Students always find it hard to remember the words they have learnt in the language classes. They repeat reading the words again and again after their teachers in the class. They copy the words down for 10 times or more on their exercise books. They do the dictation after class. But, it seems that words just escape them. No matter how hard they try, how desperately they force themselves not to forget the words they are taught, students will feel frustated in the end and give up. 

I have been there. I can still taste the salty tears of frustration back to the dark days trying my best to recite words lists for tests and exams. 

Today, when I walked by one of a classroom where Miss Chen, one of my colleague, taught her grade six students some words about diseases like toothache, fever etc, I could smell the frustration in the class. 

Students read those new words several times, and then were told to take one minute to try to remember them by heart. All the students used their own ways to remember those words. When time was up, maybe one minute or two, the whole class spell the words as the teacher requested. Then, students took turns to ask and anwer questions about their health problems with the sentence structure, like "What's wrong with you?" "I have a fever." "You should see the doctor."

I doubt that how much the students could remember about the words. They might remember how to say the words, even how to spell them. However, chances are that these words might be their receptive words, but they could never use them freely in daily conversation or even writing tasks as their productive words . 

Why is that? Because they have not get the whole picture of the words. And they were not given opportunity to use them of their real will. Words will only be one's productive words after they have been used several times in real situation. Teachers should set more  tasks for students to use the words. Only after students apply the words in their talks and writings, they can say that they really k