The biggest challenge when studying vocabulary is to actually remember the words you just learned. Some words seem to stick to your memory immediately whereas you seem to always forget others.

There are several ways to improve your memory when learning foreign language vocabulary. None is foolproof and all require some work, but with those tips you will be able to learn more efficiently:

When meeting a new word, you need to make it stick to its meaning in your mind. You can picture your memory as a giant Christmas trees, with many branches representing each a part of your memory. To remember a new word, you need to hang it on a branch, existing or newly created. It is extremely difficult to remember more than a few new words when they are totally out of the blue and not tied in any way to something else that is already in your memory. Fortunately, there are many ways to tie a new word to something in your memory:

• Using cognates and false friends
• Word roots
• Mental hooks
• Context
• Repetition