9: Find a Way to Remember Vocabulary

Find a Way to Remember Vocabulary

In your mind, make a crazy scene based on the sound of the word and its meaning. Try to combine multiple senses into your association. Make sure that when you think of it, you should see a picture, hear a sound, and feel a feeling. Make it crazy, ridiculous, offensive, unusual, violent, extraordinary, cartoonish, nonsensical—after all, these are the things that get remembered, are they not? Make the scene so unique that it could never happen in real life. The only rule is: if it’s boring, it’s wrong.

Many volunteers create stacks of flash cards and lists of vocabulary words. This is a great idea for learning and reviewing new material. Purchase a set of 3 x 5 index cards and cut them in half (or use recycled pieces of paper cut into small cards). Write a vocabulary word on the front and its English definition on the back. As you learn more information about each word (e.g., plural forms of nouns, principle parts of verbs), you can add these to the cards.

There are many ways you can use flash cards as a learning tool. When studying, organize words in meaningful groups (e.g., by part of speech, in thematic categories, regular verbs vs. irregular verbs). Shuffle the cards or groups so that you use the stack(s) in a different order each time.

Use the cards in both directions: first look at the foreign language words and try to recall the English definition. Then shuffle and look at the English definitions and attempt to remember the foreign language words.