Learn English Vocabulary

I was just thinking about how to learn English vocabulary. I like to give advice on how to study here in Ikoma (生駒).  I thought about using software like Supermemo, or Anki.  None of my students know about this software, but it is mostly English.  I wonder if there is any similar software in Japanese that students here can use easily (of course, Mnemosyne is available in Japanese, but it looks technical and that scares a lot of people away).  I think that students would benefit greatly if they had a nice easy way to review their vocabulary.

And a lot of these programs can incorporate sounds in them.  So students could study by listening and trying to say the answer.  Regular study is the best way to improve language skills.  It comes down to the old adage, ‘practice makes perfect’.  So why don’t students practice mmore?  I believe it is for two reasons.  One is that they don’t know how to motivea themselves.  That can be fixed with simple image techiques.  Another reason is they are busy.

It is hard to fix the ‘busy’ reason.  For most people, busy is an emotion.  They beileve they have many things to do and cannot change them.  ‘Busy’ makes us victims.  We are at the mercy of forces beyond our control when we say we are busy.

A central tenet of NLP is that people can almost always do the things they believe they cannot.  So students could become less busy by changing their schedules, but first they have to believe that they CAN change their schedules.

I can’t help change their beliefs, but I can try to lead by example.  The trick is to lead by example without moralizing about it.