Five Tips on Studying Vocabulary:
1. Consider using an audio or computer resource to embed vocabulary more deeply into your memory. Learning to speak and hear German may not be necessary for reading German, but hearing and speaking it, will help you remember it better. See Audio Resources and Computer Interactive Software
2. Use flashcards. You can likely access the flashcards you need at flashcardexchange.com because someone has probably already entered them for you there. If you get a $20 lifetime subscription at flashcardexchange.com you can download and print out flashcards for the site. The website has a huge database of cards that were entered by participants in the site. For example, all of the vocabulay words for German Quickly and German for Reading Knowledge have been entered. You can do online quizzing there for free without buying any subscription. On that site, search the tag “quickly” for all of the German Quickly flashcards or search for “German Quickly” with the title search.
3. Walk. It is possible to walk and study vocabulary. This keeps you awake and helps you get some exercise. Checklist: flashcards (printed out from internet), rubber bands for holding flashcards (available at a drug store or Walmart or Amazon.com), a pen for notes.
4. Peer pressure. There is no substitute for the external pressure of having cumulative quizzes in a classroom with other students and a professor. See Courses in North America
5. Persist. See Tips on Motivation
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What else have you found helpful for learning vocabulary?
Note from August 2021: This webpage was created in 2009 and has only been sporadically updated since then.
Comments
6 responses to “Tips on Vocabulary Memorization”
Because of the time consuming nature of studying theological german, I have contemplated selling a vocabulary list that would be composed of over 1000 words in excel spreadsheet form specific to theological german in order to quickly scroll and therefore reduce the amount of time spent in looking up words in a dictionary. Can anyone tell me if they would find this useful or would most prefer to simply thumb through a paper dictionary? Is this a good or bad idea? I would appreciate the input. Thanks.
Bryan,
I would be very interested in getting a copy of your compiled vocabulary list. Please let me know!
-Robbie
I would also like a copy.
There is a vocabulary program called ‘Anki’ that can potentially help you with not only German but any other language as well. The program is free to download (although you can use it online too), and once you download it you can download ‘decks’ of flashcards that others have created over the years to help with various languages, including some biblical languages along with German and French. Thus, not only can you benefit from the work of others who have already typed up hundreds of vocab words for you to study on your computer, but you can also create your own deck of flashcards with just about any language or types of information that you want to study (be it Bible memorization, math formulas, learning the Hebrew words in the Bible from 10-30 occurrences, or preparing for German exams). You can edit the decks you download (to fix errors, add new words, and such), and you can even include sound files or pictures with individual cards if you want to.
If you are interested in using it, just go to the website and download (and install) it for your computer or electronic device:
http://ankisrs.net/
Once it is installed, run it and pick “File > Download > Shared Deck…” from the main Anki interface in order to look online for flashcard sets others have made to share. You can quickly find things for German by typing key words such as “Jannach’s” (a textbook on German for Reading Knowledge) or “German.” Once you have downloaded that to your computer, I think you can study individual chapters of Jannach’s textbook (for example) by selecting “Tools > Cram” and then picking the tags labeled for chapter numbers (allowing you to focus on a select number of chapters’ worth of words). Yes, it takes some time to get used to the program and learn how it works, but I think it is worth the time.
Because of the downloadable and customizable nature of Anki, I think it may be better than “Flashcardexchange.” I haven’t used Flashcardexchange as much, though.
There is a list of Manton’s vocab at: http://dunelm.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/german-vocabulary-list/
Great Post. Glad to read them. Sometimes, Many students don’t get focused on their studies due to some distraction thoughts that come in students mind. I think Cramming is not the way to go, and neither is staying up late to read. As a parent, I’ll definitely teach my kids on this and also share above tips to memorized vocabulary. I hope this will help many teachers and students to remain focused. I will definitely bookmark this page for future updates. Thanks for sharing great stuff here.