【英語學習】Build up your own vocabulary lexicon by BBC Learning English & Obsidian.

My personal vocabulary lexicon after 1 week of practice with Obsidian.

Either you’re trying to learn English or just got the poor score from English test like my friend. If you ever eager to expand your vocabulary lexicon, here is the learning strategy which I put in practice for a week and achieved milestones I have never expected!

Since I was a student, memorizing vocabulary has never become something enjoyable. Too many words, unrelative, without a topic and no place to use. Even if you were in your flow with certain topic and digged so deep to obtain the knowledge you discovered, by using hierarchical note taking system like hand-writing on notebook or Notion, neither of those can keep my learning footprint sticked together.

Footprint on the beach. Photo was taken in Bowen Queensland

And here is my unexpected combination came up!

One of my first idea was trying to build up my English learning habit by watching those short BBC Learning English videos, it has certain advantages to take from:

1. Short enough to watch without any pressure, 1 video per day is also acceptable.
2. United Kingdom accent. (Truly useful for my daily conversation in Australia and get used to IELTs English listening test)
3. Clear articulation with moderate speaking speed.
4. High quality and vivid heading which were written by The Independent, The Times, Washinton Post etc. (You will be benefited by their paronomasia using skill)
5. Around certain topic. (Highly related with IELTs English writing test)
6. Offer explanations and examples down below.
7. Not only formal words to learn but also have fun words like piggybacks, fancy a cuppa to know! (Daily life-based vocabulary with so much joy and unexpected way to use)

At the same time Obsidian was sitting in the middle of my desktop for more than 2 years and arouse my attention, all I know was it has a cool graph view like neural networks. After quick guild searching, I found out what special feature Obsidian has to solve my English learning pain point.

1. Zettelkasten, which was too hard to implement for me before but the exact idea to drive Obsidian work.
2. Two-way links. (Perfect feature for idea association)
3. Graph view. (Huge sense of accomplishment)

So how dose the English learning system work?

• Watch BBC Learning English videos and type down all three headlines. (help to improve my English typing skill and spelling accuracy at the same time)

Well categorized with “Politician” category.

• Use [[ ]] to mark down any words you’re not familiar with.
• Create Vocabulary cards one by one with explanation and examples. (Personally use Cambridge Dictionary to find the definition of new words)
• Use [[ ]] to mark down any words you’re not familiar with in your Vocabulary cards again! Here is where the magic happen!

The words can be used with “Argument” relative sentence, and example sentence has a new word “reconcile” that I didn’t know the meaning, mark it and keep creating vocabulary card!

Keep going.

Here you go, a silk of vocabulary!

By keep creating Vocabulary cards until you’ve known all the words, it’s like a long spider silk, all the new words and effort you put in will stayed tight with your own vocabulary lexicon like a spider web.

So far, you’ve reached the first milestone to own Vocabulary lexicon, but here are some more tips for you to stabilize the web even more!

• While writing explanation for the word, do not just roll down and copy it, but listen to the compere than write it down! (Listening and spelling practice at the same time)
• Use your own words to write examples, the more connections with your life or the world you know, the better.
• Mark any words that you think it’s the premium version of some very simple words you’ve know. (Refined your beginner level words, you can truly feel you ARE upgrading with those vocabulary you just learned!)

Searching the word ”Vivid” by “CTRL + F”, you can easily to find all the level up words you’ve learn!

• Encourage yourself to associate any words you’ve learned and mark it down: synonyms, antonym, specific emotion like angry, sadness, excitement or any positive, negative situation for this word to use. (Those process are how you pick up the suitable words to write down in your exam article or express in your daily life!)
• Congratulations, you are on the web of your own English learning journey!

Unfamiliar with normal ways of learning vocabulary like 30 words at a time, the total time to spend with this strategy is tremendous. You are likely to learn 10 words in 1 or even 2 hours of time. But it truly expends my knowledge with solid foundation and words using ability.

Building knowledge have never been so much time consuming for me, not just feel good about myself after creating whose cards, but the consequent is conspicuous by every time you come up with a connected words you learn.

If you ever use this strategy and found it’s helpful, feel welcome to leave a comment, give this article some applause (Up to 50!) or share your own Graph view and joy to my email: dong.jhe.wu@gmail.com

Wish you all the best from learning.