Brain Exercises for Word Nerds

Your friends won't play Scrabble with you. You do the Sunday "NYT's" crossword puzzle in ink. You read the dictionary for fun. Yeah, you're a word nerd.

Exercising the "word part" of your brain contributes to better writing. Here are some exercises to give the word nerd in you a work out.

1. Read books about linguistics. Pick up an abridged copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which provides the history of words. Another good read? "Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," which provides the stories behind common English fables and folklore. Great beach reads for word nerds.

The Optimal Learning Environment for Studying Mnemonics

Using mnemonics to learn a foreign language requires a slightly different study strategy to other disciplines. Because it involves memorisation, there is no need for a study group to help understand certain concepts, like in mathematics or physics, and because it involves not reading a text so much as imagining it as vividly as possible, any distractions from the outside environment are much more disrupting.

Because learning with mnemonics involves a lot more fantasy than other methods, there are certain times and environments that are more suitable than others.

Ten Fabulous Ways To Learn English Real Quick

1 Become aware of your preferred learning style!

You are either a visual learner, a kinaesthetic learner, an auditory learner or a physical learner.

You need to try to learn English in the way that you prefer to learn. For instance, if you are an auditory learner, you may consider buying an audiobook from Audible. co. uk, or from anywhere else online. I quite prefer buying it from there because it is simple and the book arrives almost instantly on my Iphone. You can try listening to podcasts, to YouTube videos, to lectures. If you are a visual learner, you need to try to watch and visualize as much as possible. For instance, you could watch videos, visualize the words you are learning using the various memory methods I am going to mention in future blog posts, such as visualizing the letters of the new words jumping off the page and talking to each other. You can write on flashcards and create learning maps by using color, and your creativity. You can write symbols for each word that you need to memorize. If you are a physical learner, you may prefer to move around while you are studying, perform each word as if you were an actor or an actress, with the voice of a mouse or of a sultry woman.

As a kinaesthetic learner, you could touch the words you need to learn by either imagining the words you are touching as walking on the table; you could also play Scrabble by creating the words with the Scrabble letters.