you would like to know what to do instead and that will be better, talk to me over on Skype. My name there is chileno74.
No need to memorize anything.
EDIT:
Andre
Although it is true that "use it or loose it", it isn't that easy of a saying, per se. Take for instance in English, were you going to learn a new word right now, most likely you would still remember it in a couple of years, even if you didn't use it, and in the case you couldn't remember it, it would still come to your mind if prodded correctly. Right?
But right now, if you have to learn a new word in Spanish, you would be hardly pressed to recall its meaning as soon as tomorrow, unless you repeated it one thousand times right now, and maybe not even then you would recall it tomorrow or in a couple of months, never mind a couple of years, like if it were an English word. That's what I call "functional" language. Once you acquire that point, it is very difficult to loose it. You would loose a foreign language just in the event of not using for years and immersed in your native or another language, and even then you would be able to retain certain words, phrases etc...
I extend the offer to anyone who wants to talk to me in Skype. It is for free.
There is am old saying: "Use it or loose it".
Start with every thing you do, think about or write. Put it in the best Spanish you can if only in your head you are recalling and practicing your vocabulary all day every day. Also if you don't have the vocab to put it in Spanish look it up when you can.
See my edited post.
Argh!!! I hate to type so much.
I think that it would be better to understand the verb and all its uses , for example ,-
to Carry in English has many uses , to carry a bag, to carry over,
to carry on ,he carries himself well , and so on .Just a thought .
Good question it carries a lot of weight..
