Of all the possible tools available to help out English language Learners (ELLs) acquire vocabulary, the use of emotions is one of the most powerful because "we are learning that emotions are the result of multiple brain and body systems that are distributed over the whole person". If we go one step further and connect emotions to memories, we have a very effective set of teaching and learning tools. This procedural Teaching Note, looks specifically at how the use of Personal Memory Associations (PMAs) and their link to the emotions significantly help ELLs personalize, internalize and learn lexical items.