Memorizing New Vocabulary

 Photo and essay by Ara Ibrahim

Have you ever felt that your memory capacity for memorizing a lot of new vocabulary is holding you back? If yes, don’t worry; I felt this way too! Learning a new language is difficult and requires endless effort. During ELI classes, students learn many new words. Learning a new word means recognizing it while seeing and hearing it, and being able to use the word while speaking and writing as well. Most of the time, teachers don’t teach students how to memorize and remember words. They only inform students about words they should know. Consequently, students need to use the following strategies to assist them to memorize new words easily and effectively.

To begin with, whenever you hear or learn a word, write it down. It is much better if you have the words handy. Using flash cards is excellent option! After writing down the word on one side, look it up for its part of speech (noun, verb, adj, etc.) in dictionaries, and write it under or next to the word. Next, write the definition with the synonym on the other side. You may also write its pronunciation, which will be helpful to remember the word. If you don’t like papers, there are electronic flash cards too! In this case, you can benefit from applications such as Quizlet.

Afterwards, study the roots of the word, prefixes, and suffixes. For example, when you see a word like cooperative, you know that prefix (co) means together, and the root (operative) means work. Therefore, you can infer that cooperative means working together. After reading a word use mnemonics. Try to link it to a memory, something funny, or anything that helps you somehow to remember the word. For instance, the sound of the word pragmatic is similar to its synonym’s sound “practical”. They both start with “pra”, so you can think of this and memorize using this technique.

Subsequently, study the flash cards. After you write down the words and everything, read them for the second and third time. The next day, read the words again, but this time challenge yourself by only looking at the words and attempt to remember their definition. While doing this, put the words that you remember together, and put those you don’t remember together, so you can review them later. After three days, go over all of them and review. Then, study them again after three weeks and after a few months. Keep doing so until you memorize all of the words. I promise if you do this, you’ll never forget the words, and they’ll stick in your mind.

Finally, the best way to remember a word is practicing and trying to use this word. Thus, try to read as much as you can. Spend a lot of time reading in the new language. The more you read, the more words you learn. In fact, when you come to Texas A&M University, you will see daily newspapers called “The Battalion” throughout campus. Pick one up every day and read the articles first. Then, if you see a new word, write it down and study using the methods mentioned before. After studying, try to use the new words in speaking or writing. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake at first. It is essential that you attempt to use the word every chance you get.

To sum up, to master vocabulary, you had better use some good techniques such as flash cards, know the word forms, relate the word to something, and practice. All of these things are equally significant and helpful for memorizing new terms. I hope these approaches could help you in improving your vocabulary. However, the procedures stated above are not the only way.