Learning
languages has always been a passion of mine and something I was quite good at.
However, one of my least favorite aspects about learning a foreign language used
to be vocabulary learning. I’ve never been a person who liked the ordinary way
of learning vocabulary: in my opinion sitting down and learning random words
without actual context by heart isn’t a good way to memorize them for a long
time. Sure, they are saved in the short-term memory and you’ll pass your
vocabulary test, but two weeks later half of them are forgotten. That’s why I
now use different methods to memorize vocabulary.
For me it’s
very important to learn words in the right context. Most of the time I don’t
think it actually makes sense to know the meaning of an isolated word, but not
how to use it in a sentence. If I look up a word, I always do so in a
monolingual dictionary to learn synonyms and I make sure that I find a few
example sentences to really understand the meaning of the word. A big part of
my English vocabulary knowledge also stems from reading English books. Over and
over again I read commonly used words and phrases in the right context and
after some time I automatically memorize them. I usually try to guess words I
don’t know based on the context they occur in and if I don’t understand
something I will look it up.
However, reading
books, watching television series or movies and listening to radio programs is
fun and easy to do, but it’s obviously not enough. No matter how much I
surround myself with English in my daily life, I won’t get around studying and
learning vocabulary – it’s inevitable. That’s why I use other ways to memorize
vocabulary and not the boring method of learning everything by heart and
forgetting it a week later. My favorite method so far is using interactive
websites like vocabulary.com. I like doing quizzes, filling in words in example
sentences or match words with their synonyms because I think that way I
remember them in the right context and don’t forget them as fast. In my opinion
the key to remember stuff in general – not only vocabulary – is to understand
it and be able to connect it to other related topics. So for me it’s important
to know possible collocations of a word and when and how to use it.
Of course,
sometimes there is no way around the good old method of learning a list of
words by heart. If I absolutely have to do so, I always make sure to write the
list by hand because somehow I have the feeling that I remember words better if
I have written them down myself and not just printed them out and read them through.
Still, I probably won’t ever be a big fan of learning things by heart and
definitely favor other methods of memorizing vocabulary.
