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The best methods for vocab. | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| RagsToRich Newbie United Kingdom therealmind.com Joined 5395 days ago 11 posts - 18 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 4 04 April 2011 at 12:07pm | IP Logged |
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What are the absolute best methods for learning vocab. Putting aside "interest" and previous exposure. What I'm interested in is the best methods for learning new vocab.
What I use at the moment is just flash card drilling at incremental intervals. So 5 minutes, 15 minutes, an hour, then a day. After that I find most words stick long enough for me to encounter or use in the real world. However I recently read about some other techniques - such as drawing synonym diagrams, consciously making pictures to go with the words, and so on. Is there a method which is seen as superior for learning vocab fast? Reading on its own I think is highly inefficient for vocabulary (although I think it's great for familiarising the brain with gramatical structures) - I can learn 20 new words in just over an hour but with only about 25 minutes of actual work and concentration using flash card drilling, whereas by reading you could read with constant concentration and dictionary use for 3 hours and only have 5 or 10 new words actually stick. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 2 of 4 04 April 2011 at 1:38pm | IP Logged |
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This thread
about "super fast vocabulary methods" should keep you busy for a long, long time. Edited by josht on 04 April 2011 at 1:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6449 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 3 of 4 04 April 2011 at 2:18pm | IP Logged |
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Well, just working with word lists creates another problem - you will not have learned HOW to use these words.
Like, a word "suicide". Only through reading or seeing it in often contexts you get to know, that the verb for that is "to commit" rather than "to do". Say, the word "power", it translates as three separate words in my language - "vara" (like political power), "spēks" (power of a tsunami wave=force) and sometimes even "elektrība" (electricity as in "the power is out in the whole block") and "pakāpe" (in mathematics 2^3=8). The last word "pakāpe" translates back to English as "degree" (to a certain degree), "rank" (as in some army rank) and maybe even something else. My point is, there's too much context-specific information that you can not squeeze onto your flashcards. Word meanings leave the one-equals-one phase pretty quickly. On a more gossipy note, I have a Chinese friend who loves learning vocabulary. He knows many, many, many words in many, many, many languages. He describes his learning method as "I recite dictionary". Can you easily understand what he means? In English, the word "recite" is used about poetry only (maybe kids learning ABC's as well), but that's about it. In Chinese though, a phrase "我念生词" translates to "I learn new vocabulary". The verb "念" itself can have multiple common uses, like "study", "learn", "read aloud" and, of course, one of the possible meanings is "to recite". So, there you go. What my friend knows in sheer numbers of words is absolutely amazing, and he is able to read simple texts, but when he speaks he's sounding just like he's translating word-for-word from Chinese, and he's lost once the text he's reading gets bit more complicated or idiomatic. As you can tell, reading is not something he does often. Very often when a learner writes a homework by using dictionary a lot, he or she ends up writing weird sentences, because a dictionary (a big word list basically) mostly does not tell you HOW to use the word, and which synonym is the right one to choose in your attempted sentence. I'm not saying don't learn vocab from flashcards or lists or anything, no, but remember that this way you help yourself to learn to read and understand, NOT use these words correctly. So, get some vocab down this way, it surely speeds up the process, but reinforce it and learn the correct usage through reading. That's the only way to get a good feel for language usage, vocab usage included. Now the answer to your question: I learn words in groups of ten, from English to target language (the other way lets me learn to recognize words fast when I see them, but not be able to come up with the words on my own when I need it). I write them down, read through a few times, hide the list and then try to write down those ten words. DO NOT use a list with English meanings while doing so, that's cheating! First 5-6 words come easy, last one or two are a hell! While trying to remember what I'm missing, my brain runs through the whole list several times over, thus cementing it in my brain. Then I check with the original list, correct mistakes, hide the list and try getting all 10 correct once again. Usually after 5-6 attempts I feel very comfortable with the words. Take next 10. For me, it goes pretty fast and is even quite entertaining. Fits my thinking/learning style much better than flascards. Give it a try, see how it goes! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| chrisphillips71 Groupie United States Joined 5228 days ago 64 posts - 86 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 4 04 April 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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Does anybody have advise on where I can find good lists of Spanish vocabulary, preferably
with audio. I use Byki to study vocabulary and am always on the lookout for good lists. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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