What do you do when you can't remember a word in English?

Today I'm here to talk about different behaviors ESL students have when their minds simply go blank. One of these days I was eating grapes and then I stared at the grapes trying to remember the name "grape" and it didn't come at all. How come I can't remember such a basic word you learn during your first stage at an English school? Well, I'm not saying I let it get to me every time something like that happens. It keeps happening whether I want it or not. What I want to focus here is not on the desperate feeling that strikes you every time you remember you can't remember a word, but what you do with that.

I'd say there are many ways to deal with that. Many people just let it go and wait till the next moment they'll have the chance to read or hear that sentence or word somewhere. But many other people, me included here, sometimes keep stuck with that frustration until they finally do something to fix it. When I don't have much patience or time to waste, I just look up the word on a dictionary (usually an online dictionary) and try to let it kick in. But when I'm really willing to take the effort and brush up on my vocabulary, not only do I look up the word I forgot but also the words that combine with it. So let's take the word grape as an example to try to understand what I really do to get the most out of it.

ADJ.

juicy, sweet

lovely sweet grapes

| black, green, purple, white | seedless

QUANT.

bunch

VERB + GRAPE

eat, have | harvest, pick

The first grapes are harvested in mid-August.

| crush, tread

The peasants were treading the grapes in huge vats.

GRAPE + NOUN

harvest

So there we have it. The whole list of collocations that are used with the word grape. Now, instead of having the word grape as part of my active vocabulary in English, I included about 10 other words that combine with it. Adjectives, verbs, nouns, etc. The website I usually get those collocations from is "http://www.ozdic.com". I highly encourage you to bookmark it. It'll come always in handy. Take care!