Psychological effects and tricks to help you learn English

This article will not help you find out how to learn English with hypnosis in just two months. But we will tell you what features of the psyche you can use to learn English more effectively and quickly. These techniques will not harm your mental health and will help you to make learning and memorizing new information much easier.

1. The “yellow marker” effect
This psychological phenomenon occurs when we perfectly remember an object that stands out from other similar objects. For example, when you walk down the street, dozens of people are passing by. You will not pay attention to passersby in ordinary clothes, but a strange girl in an acid color dress and pink hair you will not forget for at least a couple of days.
By the way, this method is actively used by the media to manipulate our consciousness. So, some unimportant events are sometimes turned into major ones with the help of interesting reports, impressive photographs, etc. This usually happens when they want to divert our attention from something more important, something they would like not to show.
How to use: Suppose you have a word you can't remember, for example, "comb”. Try to "insert" this word into a set of words with contrasting themes: write yourself a list of 9 words on the topic of "food" (or any other, not related to beauty topic), and write comb as the last one. Now learn that dozen words the way you're used to. You will see that the "contrast" word is remembered first and fixed in your memory. This way you can learn all the words that you often meet, but cannot remember.
In addition, you can use this effect in other ways, the main idea being to make the learning process memorable. For example, underline or highlight the phrases you want to learn, study in an unfamiliar place, draw what you are learning, etc.

2. The authorship or generation effect
This psychological feature is best seen in adults and consists in the fact that a person remembers the material best when he or she has invented it. For example, if you are writing an explanatory essay, you will remember it better than reading someone else's text. And all because in the process of creating the essay, your brain actively worked and the information was fixed in memory.
How to use: You can use this effect when learning new words or grammatical constructions. For example, you need to learn 7 new words. Make a story with them, and you will remember them well. It is better if the story concerns you personally, and avoids abstract phrases.

3. The Incomplete Action Effect or Zeigarnik Effect
This phenomenon occurs when we remember incomplete actions better than completed ones. In other words, if you have not finished something and you have been distracted, after a while you will perfectly remember what you have been doing. If you finish your work and only then switched to the next task after a while memory will erase the memory of the first case. That's why at school and university all our knowledge would go away immediately after the exam.
How to use: For information not to be forgotten, it is necessary to keep it relevant to you. It means you should not stop studying English, even if you've reached the desired level of knowledge. For example, keep watching movies and TV series to draw modern vocabulary, read books in English in order not to forget how to construct sentences correctly, etc. Moreover, even if you have to buy definition essay now, with constant practice you will be able to do such work on your own.

4. The effect of interest
It is difficult to argue with this point: in fact, we easily remember things that are interesting to us. For example, we can easily forget to buy bread, but we can tell the content of our favorite TV series.
How to use: Only you can make English interesting. To do this, choose the methods of learning English that you like. For example, you can learn English through movies and TV shows, songs, and games.

5. The principle of limited memory
Scientists have managed to find out that our memory perfectly absorbs 7 +/- 2 units of information in one session. This is why, despite the popularity of "Learn 999 new words a day" techniques, we see few examples of people who have actually managed to do it. That's because short-term memory is not limitless.
How to use: Learn no more than 5-9 new words a day, then they will be well remembered and you will have time to repeat them. Choose the quality of memorization and not quantity.

So, now you know some features of our psyche that can be helpful to you. We hope that these simple techniques will help you improve your English.
There can be many such "techniques", the most important thing that a student of any age should understand is that the exam is an assessment of your knowledge that you have received for the semester or academic year. So, in order not to go crazy the night before the exam - solve your issues as they come up and prepare in advance for the exam. Learn, read, and study - it will work for you.