How do you 'learn' new words? What's the magic?

 A lot of people, including my friends, have asked me how to learn new words in English. They further report that they increasingly dispossess words that they thought they had learned. They ask me what could be the possible reason for this linguistic dementia, and how to address it.

I would like to answer in the form of a story. Suppose you go to a party and you find out that you don't know any single soul you are to dine with that evening. So you start introducing yourself to them. Imagine they are, say, 30 in number, and that they are all lining up to shake hands and exchange names with you.

You get to know the first person; the person tells his name, say it's Mr. Burdovsky, a Russian. And then there is Mr. Schimdt, the German, followed by Mr. Hobuchandra, the Indian, and so on.

By the time you meet number 30, I bet you'd forgotten the name of the first person you just met.

Now, imagine again you meet one of the attendees later that week in some other place. Say you stumbled onto Mr. Schimdt at the grocery store, and you two recognize each other, stand together for a while, chat a bit and get to know each other a little more. The chances are less likely now, that any of you wouldn't recognize the other when you meet in future.

So it boils down to this: learning a word is like getting to know a person. The more intimately and in detail you know them, the more is the chance for you to remember and recall.

That's the magic I know.

So next time you decide to be familiar with a word and plan to 'own' it for good, be sure to:

a) Look at it closely, its letters, stress; pronounce it and 'get to know' it physically.

b) Think about this word; 'spend time' with it as if you are spending time with a person. Regard it as a new friend of yours.

c) Write it in your notebook; make sentences with it - using it - three or more. Look at it from different angles in your sentences. Look at the word class (adjective, noun, verb, adverb) it belongs to.

d) After you feel that you really have a good introduction to the word, move on. But be sure to 'see that word' again a couple of days later, i.e. revisit the page of the notebook where you recorded your first encounter with the word. Go over your sentences that you wrote. Write one or two sentence more with it. Make it your close friend.

But most importantly, you have to read a lot to meet words that are used suitably in sentences. Random picking up of words from dictionary for the purpose of memorization is like stopping a stranger and trying to get to know him. Without relationships, such acquaintances don't hold on.

Reading gives you tenable relationships. You can pick up words in the flow of the reading that you are submerged in. By this way, you can have a very clear understanding of the uses of the words in actual text.

Just as your friend's friend is to you, so are unfamiliar words in relation to what you read. You remember them well if there is an established connection.

So read a lot, look up the meaning of the unfamiliar word in a dictionary, develop a 'feel' for the word, write sample sentences in your notebook, and visit your 'friend' again a couple of days later.

I'm sure you'll make lots of friends this way. Cheers! 

On Chinese Beaches, The Face-Kini Is In Fashion

In China, it's the height of the tourist season for Qingdao's famed beaches. But while many of the town's visitors want to enjoy the sand and water, they're not so wild about sunbathing. So they often resort to a local tradition: the face-kini, a sort of light cloth version of a ski mask.

Often paired with a long-sleeved shirt, the face-kini reportedly costs from $2.40 to $4; many residents simply make their own, out of old clothes. But observers could be forgiven for thinking they've stumbled onto a vacation community for superheroes in Qingdao, a city across the East China Sea from South Korea.

The newspaper says, the head-cover reflects "an ancient sentiment in China, like numerous other countries: a terror of tanning."

In many cultures, a tan doesn't imply health and leisure, as it often does in Western advertising. Instead, it's seen as a connection to outdoor work, and the peasantry. Preserving one's pale skin, the thinking goes, implies that you lead a pampered, successful life.

Of course, there's another way to accomplish that goal, and still beat the heat: visit an indoor pool. And that's what Chinese folks do by the tens of thousands. But even that has created a stir.

Photos of a few of China's gargantuan pools and water parks made news earlier this month — in part for the mass of humanity that seems to fill every foot of available space, and in part because web surfers were scandalized by what they called unsanitary conditions.

The Chinese bulletin board site posted several photos, showing thousands of people enjoying their (very) close proximity to one another. More than one commenter on the story had the same idea: "dense phobia."

a. What is a face-kini?

b. How is tanning viewed in some cultures?

c. How are Chinese avoiding tan?

d. What are the contextual meaning of the words: 'stir', 'gargantuan', 'web surfers', and 'dense phobia'?