The best vocabulary registration strategy
By Georgina Palencia
This week I started again the courses I teach at the College. One of the courses is Intermediate, and at that level, on the first day the students always express the same concern: the hardest thing for me is remembering the vocabulary. Although the truth is that this is a constant at all levels after a while of learning words.
We have given in this blog @spanishperfecto different vocabulary memorization strategies, but I want to emphasize one here.
This week I have dedicated myself to taking a new look at the vocabulary memorization strategies, especially with some new students. Also, at the registration strategies, because perhaps the problem is not only in how we want to remember them, but in how we record them. So I invite you to change the question:
How do I memorize the words? versus How do I register the words?
They all say their strategies work for them, and I don’t doubt it; but I’m sure some strategies that teachers propose would work better. I repeat, we have shared some other articles on the blog, but today let’s emphasize the lists by association or inclusion in categories.
Before I talk about how to make the lists and give examples, I will tell you about three strategies that I saw in my new students and some disadvantages I see.
Julián, for example, told me about his flashcards and I saw that he does them word by word. This is a very popular strategy, and I even have board games like that which are very entertaining. However, imagine how many cards they would have to need to complete a record of the class words. Not only is it really anti-ecological, but if you want to remember a word you will have to search in a package without a guide to be able to reach it. Then, when you decide to study them, what recording information in the mind are you giving to the brain: none.
Alysa, another of my beautiful new students, is taking vocabulary notes in her class notebook, there among other grammar notes or explanations she wants to have. Because she is super applied, outside of class she subtracts the vocabulary she learned and creates a list. Her class dates are her guide. I find it very interesting because it seems that her mind is a whole timeline and she remembers almost exactly. But what about the words she knows outside of class? Or how is your mental process when you want to do a memory search for a word? Because they are all mixed up, as in the case of Julián’s package but in a list, for example: although, big shoe, stepbrother, on top of that, early morning…
The third student I want to tell you is Raquel. She does something interesting too, she has two classes, learning and study records. One is vocabulary and one is general notes. Raquel has a kind of dictionary or personal glossary. There is something that I love about that, she feels a lot of pride in; this booklet has more and more words because it gives her an idea that her vocabulary is growing. And yes, she is growing. However when she grows the registration does not mean she has the same number of words in the registry that are in her memory. Neither because it is a personal record. You have to return to the record again and again and study and, most importantly, use it. The registration criteria remains for me a difficulty for study and use.
A dictionary is a dead letter without its users. But, by the way, even in the dictionary the vocabulary has some registration criteria, the spelling is the most common. So there is my emphasis and my invitation today. Let’s record the vocabulary for lists of associations or categories.
I give you examples:
10 adjectives to describe a house:
Uncomfortable.
Luminous.
Expensive.
Narrow.
Humble.
Central.
Cozy.
Ancient.
Modest.
Warm.
10 ways of saying no:
No way.
Absolutely.
Not even as.
Under any concept.
I do not want to.
No way
Nothing.
Do not even dream about it.
No way.
Neither joke.
10 geographical accidents.
Cliff.
Lake.
Beach.
Mountain.
Forest.
Desert.
Valley.
Volcano.
Waterfall.
Definitely, by association it is an excellent way to study vocabulary. Ah, and it is inexhaustible, even for language natives. Notice that in the first example, the criteria is the word category: adjective, and the subject: house. There are 10, but another file with 10 more and with those two criteria could be created later.
Pay attention to this conclusion. How the words register to study them, either on paper or digital, the creation of your records in the brain will depend on memorizing them and remembering them.
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