Organising your Vocabulary Learning

The aim of this sheet is to offer some suggestions which may help you if you find that:

• your present method of noting down vocabulary is not effective or
• there is just too much vocabulary to learn

When organising the vocabulary that you want to learn there are two things you have to decide

1. Where do I put the words and phrases that I want to learn? Notebooks, flash cards, computer files, pieces of paper around your home - there are many possibilities.

2. How do I classify the word or phrases that I want to learn? Most people find that it's useful to classify the vocabulary that they write down. Here are some popular methods:

• according to alphabetical order
• by topics
• by situations
• by "families" of words
• by words with similar meanings
• by frequency of occurrence
• by level of difficulty

There's just too much to learn - how can I cope?

Let's say that you plan to learn 10 words a week - a modest target. Unless you can remember words by looking at them once, you will face the following problem:



How could you reduce your learning load? - RECYCLE

In other words try to read, listen or speak about the same topic over a number of weeks. You will find that the same vocabulary keeps occurring and if you follow the same topic over several weeks, you will meet some of the words you have tried to learn earlier. What's more, meeting the words in context will help you remember them.

Language Learning

Organising Your Vocabulary Learning

Remembering Vocabulary