Welcome back to the Shababeek Center blog! If you’ve ever felt like you learn a new Arabic word one day only to completely forget it the next, you are definitely not alone.
In this episode of Tips for Learning Levantine Arabic, our program director Jennifer Killpack breaks down why traditional flashcards and one-off memorization often fail. Instead, she shares five research-backed, practical techniques—ranging from word associations and collocations to interval spacing—to help you build deep, natural language pathways. Whether you are studying with us at our center in Amman or joining our online sessions from across the globe, this episode can transform how you approach vocabulary acquisition.
Greetings from Amman, Jordan. This is Tips for Learning Levantine Arabic. My name is Jennifer Killpack and in today’s episode I want to offer some techniques for improving your ability to remember new Arabic vocabulary.
Now I should say that rarely is there just one trick that works consistently for learning new words. We need layers of encounters and experiences to acquire Arabic. And we need to learn to see vocabulary from a variety of angles of usage to eventually help us communicate smoothly. But many Arabic learners put pressure on themselves to memorize vocabulary. If you’ve listened to previous episodes, this is a mindset I work really hard to dispel.
That’s because comfortably using a language requires familiarity with much more than surface meaning. It requires an intimate understanding of how other words combine to create sequences to express complete ideas in another language. This means we have to move beyond feeling that one encounter with vocabulary completes this work. Instead, we need to think of re-encountering the same word as it combines with other words, another essential step in knowing vocabulary.
In other words, learning a vocabulary word is not a one-off event. We need to learn and relearn language in combination with new meaning and associated vocabulary in order to reduce the moments that we are stuck searching for the words we need in order to express ourselves easily. That’s why in today’s episode I’m going to introduce a few reoccurring ideas proposed by researchers for doing just that. My hope is that something I share will spark a new approach that you can use in your sessions to deepen your familiarity with Levantine Arabic.
Who knows, this episode may offer you a fun new angle of language discovery and boost your enjoyment of the process of learning Arabic. That’s my hope. So without further delay, here are five activities that if employed in your sessions, can enhance your recall of vocabulary.
If learning a descriptive, what nouns does it describe? Let’s say I’m introduced to the word squeaky. Learning how to use this alongside other words and which nouns it often occurs with can be extremely useful for building understanding and memory hooks, something we can really sink our teeth into, something that really helps it make sense. Squeaky toy, squeaky door, squeaky shoe. Sometimes we even say that something is squeaky clean. This is very valuable information.
After all, knowing a word’s meaning is not at all that beneficial if we don’t know how to use it in combination with other language. If it’s a verb, what nouns are associated with it? We hang clothes on the line. We hang pictures on the wall. Someone can hang themselves using rope. To hang out means we are just spending time together. But to hang up on someone means you’re ending the call abruptly. These examples fill in meaning and build concreteness around how language is used. So it really behooves us to take some time in a session to pause and build this understanding of how it interacts with other language.
Say you learned the word artificial. Simply learning that this word means: “something not real or fake” is less useful than knowing how to combine it with its frequent noun pairings: artificial fruit, artificial flavor, artificial colors, artificial flowers, artificial intelligence. Some time spent brainstorming these can be time extremely well spent. After all, a word like fake is actually used quite differently: That painting is a fake, it’s not artificial. That dollar bill is a fake, meaning counterfeit, but it’s not artificial. In neither of these examples, is artificial suitable, even though it still has a meaning that is closely associated with fake.
English speakers know this, but second language learners need these pairings to not mismatch vocabulary. Without this kind of work, funny combinations can occur that give someone away as being not entirely familiar with the language. For example, someone said to me recently that they hoped I had a good moment instead of having a good time. To a learner of English, time and moment carry similar connotations, right? So they may not catch how odd their combination of good moment sounds.
By focusing on word associations or collocations, you integrate new vocabulary with vocabulary that you are already familiar with. This has the effect of strengthening both. Squeaky, for example, is strengthened by toy, door, shoe, mouse, but those nouns are also being reinforced. These associations build memory links that assure us, when we go to use any descriptive, that we are pairing it appropriately. And here’s why it matters: improving language association by taking a little time to think of its likely partners can produce less hesitation in your thought processes, and this has the beautiful side effect of easing fluency.
Another way to do this is to also order or classify words. If you’re an advanced learner, working on ordering or classifying words that have similar meaning can be highly effective. Are there synonyms for words that contain nuances in meaning? For example, something can be sad, depressing, devastating, heartbreaking, catastrophic, unfortunate, hard, or rough. It can also be a bummer or a downer. Could you order these ways of describing an event from low to high or best to worst? Which one would you say to someone if they just lost their spouse? What would you say to someone who lost their job? What about if someone just lost 10 bucks or misplaced their keys? That’s really depressing isn’t as appropriate as, oh, that’s unfortunate or bummer. But if someone just lost a loved one, that’s a downer is less appropriate. Do you see what I mean? Ordering or classifying is another technique that can be used in your sessions and done with your language coach in order to understand the nuances in a way that can help you as an outsider start to perceive those differences. It can help you distinguish between slight differences in meaning or classification and also enhance your retention by building deeper understanding around vocabulary that is generally less forward.
The second technique you need to start using is to collect examples of usage and salient examples of usage. Rather than focusing on understanding what something means in another language, try to remember that usage is meaning. Many languages have one word for something that has two words with very nuanced meaning in another language and vice versa. Take for instance the words shadow and shade. These 2 nouns, which can also be verbs, can be quite difficult for non-English speakers to differentiate between.
Recently, I walked the Camino, France to Spain, alongside a lot of second English language learners. Often I would hear the word shadow used where people meant shade. Things like, let’s take this route because we can walk in the shadows. To help with this particular difficulty, I recommend recording sentences like: When the sun shines behind our back, we can see our shadow. That’s my shadow right there on the ground. A shadow is made by light or the sun. But shade is created by trees and their leaves. I’d explain that in Indonesia they put on performances using shadow puppets. I’d explain that to say someone is in another person’s shadow means they aren’t seen as clearly. The other person overshadows them.
Whereas shade is used very differently. Trees are strongly associated with shade. Trees provide shade. It’s cooler in the shade than in the sun. In the afternoon, there is less shade than in the early hours of the day. I prefer sitting in the shade while we eat so that the sun is not shining directly in my face. Can you see how these examples help fill in meaning and the nuances between these two words? Because shadow and shade can be used as verbs, I can also say the trees shade the path as an action, or that we can shadow someone at their work if you want to learn about their occupation. All this deeper processing of language creates visual images in our mind. These mental images lend to stronger recall of the language.
Try to foster personal connection with vocabulary words. What do we mean by that? Whenever possible, try telling stories about yourself, injecting new Arabic vocabulary that you’ve recently learned to connect the past with the new concepts. Or try to give personal opinions to fuse the new language you’ve come across with personal expressions of your own inner thoughts or experience.
For example, if I learn the verb to retire, maybe I talk about how my father-in-law retired at 70, but that I hope to retire before I turn 60. Maybe I tell a story about someone I met who retired too late and regretted it because their spouse died before they could enjoy those years and do all that they had planned. The important thing is to root the new vocabulary in something personal and to demonstrate its usefulness to my own storage mechanisms. Having these examples recorded in a short story of my own can evoke strong memories, attitudes, or feelings, and when associated with new language, this can lead to better retention of vocabulary.
This goes along with a lot of other things we’ve said so far. A powerful way to help vocabulary stick is to promote imagery around language. Anytime you can quickly capture language with visual representation—that is, drawings, diagrams, illustration, video, even people watching—this can further solidify language as well. The personal investment of visuals that you take time to create can be memorable.
Playing something like Pictionary, for example, can make it easier to remember words that learners labor to conjure and draw. For visual learners, bringing an image with them to the session gives their brain something further to hook into. You relate language to something present in the physical world, and then recall of these images may forever be part of retrieving a particular word.
Even taking pictures of a sign, for example, in order to learn a written phrase, something you discovered when you were walking past or driving, can make it likely that you will remember it better. Take a picture in a store of something you didn’t know the Arabic word for. Before you show your language coach the picture, try to describe all around the object or image and see if your language coach can guess what it is and then show them. Time will tell, but my guess is that it will form a memorable experience that aids in your recall for years to come.
And here’s the last tip: provide interval or delayed spacing of encounters with new language. Now, how can you do this? Don’t get me wrong, I am not encouraging a system where you use flashcards to review. If you are learning language in an immersive or intensive program, vocabulary is going to start coming too fast to commit to flashcards. And in my opinion, this can be an inefficient use of time.
Instead, revisit audio content that’s been created for you, that is long stories or recordings of language used in context from your previous sessions. This gently reactivates language you met days, weeks, or months ago with minimal effort. If you told a story about being laid off from a job after learning the noun unemployment, and then your language coach recorded the story for you, and in it you discovered new concepts like being fired, laid off, application process, relistening to this recording multiple times over the course of several weeks is going to give you the chance to re-encounter that language again in a meaningful way.
Sure, throughout a language session you heard the new vocabulary used many times, but you need to create an interval spacing between encounters to help that language stick. Hearing it and pushing yourself to use it again the following day, a week later, and especially a month later is another key to retention. Listen to that recording again with your language coach and discuss the concepts contained within it one more time. Provide for yourself subsequent reoccurrence and retrieval experiences. Keep wrapping around this content to quickly pop up vocabulary you worked hard to understand in previous sessions. And I promise you, this last technique will go a long ways in terms of your vocabulary retention.
Don’t lean on your coach to be responsible for reviewing your vocabulary. They’re creating resources for you that become endless content for review on your own time. However, bringing those back into your sessions and discussing those concepts activates and reactivates that vocabulary again and again for yourself. It’s a very effective review and retention exercise.
Because many of these activities demand a deeper level of processing alongside the reactivation of old known words in connection with the new, they each hold the potential of enhancing your long-term storage, at least according to linguistic professor Anita Sokeman, who I would like to thank for inspiring and filling out a lot of the concepts that I had in mind for this episode, with her chapter called “Current Trends in Teaching Second Language Vocabulary”.
I would also like to mention that these are just a few of the many ways that one can go about creating stronger language pathways, association, and memory aids. There are probably a million ways to do it and some of them just require time and opportunity for speaking in Arabic, which signals to our brain that it is necessary language and useful.
I hope you found these tips of value. And as always, I hope your language acquisition experience is enjoyable as it is effective.
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