mdolla: Workout Your Brain By Learning A New Word Every Day, You Will Get Smarter

Have you ever had the feeling of speechless because you are running out of words to speak your mind? Or have you ever read a word that you are familiar with but suddenly cannot recognize its meaning? Sometimes there also might be the case that you have a word in mind but you forget how to spell it right. These situations do not prove you are not intelligent enough but somehow show that your brain needs some more training.

Workouts aren’t just for your body, your brain needs that too.

The brain, anatomically speaking, cannot be called a muscle, though it is partly composed of muscle tissue.

There’s a very good reason though why experts use the analogy of exercising your brain as if it were a muscle. In both cases, you can be sure that if you don’t use it you’ll lose it. Evidence suggests that mental stimulation improves brain function^[1] whilst also reducing the risk of cognitive decline and related diseases.

So what kind of exercise does a brain need? Probably learning more words.

Your body needs exercises, your brain needs new words.

Learning new words stimulates our brains in more than one way; it activates the brain’s visual as well as auditory processes.

We learn words by simulating how they sound and visualizing the concepts to which they are attached. Instead of taking time to sound out the words that the eyes see, the brain trains itself to recognize the words that are frequently seen together. ^[2] That’s why sometimes when a word is misspelled yet you can easily recognize it.

Whenever we read a word, the visual cortex of the brain is stimulated to help us recognize a word. With a continuous practice, our brains will get used to associating images and concepts. This helps to improve our memory because it becomes easier for our brains to recall the previous concepts with the existing stimuli.

Research also suggests that the brain is a dynamic organism.^[3]

“The brain changes as we learn more vocabulary, no matter the age, as vocabulary is learned at all ages.”

When we try to acquire a new word, the gray matter density increases as a result of learning, despite the age.

Researchers have performed a brain image analysis to show that people with similar verbal IQs can have different verbal knowledge levels when they try to increase the gray matter density through vocabulary acquisition. In other words, learning a new word is a practice for our brains to grow so as to improve our intelligence.

Putting new words learning to another level and explore new realities.

So you see how learning new words has helped you train up your brain. What about putting new words learning to another level?

Learning a new language is, of course, an unsurpassable method for acquiring a huge amount of new vocabulary in a short amount of time. Aside from stimulating our brains though, a language also teaches us new concepts, and new realities.

Jay Rubin, the English translator to famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami, has illustrated this point finely:

“It’s still fascinating to sit back and realize that my brain is working in a totally different way when I’m functioning in Japanese. I very often feel I’m writing original -almost original- fiction. What’s on the page is Murakami’s prose, not his language.”^[4]

Japanese and English are vastly different; aside from containing very different sounds, they are composed of completely different grammatical structures. According to Rubin, Japanese also contains what he refers to as “intangibles,” words that express concepts that don’t exist in other languages.

These “intangibles” can of course be found across many languages. They illustrate the importance of having a high competence in the native language if you’re living in a different country and want to truly immerse yourself in its culture.

Apart from those foreign concepts, new words in our own language can also teach us new concepts, even as adults. Need to learn something technical that you know almost nothing about? It is very likely that you will have to learn a whole set of new vocabulary.

Learning new words will not only improve and increase our brain function, but also give us the ability to open up new worlds we may not have known existed.

Kickstart with your brain workout schedule!

The way we use language is closely associated with our brain activity. Maintaining a large vocabulary is a sign of intelligence, and it also helps us with our mental health. So start from today, try to learn new words every day.

There are easy ways for you to learn new vocabulary anywhere anytime. Whether it’s through doing the daily crossword in the paper or trying out a fun new app like Dictionary.com. Just one click, you will see the word of the day with clear explanation and examples which allows you to fully understand its meaning and usage. Learning new vocabulary is a great way to spend your time (no matter how you use it).

For those who like to take on challenges, learning an entire new language might also be your option. You can try out some apps like Duolingo which provides word quizzes for you and motivates you to stay on track by keeping a learning record. If you have some more spare time, you can also take a language class to practise more with fellow classmates.

But my favorite way of learning new words and phrases is always from watching movies and listening to different types of songs. When I see or hear anything I’ve never come across before, I’d immediately put that down in my note (well it’s handy because I’m just jotting that down in my phone’s note app.)

One single new word every day will eventually make up a big list of words. Start from small and you’ll end up big!

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

[1]	^	Havard Medical School: Can brain stimulation aid memory and brain health?
[2]	^	Time: Your Brain Learns New Words By Seeing Them Not Hearing Them
[3]	^	Academia.edu: Vocabulary and the Brain: Evidence from Neuroimaging Studies
[4]	^	The Rumpus: THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH JAY RUBIN