Today's topic is: Focus on phrases, not just single words, and don’t be like 99 % of people.

Have you spent many hours searching on the internet for how to effectively learn new vocabulary? Have you seen many methods but you don’t know what’s best for you?

You might come across that you need to learn 500 or even 1000 most used words in your target language if you want to have a proper conversation with people. It’s maybe true but how should I suppose to learn 500 or even 1000 words?

If you’re truly serious about your learning journey and you have the motivation to learn your target language, you need to focus on phrases and not single words without context.

Let’s have a look at what phrases are.

Phrases are words that naturally fit together in a language. With them, you can express a particular idea, and are often used by native speakers. If you learn phrases, you will more likely develop your confidence and fluency faster in your target language and it will also help you reduce mistakes you make.

You can learn phrases like these:

• Can you help me?
• Thanks so much.
• That sounds great.
• How can I help you?
• What time is our meeting?

Whether you are a beginner or advanced language learner, there are thousands of phrases you can learn because you will always use them in a conversation.

But it’s not just about phrases. The same can be applied to learning new vocabulary because it’s getting tiring to learn new words without context over and over. Let’s say you learn these new words: clarify, tremendous, hence, computer. You can learn them by heart and repeat them over and over.

Or you can simply put them in a context like this:

• Could you clarify the first point, please?
• Did you win? That's tremendous!
• I want to be fluent in French, hence I have to study every day.
• My computer is broken.

Learning new languages is an amazing long-term journey. You need to try many ways in order to reach your fluency. If you don’t know where to start, try learning phrases and new words in context. When we learn phrases and words in context, we’re more likely to recall them and use them in real conversations with native speakers.

Have a nice night.