Learning and memory go hand in hand because your brain processes the new things you’re learning together with the old information you already have. You also have two different areas of memory: short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory handles the new information received by the brain. It can only hold on to things for approximately 10-25 seconds. It also has limited capacity: it’s only possible to keep 4-7 things in mind at the same time. In contrast, long-term memory is like a nearly…
The previous article laid out the complex nature of vocabulary acquisition: new words are not learned instantly, but through a multi-stage, incremental process which normally proceeds from receptive to productive vocabulary knowledge. The first stages of this process are essential: learning the correct spelling and pronunciation and the precise meaning(s) of a word builds a solid foundation for your language skills as a whole. But the next step can be defined as critical: if a learner is not able to…
