You’re welcome, Tzipi!

Hope the article is helpful to you!

Thanks, Sergio.

Good to see you’re still around!

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the comment.

That could be a great idea, indeed!
I would love to hear how you will be doing with it.

The sky is pretty much the limit with mind maps. I love them.

One of the most important convictions I have when it comes to learning a new language is that self-management is the most important thing. You can never learn a new language if you (yourself, your mind) keep sabotaging your efforts.

This MAY be less of a problem for those who have a strong passion for learning languages and want to dedicate their lives to become a polyglot. But for everyone else it is.

The Language-Learning Obstacle buster was made with this in mind.

As for the vocabulary, I’ve never used Anki or anything like that. Although I’ve used a similar approach — learning words first from the language-learning materials and later from “real-life” stuff (books, TV, the Internet etc.).
I write the newly learned words down to review them in certain intervals.

I even do that with sentences that illustrate certain grammar rules that I tend to forget, or re-reading a piece with many complicated words in it. ( I will have an article up soon that explains this in detail…)

If you’re already capable of reading well in your target language, then that’s an excellent way to learn and maintain your vocabulary. If you read a lot, you will get exposed to the words pretty much without the need for techniques or methods. This is especially effective for passive vocabulary.

To increase your active vocabulary (words that you can recall and use in speech and writing) you need to make an effort to actively use words from your passive vocabulary.

Why not write 3 words from your PV down every morning that you will use during the day? (if you’re in the country and hanging around with locals this should be easy. If not, use language exchanges or even do it in writing if you don’t like that.)

As I’ve been very busy lately, the only thing I CURRENTLY do is directly making a few sentences with a word I don’t know or couldn’t recall. But this is easy for me to do as I practically speak Spanish all day long.

There are of course plenty of ways to improve your vocabulary, but there’s no one method that outperforms the others by 1000%.

We will keep searching, though. 😉

Thanks for the contribution, Brian.

And let me know how it goes with your vocabulary mind map.

Thanks for your comment, Stanislaw.

Great to hear you’re still going strong!
Many people of your age think they can’t learn anymore.

I see the two obstacles you mention as basically the obstacle AND the solution.

1. Obstacle = A sincere lack of time.
2. Solution = Be realistic.

Some would advise you to rearrange your day, but who am I to suggest that you haven’t already.

Besides, even with the most advanced time-management techniques you can’t have more than 24 hours in a day. (Something you generally realize once you start implementing them.) 🙂

Having said that, many people who say they don’t have the time actually do have it. They bring that up too easily in order to have an excuse not to commit themselves. Or they haven’t really build up their language-learning time yet.

Therefore, I won’t put this issue on the map. But if you plan to use it, I recommend YOU do. (You may want to elaborate a bit on the obstacle and the solution, though.)

Personalization is the key here; documenting your personal obstacles and weaknesses, and finding solutions to them.

Thanks very much for the contribution!

I think I will adapt it for that purpose. what do you think? how do you learn vocab?

Thanks for your comment, Henry.

And, good point!

I made it big on purpose to include many general language-learning obstacles that people could have.

So, it’s likely that you’ll find a few that aren’t a problem for YOU.

Therefore I recommend that you delete them from the map.

If it’s still too big, then you could drop the daily review and only check the problem once it starts to bother you.

The only problem with not reviewing daily is that you sometimes forget the obstacles and thus, you don’t recognize them when it matters. Sometimes, when you’re discouraged by something, you’re already too far gone to go and check the map.

This could lead to lost time and maybe even giving up learning a new language completely. A situation you probably wouldn’t be in if you had recognized the obstacle immediately.

Hope that helps.

It just takes too much time to review the map every day.