Have you ever wondered “how can I learn Japanese (or any other foreign language) more effectively?” Fast reading, highlighting, and summarising notes are popular study techniques, but studies show that they are pretty inefficient.
One of the most effective learning strategies are called active recall.
A study shows that language learners who used the active recall strategies remembered new words better than those who didn’t use this technique.
What is ‘Active Recall’?
Active recall refers to actively retrieving information from your brain. This sounds quite normal, but how often do you actively do it? In the world where we can google anything instantly and find any information online, people rarely bother to actually retrieve information from their brains.
However, the act of retrieving things you learned from your brain strengthens neural connections. The more often you do it, the stronger the connections will be. This could help you remember vocabulary and this could help you become more fluent in your target language.
So how can we apply this in language learning? Here are some examples.
Kanji writing
Many people find reading and recognising kanji are easier than writing them. This means, you are not the only one who have been in a situation where you go “I know I can read kanji for ‘soy sauce’ but I just can’t remember how to write it now!”.
When you can’t remember a particular kanji, try writing it a couple of times before you google it. When you jump onto googling, then you are not actively retrieving it from your brain, and you may be used to relying on googling too much. If you try writing a couple of times first, at least you are trying.
Kanji reading
When you don’t know how to read a particular kanji, see if you can retrieve any meanings out of small parts before you search the meaning of it straight away. Also, using this technique can help.
Speaking
When you want to use certain words but you know how to say them in Japanese, try not to google or speak your first language straight away. You can try working around the words you don’t know.
For example, If you don’t know how to say ‘environment’ (環境 かんきょう) then you can use words such as 周り (まわり surrouding), 近く (ちかく nearby), 場所 (ばしょ places), 自然 (しぜん nature) etc.
This way, you are still actively trying to express words you don’t know by using words you know.
Listening
As for listening, it’s hard to understand every single word when you are a beginning to intermediate learner. Good news is you don’t have to!
Simply focus on what you do know. With words you didn’t understand, use the words you know and the context to decode what people could be saying.
Pronouns
Who feels guilty for using words like ‘this thing’ or ‘that thing’ too often?
Try to avoid using pronouns such as これ or それ too much. Make sure you use actual words for things. This can help you get used to retrieving words from the brain.
Make flash cards
Who has made a glossary page in your language learning book where you have words in your target language on one side and the translation on the other side?
If you are passively viewing these word pairs, you are not working your brain hard enough. You could hide one side or turn your whole glossary into a set of flash cards! This way, when you go through those words, you are repeatedly asking yourself a question ‘What does this mean in Japanese?’, stimulating brain to retrieve the information you want.
Read Aloud
When you engage with a Japanese text, try to read it aloud. This way, your brain is more involved because you are paying attention to the script as well as the meaning of the text and the pronunciation.
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