Vocabulary Learning

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.