ABSTRACT
A primary reason why we humans are at the top of the food chain is that our brains have evolved to be able to organize experiences into patterns and learn from these patterns. The type of learning that goes on every day in our brains is what is often referred to as natural learning. Let's explore natural learning to see how it might inform our vocabulary teaching efforts. The brain learns by forming synapses, connections between brain cells, and the numbers of these cells and their synapses are staggering. The knowledge that you possess that enabled you to solve the puzzle is but a miniscule sample of the vast amount of knowledge that you learned naturally as you acquired English. The purpose of this activity is to make the point that we know a lot more about words than we realize and that words are often used together with other words in a pattern that we call collocation.
