Tip #1 – Set up your cell phone to use the language you’d like to study. – Go to the menu, find settings, locate language and change it to Spanish, Chinese, whatever you would like to learn. If you ever get stuck you can go and change it back.

Tip #2 – Take a look at the buttons you normally push and begin associating those items with the new vocabulary. – This is a great way to master simple words and phrases with little or no effort. For example, each time you open up your cell phone you’ll see, (in the case of Spanish), “mensajes” instead of “messages”, “juegos” instead of “games” and “llamdadas hechas” instead of “calls made.”

These words begin to stick once you see them again and again. Before you know it you’ll recognize the Spanish word just as quickly as the English one.

Tip # 3 – When you have downtime, take out your cell phone and start hitting buttons. – You’ll be surprised at all the vocabulary you can learn by just playing with the different menu items. Some things you’ll recognize immediately and others you’ll be able to guess just by where you find them.

As you probably know, the more contact you have with the language the better. That is particularly true of vocabulary. Seeing a word for the first time and then not seeing it again is a recipe for a very limited vocabulary. You have to get the repetitions needed to help move the information into long term memory.

You also need to see things in context. With a cell phone, you begin to see relationships between words of the same category. For example, the category “llamadas” is “calls” in English.