How I group the phrases into themes

You may or may not have noticed, but each day's phrases usually center around a certain theme. For example, the other day I wrote three answers to an invitation to go to a dance club:

I'm up for anything.

I don't know about that.

There's no way.

There are a lot of ways to organize phrases. For example, I could teach 3 different phrases that all use the word "anything":

I'm up for anything.

Anything goes around here.

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Or I could present 3 phrases with similar but slightly different meanings:

I'm up for anything.

It's up to you.

Whatever you decide is fine.

I've used each of these types of themes in the past. But for the past few months, I've only been using the first kind of theme - phrases that are all used in a similar situation. There are a few reasons for this.

First of all, it's easier for me to come up with the ideas when they're all connected to a certain situation. That's because thinking of realistic situation is the hardest part of the writing process. Right now, I have a window open on my desktop with a list of dozens of useful English phrases and expressions that I haven't been able to use on the site yet. Here are a few that are on the list:

• take some time to ___
• chances are...
• That's not bad, considering.
• You have an obligation to ___
• Just take it easy.
• Let's move on

...and so on. I haven't used these yet because I haven't been able to imagine a specific situation where these phrases would naturally fit. But once I imagine a situation, it's easy to think, "OK, what else would I say here? What would the other person say? How would a 3rd person describe this if they were watching our conversation?" Since imagining situations is hard and thinking of phrases is easier, it's fastest if I re-use a single situation for more than one phrase.

There's another reason I've chosen to organize by situations. If you learn items that are too similar in meaning or opposite in meaning at the same time, it can actually cause "interference" and make it more difficult to learn. I came across this problem when first learning Japanese. I learned the words for "left" and "right" at the same time. I remembered both words, but I could never remember which one meant "left" and which meant "right". It took me months to finally get it straight.

So that's why I avoid teaching phrases that are similar in meaning on the same day, or presenting casual and formal versions of the same idea. Overall, I think it's just a lot easier to remember when the phrases all mean something different but can be used in a similar situation.