“Where’s Trutnov?” I asked.
“It’s about 100 kilometers…”
But then she stopped.
She looked embarrassed.
She said, “I know where it is. But I always get the words for ‘east’ and ‘west’ mixed up.”
And she didn’t know why.
A couple weeks later, while reviewing my Czech flashcards, I noticed I was doing the same thing – mixing up the words for “push” and “pull.”
And I didn’t know why.
But then, one day, as I was reading some truly thrilling language research, I found out!
The answer… interference theory!
Here’s how the writer described it:
“presenting semantically grouped L2 words to learners has a deleterious effect on learning.”
(Isn’t that lovely writing? Maybe he should try a spy novel next…)
And here’s how I would translate the writer’s description:
You learn two new words today. But because the words are similar (ex. east and west; push and pull) tomorrow and every other day for the rest of your life you mix up the two words. And that’s not good.
Advertisers have known this for a long time. They know that if you see a commercial for a Skoda and then immediately after you see a commercial for a Fiat, you’re less likely to remember which had the new brake system and which had the new heated seats. So instead, Fiat chooses to play their commercial after the one with the model selling toilet paper.
But what did we do in school? Exactly the opposite! We learned a list with all the fruits…a list with all the colors…a list with all the farm animals, and so on.
It seemed like a logical and organized way to build your vocabulary…but you can’t argue with research.
In one of the first studies done on this subject, it took students 7.2 repetitions to learn a list of non-related words while it took the second group 11.3 repetitions to remember a list of related words.
That’s a 35% difference!
Not bad…
And if you’d like to learn all my tips and tricks for building a powerful, strong and sexy English vocabulary, well, you can do that right here:
