Tuesday's Tip for Language Learning #8: Improving Awareness/Attention
From Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star ATTENTION/AWARNESS Awareness/attention is critical to memory -- of anything. If you did not see something, you cannot remember it. If you saw something but did not notice details, you cannot remember it. If you did notice some details in passing but did not pay particular attention to them, you cannot remember them. Awareness and attention are key to remembering words, grammars, and other linguistic phenomena needed to be a successful language learner. The better you become at being aware of the right things and paying enough attention to them to stuff them into your memory, the faster you will acquire a new language. Let's take a look at some examples. Words Rather than trying to remember a word as a whole, try paying attention to components of the word. How many syllables are there? What does the word sound like? What are the pieces of the word (the root, prefix, suffix)? Is there anything else unique abou...