My Vocab Learning Strategy

Hey there again, guys :)

It’s crazy how time’s been flying lately, isn’t it?! You come back from summer break and in the blink of an eye, PC1 is just around the corner! Since the upcoming progress check will be all about vocabulary, the topic of today’s post is (big surprise, I know): vocab learning strategies.

Actually, I’ve got different strategies for the different languages I study, so there’s no such thing as the one strategy for me. The following strategy, though, will understandably be all about studying for English.

“Small talk”

When it comes to studying vocab, I admit I’m a bit weird. For me, a new word isn’t just a new word. It’s more like a new acquaintance – you’d never just meet someone and get right down to discussing world politics with them, would you? No. You’d probably start with small talk: a little chitchatting about the weather or how you both know the person who invited you to the party or whatever it is you’d say to get the conversation started.

In my case, the same applies for vocab. (Does this make me sound a little crazy? Probably yes.) Whenever I come across a word that’s absolutely new to me, I first try to find a basic meaning for it. This will help me to categorize it later on, which is very important as I remember words best in context to other words. 

Next, there are several points I need to make sure of:

- Does the word belong in one category only? Or is it, for example, both a noun and a verb?

- What about spelling? Take fascist – who can spell that correctly at the first attempt?!

- How is the word pronounced? Are there major differences

between British and American pronunciation? I mostly rely on

howjsay.com when checking pronunciation because a simple mouseover is all it takes to listen to words there (repeatedly, if necessary).

- What about differences in meaning between American and British English?

This step sounds like some work, but I’ve learned that I get discouraged easily if I just start working through vocabulary lists when I don’t know much about the contours of the the various words yet – and for me, discouragement is a real killer when it comes to studying effectively.

Next step, I go into detail. And to do so, I like to use vocabulary.com.

Once I’ve created a list of the words I need to learn on vocabulary.com, I start working through it by reading the information and example sentences provided. This helps a lot to find out about register, collocations and what context a word is generally used in. I’m also one of those old-fashioned people who like having something to hold in their hands – that’s why I often print lists and then mark whatever seems worth highlighting.

If the explanation provided by vocabulary.com doesn’t help (which doesn’t occur often, but it still might), I try just the word. This is probably my favorite corpus because it’s easy to operate and provides a wide range of collocations and example sentences that help to give me…let’s call it, a feeling for the word.

Once I’ve worked through the whole list at least two times, I do the vocabulary.com challenge to test myself and (hopefully) feel encouraged by my success.

Hopeless cases

Unfortunately, there’re always one or two of those words that just won’t stick in my memory however hard I try to remember them. I write these words down by hand (an archaic but nonetheless effective method) and put them on my kitchen cupboard. That way, I’ll basically be forced to look at them all the time – when making tea, cooking dinner, doing the dishes – and somehow, after a while I will have memorized them without even noticing. Flashcards are really useful due to their repetitive aspect, too (I use them for Arabic a lot), but writing down all the words and additional info is pretty time-consuming. What I also love about my kitchen-cupboard-method is that I more or less learn the difficult words in passing and don’t need to sit down and start flipping cards (because, honestly, it’s not that much fun, is it?).

Last but not least

An Arabic proverb says (freely translated) that repetition will even teach a donkey. Well, I guess there’s some truth to it. That’s why my final rule is: repeat, repeat, and repeat!

Whatever your favorite vocab learning strategy is, I hope it will pay off eventually and I already wish you GOOD LUCK FOR PC1!

See you soon, bye-bye :)