English vocabulary coding, a way to learn easily

The English vocabulary coding method, also known as coding and keyword coding, is called the Keyword Method in English. This method, which is used to make English words easier and faster to remember, is based on finding a familiar concept, kind of story, in the native language that has a pronunciation similar to the English word. To find out about other ways of learning vocabularies read “Ten ways to increase English vocabulary“.

After encountering the English word at other times, one will recall it faster and will find the original word in his or her mind. By studying the following explanations you can get acquainted with and use this method. Note that this method might be less useful if the learner is going to use the words learned through this method in spoken.

The reason for using the coding method to remember words

Researchers say that one of the most effective ways to remember different topics is to use imagination. This method is very old and its foundations can be found even in the knowledge used among the ancient Greeks.

They believed that human memory operates on two branches of imagination and association. Imagination means imaging in the mind and associating means communicating between different information in the human mind. It is interesting to know that the coding method precisely employs these two elements in learning English vocabulary process, and thus, this leads to positive results.

How to use vocabulary coding

This method is chosen as a Persian sentence, some of which have a phonetic similarity to the English word. Also, the meaning of the English word must be included in this sentence. For example, if we put the word bachelor in English, the sentence that will be used as code might be: “بچه لر اگرچه لیسانس داره اما همیشه مجرد می مونه.”

Thus the word “بچه لر” represents the English word, and the two words “لیسانس” and “مجرد” represent its meanings in this sentence. Note that language constraints make these sentences usually have a humorous aspect that in turn will help them learn more. Obviously, it is possible to use coding method in all languages of the world and anyone can use this method to preserve English vocabulary or any other language according to their native language.

Limitations of vocabulary coding

This method is used when you are dealing with an English word and need to remember its meaning. But on the contrary, when you have the meaning or equivalent of the word, this method is not suitable for remembering the English word you want.
To remember that the Bachelor has both لیسانس and مجرد meaning, you should:
1. Pull out the keyword (bachelorبچه لر از )
2. Drag the image according to the keyword (جمله ” بچه لر اگرچه لیسانس داره اما همیشه مجرد می مونه ” از بچه لر)

Drag the meaning of the word out of the image (two words bachelor and single from “دو کلمه لیسانس و مجرد از “بچه لر اگرچه لیسانس داره اما همیشه مجرد می‌مونه”

The clearer the keyword and the more appropriate the sentence in the mother tongue, the easier the process of remembering meaning will be. Coding method is very effective at linking new information to the previous familiarity, but it does not help much in the process of getting new information in mind. Therefore, it might not help much either while an English word is chosen to be tied with an idea in productive skills, speaking and writing.

Other examples of coding done for a few words

Postpone : به تعویق افتادن/عقب انداختن
: پُست ِ پونه به تعویق افتاد.
Qualify : صلاحیت پیدا کردن

کو آن لیفی که صلاحیت حموم کردن مارو داره؟
Peril : خطر، خطرناک
: مایع ظرف شویی پریل خیلی خطرناکه، چون خیلی لیزه.
Predict: پیش گویی کردن، پیش بینی کردن: معلم پیش بینی کرد که پری دیکته رو 20 می‌گیره.

Coding method has a variety of techniques, and much can be gained through reading the books of Tony Buzan and Harry Lorraine. This approach is based on a more general topic of memory and learning that Tony Buzan first explored in the 1970s. The key point to note is that the codes used for each English word are intermediaries to the original word and should not be over-colored in the mind to accommodate the original word in memory. Note that we don’t have to use coding to learn all the words because it’s time-consuming. This method is usually used to memorize difficult words.

The abstract of this article:

In this article, we discuss the English vocabulary coding method, which is an easy way to learn English vocabulary and provided some easy-to-remember methods. It is recommended to read the article “A study of English vocabulary learning using the dual coding theory“.