How do I learn words?

One of the biggest pain points in language learning for most of the people is learning the vocabulary. You cannot avoid it: it is essential to have a wide range of vocabulary to cover any topic. In today's post I will show you some of my techniques.

When it comes to learning a language, I always hear from my friends that their biggest issue is learning the vocabulary. They have many reasons for that:

1. Learning words is boring. You need to sit down and learn them one by one, and it takes a lot of time. 
2. You don't have patterns you can use. Unlike grammar, you don't have rules and patterns you can follow. Especially if you learn a language that is absolutely new for you and you don't even know any related languages. 
3. It's easy to forget them. Especially in case of words you seldom use, there is a great chance that you will forget them before actually have a chance to use them.

I always tried to avoid these issues. In high school I followed the old method. I wrote the words down in a copybook, and then sat down trying to study them one by one. Many times I only remembered them in a sequence, and if I forgot one of them, then I forgot the next one, and so on. It was painful and boring. 

Then I found Voca, which is a vocabulary teacher software. You import a word list, and then it makes questions out of it. I used that for a couple of years, until I found my ultimate vocabulary teacher, Quizlet.

Quizlet is a free-to-use online service. You can import various word lists into it (named study sets). There is an option to memorize the words in the form of flash cards, which is not really my style. I rather use the Learn option, which is my favorite. First it asks every word in the form of a multiple choice question. Its algorithm recognizes the words that are similar, and tries to put them in the same questions - like the Norwegian words eller, etter and heller, which are really similar. If you could answer it, in the next round it will ask you a word that you need to write down without help. If you could answer both questions correctly, the program won't ask the word again. If not, it will ask it over and over until you get it right.

You can create custom tests from the words as well, with true/false, writing and multiple choice questions. You can set the number and types of questions manually. It also offers options like game-based word learning - I tried them, but they haven't really worked for me. Of course it can for you, so I encourage everyone to try them out.

My strategy is to create a study set for each lesson of my book, and then learn all the words with the Learn function. Then, when I learned all of them, I come back regularly and take a test. It takes some time, but it helps me to memorize the words. 

Apart from that, in case of rare words, I usually write them down in sentences, to create a context I can more easily remember. It helps most of the time.

I am planning to further continue this post later, but until then, share your comments, thoughts, your strategies and of course, your questions, in the comments section!

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