When learning another language, there are many ways of recording vocabulary. Depending on your style of learning, you may have a specific way of memorising new words.
Many years ago, one of my Turkish students brought in a list of English words he wanted to learn. He just wanted me to read the words in English, he would then say the Turkish equivalent. Our utterances were recorded on cassette tape, so that he could listen to the vocabulary while he was walking around. The next day, he had another list with more vocabulary (that he wanted me to record for his colleague). I’m not sure if this is the best way of learning vocabulary. Although, I remember when I was learning a language, I listened to the tapes on my Walkman. However, the language involved conversations rather than just random vocabulary.
If you are a language learner attending daily lessons, you will be taught a lot of vocabulary throughout the week. Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember it all. Remember and learn the words or phrases that you consider are important to you. Most adults can remember between 5-7 new words each day.
When recording new vocabulary in your notebook (paper or electronic), here are a few tips to help you.
- Make a note of the ‘part of speech’ (e.g. verb, noun etc.) by the new word.
- Word build- if it’s noun, is there a related verb, adjective etc?
- Note the pronunciation and syllable stress.
- Write an example sentence so you can understand the word in context.
I find the app Quizlet very useful for learning new vocabulary https://quizlet.com/en-gb
- When I was learning French and German at school, I used to stick a list of vocabulary and translation to the door of my room, so that every time I passed by I had a reminder.