How to learn vocabulary
¡Hola hola!
I’ve been asked this question many times before, so I decided to write about it and hopefully help you out, or at least give you an idea of what I think works best, not only to learn vocabulary but also to motivate yourself to study it.
Something I’ve learnt after learning different languages is that you have to be as organised as possible and work smarter, not longer. It’s better to study 10 minutes a day rather than over an hour a day, then drop out after one month because “it’s too much”. So when you’re writing down your vocabulary, first of all I always recommend to have it in a different notebook than your grammar or main book, this way you have it more organised. Otherwise if you have everything mixed up, trust me, in the future you will lose motivation to find the areas that you want to practice or revise. You’ll end up not doing it, which will lead most likely into dropping out the language. You need to make sure everything you do from the very beginning of learning a new language, will help “the you of the future”, you need to ask yourself “Will this help me study or revise in 6 months time when I have way more grammar and vocabulary to learn?”. If the answer is no… Then you know you should do something different.
The second thing is not only to have a different notebook for your vocabulary but to organise it properly. If you have all the words just in a notebook with no organization at all, it will be really hard to find a specific word if you’re trying to find it, and it will make it hard to study, at the beginning you probably think otherwise when you only have 20 words to study, but when you have over 200 or even over 500, it will be hard to find the motivation to study all!
In my opinion there’s three ways of learning vocabulary that really help me out when I’m learning a new language, and those are the ones I will write about. Get yourself a drink and let's start!
The notebook from A-Z. You can buy a notebook or a phonebook which comes with all the blank paper divided in alphabetical order, and what you do is write the vocabulary in your native language alphabetically and next to it in the language that you’re learning, I wouldn’t recommend to start with writing in alphabetical order the language that you’re learning first, because if you forget about that word then you probably will end up never finding it unless you go page by page, you need to be realistic and thinking in the worst case scenario, so I would personally follow the alphabetical order of your native language so that way if you forget the word in the language you’re learning, it will be easier to find. This method is really easy and it helps you to have all your vocabulary in order which for some people is a great way to study, as you can be like, “Okay! Today I’m going to study the A words, tomorrow the B” and so on.
Categorise your vocabulary. What do I mean by this? Well, instead of writing all your words in a book, this is the way that I like the most and the one I always do. I divide the vocabulary in different categories that help me. For example “Clothing”, “Sports”, “Food”, “Swearing words” (let’s be honest, we all learn those ones too), etc. This way whenever you’re looking for an specific word you can go straight to the category and find it easier, not only that, but when you’re studying and revising the vocabulary, you can be like “Okay, today I’m going to revise the animals, tomorrow the clothing”. It’s at least to me the best way of learning vocabulary as it motivates me to revise it, instead of just writing all in a notebook and forgetting about it.
The post-its. Using post-its in the stuff that you have around the house with the Spanish word on them, so every time you see them or need to use them, you can get used to how’s the Spanish word for it. This way just doing daily stuff in your house, will make you learn and memorise your vocabulary. I really like this way as it makes it fun, and you can do it mixed up with one of the above two, I would do this one mixed up with number 2.
These are my main ways of learning vocabulary when I’m studying a new language, remember to follow my Instagram @avaspanishlessons as I put up a new word everyday (Word of The Day/WoTD in my stories) and I already have over 180 words that you can learn! My Youtube channel AVA Spanish has some also videos that will definitely help you with learning new vocabulary so check it out!
I hope you have enjoyed this post and that at least I was able to help you out with it.
Keep on learning! Make sure to make it fun and easy to motivate yourself!
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