Throughout human history, people transmitted and learned new knowledge by means of storytelling, and some scientists argue that the human brain is wired to learn new information and acquire social skills, through storytelling.
Furthermore, the brain is all about connections, and memory does work by associating different ideas with each other and with sensorial information such as smell, images, sounds, and feelings.
How this applies to learning a language?
Learning new words without linking them in a meaningful way can be very inefficient as many of them would not remember. A better way to learn new information is to organize it in groups or categories that “make sense” and then associate these categories with images that can be read/seen as short stories.
For example, I made a drawing with this sequence of images: seed, roots, small plant, tree, and fruit falling from the tree. The sequence represents the life-cycle of a fruit tree and I believe that learning the new words in this contextualized way will help me to remember them.
An example on how to learn words with stories
- Chose a meaningful category
- Think about the items that belong to that category
- Draw a sequence of images, containing the items of the category, that tells a story
- Label the items in the language you want to learn