tuve ocasión de

In short

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  tuve ocasión de

  I had the chance to

Why it looks that way

Tener ocasión de is to get the chance to do it. Me tocó is it fell to me, often the unpleasant kind

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

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  Tuve ocasión de conocerlo en Madrid

  I had the chance to meet him in Madrid

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• lo recuerdo como si fuera ayer — I remember it like it was yesterdayphrase
• no me lo esperaba — I didn't expect itphrase
• por poco — nearlyphrase
• que yo recuerde — as far as I rememberphrase
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