Memorizing methods

Mnemonics  mental shortcuts (associations, acronyms, etc)

Learning environment  Buy magazines or books in the new language, watch movies, and cook
(or just eat) the local food.

Put the word in context  use sentences or images

Learn from real life situations  Movies, TV shows, books, podcasts or songs. So if you see or hear
a phrase or sentence that you don’t understand, write it down, look it up and start memorizing it.

Take it to the next level  mind maps with associated words, synonyms or antonyms / try not to
translate the word into your native language, but instead, explain and describe it in the language
you’re trying to learn.

Find the tools that work for you  Flashcards, apps, lists, games, or post-its, are great ways to
memorize vocabulary / time: Some people want to set apart a specific time, others learn more
spontaneously.

Make it interactive -> Don’t just read the words from cards or lists – hear them pronounced, say
them out loud yourself and write or type them

Focus on useful words 

Repeat and then repeat some more  repeat new and recall old words

Word networking  context – write down a full sentence or phrase

Listening and reading  play the audio while you read. If your text doesn’t have audio, try to read
the text aloud yourself, or ask a native speaker to do it for you.

Selection  the only words you need to know in your target language are the ones that you’re: 1)
Most likely to hear, or read. And 2) Most likely to speak, or write. If you know this, then you can be
very selective about which words you learn, and which you don’t. Use these criteria:

1 Essentiality – In any situation, there are words that you will absolutely need to know, or you
will not understand what is going on. If you love gardening for example, you will definitely need to
understand essential words like “trowel”, “pesticides”, and “flowerbed”, even if these words
aren’t very common in other situations.

2 Personal relevance/interest – Even if two people speak the same language, their individual
vocabularies are probably very different. A doctor, for example, will know more words for human
anatomy than a painter will, but that painter will have more words for artistic techniques than the
doctor. This is because we have a natural tendency to learn words that are relevant to our lives,
our jobs, and our interests. You should do the same in your target language.

3 Frequency – There are lots of words that you need to know, no matter who you are or what
you do. Usually these are words for common activities like “eating”, “sleeping”, and “walking”, but
also function words like prepositions/postpositions (to, above, below) and articles (the, a/an).
These differ from language to language, but you can find “frequency lists” for many languages
online.

Association  When you learn new words, try to look for associations and relationships with ideas
and concepts you already know.

If you already have a web of strongly associated words in your mind, then it is easier to
add more related words to that web, and easily remember them.

Deconstruction  Sometimes words can be easiest to remember when you deconstruct them, or
break them apart, and look at the meaning of the resulting pieces

Dynamic repetition  rote memorization is not efficient. So DR is like this :

1 Start by covering a resource as you normally would (read a text, listen to an audio clip, etc.).

2 Wait a few days, and return to the material.

3 When you return to the material, use a different approach. If you first read a text, now make
an audio recording of yourself reading it aloud. If you listened to some audio, try to write out what
you heard by hand.

4 Wait a few more days, and return to the material again. Repeat from step 3 as needed.

5 Every time you return to the material, try to absorb it in a new, unique way. This will help
keep you interested in the learning process, and allow you to review the same content dozens of
times before you get bored of it.

Note-taking  whenever you discover a new, unknown word in your target language, write it
down, along with the date and context when and where the word was found.