Should You Learn Phrases Or Words When Learning A Language?

You will often hear that you should learn phrases when learning a language, as these are far better than learning single words.

This may seem strange as you where probably made to learn a list of words if you studied a language in school, so is there any logic to this?

Well yes, in general, learning phrases will be better than learning words, but it also does not mean that learning words is pointless and I will go through exactly why this is below.

Context Is Very Important

When you are learning a language, context is everything. If you are able to give something context, it is much more likely to be comprehensible.

If you are just learning words in isolation, there is no context. You have the words and that is it. If you remember it, that’s good, but generally this is more difficult, simply because of the lack of context.

If you learn phrases, you get context. Even if there is a word in the phrase that you do not know, you can probably still work it out, or at least have a rough idea of the concept of the phrase, simply from the context from the other words around it. 

You can very quickly see how this is going to help you progress so much faster in a language than just learning single words.

(You can read more about – What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?)

Phrases Sound More Natural

Phrases are also going to be much more natural sounding, which is important when you want to actually speak.

If you only learn single words, you will sort of have to string them all together and while a lot of time that should work, there will be a few occasions where you just sound weird. 

Phrases are actually how native speakers say things, so by learning these, you are instantly going to sound like you know the language.

Phrases Show You Grammar

Phrases are also displays of the language in action, which means you can see how grammar works. While you cannot learn every aspect of grammar from phrases, you can certainly get a feel for it, which of course a single word will not have.

Phrases are going to just generally show you how words interact and even if you do not realise that they are doing this, you will just be subconsciously processing all this information. 

Should You Only Learn Phrases?

Phrases are extremely beneficial, but of course you cannot just learn these and expect to make progress in a language.

You have to see them as bricks of information that you can use to build a solid foundation, but really you need so much more. 

You will need to produce your own sentences, and really do to this you will need to know some more vocabulary.

Perhaps you learn a simple phrase like “where are the toilets” …if you learn some extra vocabulary, you suddenly have a whole plethora of phrases “where is the bakery” “where is the bus stop” and so on.

As you can see that while phrases are great, learning words does have its place too, in fact, doing both is really going to allow you to make the best progress in the shortest amount of time.

Can You Just Learn Words?

I often get asked if you can just learn words, rather than phrases. Normally this isn’t the best approach, as I’ve discussed above, but there can be a time when does work.

If you pair learning words with a lot of immersion, it can work very well.

Immersion is going to make sure you see the words in its natural context and help you learn them that little bit better.

I have done this myself and found it to be very useful. I learn individual words using flash cards, and then do a lot of immersion.

I was originally learning the words, and hoping they would appear in immersion, which is a bit inefficient. Sometimes they would, sometimes they would not.

However, now I take the more sensible approach of taking words I do not know from my immersion and adding them to flash cards. Then all I have to do is learn the flash cards and rewatch whatever I was immersing in, knowing the word will appear again.

I have found this method to work a lot better than learning phrases and then extra vocabulary to mix into my phrases. 

Advanced Learners Will Find It Easy To Just Learn Words

A lot of these methods work a lot easier for advanced learners. At this point you are really only honing in your skills. You will have small gaps of knowledge that can be easily solved by learning a new word or two.

If you are a beginner, learning words through immersion may be too difficult as most of the words are going to be unknown to you.

If you are just starting out I would focus on phrases, and build a small core selection of these, then look to add some extra vocabulary to create your own sentences. As much as I think this method is inferior, for a beginner it works better.

Just keep working away at it and when you feel ready, try and learn words through immersion, it’s tough, but you will get there.

Conclusion

As you can see, learning phrases and words are both important. In general, phrases will be a better place to start and you will see more progress from doing this, however, as you develop, you will need to change you process and start learning more individual words.

Language learning is a lot of trial and error for a while, but you will eventually work out a system that seems to be working for you, just keep working on it and you will start to get more comfortable with what you are doing.  

(You can read more about – What Is The Most Important Aspect Of Learning A Language?)