own language, then you try to remember the translation in English. This
extra step slows both your speaking and your listening ability.
Trust me. It’s much better if you learn a phrase – a group of words. It’s
easy. You listen to someone speaking real English, and when you hear a new
word, you write it down. Or when you read a story and you see a new word,
you write it down. Only you don’t want to just write down that one word.
You want to write down the whole phrase or sentence that it’s in.
In other words, you learn the language in chunks. So, instead of just
writing down the word hate, you would write down John hates ice cream.
You would write down the whole phrase and its meaning.
It’s easy to look up words in an English language dictionary, which most students own. Phrases can
present more of a challenge, since they can’t always be translated literally. That’s why I recommend all
my students get a good idiomatic dictionary, or dictionary of English idioms. Idioms are common
phrases or sayings in a language. If you just search online for “dictionary of English idioms” you’ll
find a ready selection of these books to choose from.
Why do we do this? What’s the power of phrases? Well, for one thing,
phrases give you a lot more information. They give you much more
information than you would get from a single word. As a result, phrases are
easier to remember, because they have deeper meaning. They present you
with a kind of picture or story, especially when you get them from something
you are listening to or reading. When you hear, John hates ice cream, you
remember the whole little story. You remember who John is. You remember
that he had ice cream, and then you remember he hated it. He didn’t like it,
right? So you have all these extra pieces of information. This extra
information puts the word in context. It helps you remember the meaning of
the phrase as well as the meaning of that word! This might not seem like
