Can’t wait to hear it!!
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Hello everyone,
I use most of the techniques I’ve read in this post. I also spend time talking to myself in another language, when I’m on the bus or walking in the streets. I wonder how I would tell a friend about the past day, and that way I can find out what I can not tell yet and find out the missing vocabulary or structures.
Like PinAngel, making connections with other languages is helpful for me.
What I’m struggling with is to memorize long-term this vocabulary. So far I was using Anki, but it does not allow to make flashcards in all languages at the same time. So at the moment I am currently designing my own Anki-like polyglot-optimized vocab revision app. I don’t know yet if this will be efficient, but it’s worth trying 
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As far as I am concerned, whenever I come across unknown words impeding me to understand, I cannot help looking them up and if I consider them to be relevant and useful according to my current level, I jot them down on a notebook by building a phrase in order to project those words in a specific context . I take a moment to visualize the given word or expression in a situation that could happen and repeat it in my mind.
Afterwards, I try to have a look regularly at the words and expressions recently learned in order to stick them in my mind especially when I am at a beginner, intermediate level.
This kind of memorizing exercices get obviously tougher over a long period of time.
In my view, once a person reach a high intermediate /low advanced level, one must read a lot to kind of reactivate the dormant vocab.
For the speaking part, I am convinced that exposure is paramount, you need to speak a lot and listen a lot to be able to expand your vocab.
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I mainly use Anki, but it’s not enough on its own.
I find that I need to read a lot of material (and write, and speak…really use those words) and encounter the words “in the wild”, to really get them to stick in my mind. Then if I encounter new words, I input those into Anki too! It’s a more self-perpetuating method than at elementary level where you really need vocabulary lists to get a head start.
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I like flash cards for drilling vocabulary. I think they’re good for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners if you’re trying to expand your vocabulary. It’s kind of a catch 22. As a beginner you are learning vocabulary that repeats a lot so you don’t really need flash cards but reading is so painful that flash cards are often more enjoyable. As you get more advanced the words you don’t know don’t repeat so much which is why using flash cards are still very useful I think. I like Anki.
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interesting! You’re right that lists such as “100 most frequent word in French,” “15 most frequents verbs to know” etc. are useful and they give a big-picture of the language.
As a teacher, I’ve noticed that the older learners are, the more “utilitarian” they get. Young professionals, and also learners in their forties or older will often ask me “Léa, what are the most common words? Should I remember << papillon >>, do French people really use it?”.
On the other side of the age spectrum, children and teenagers tend to build more personal, unique vocab. They’ll see weird words such as “saperlipopette,” “incommensurable,” “un paon” as cool, and they’ll indulge more in memorizing less useful words, sacrificing utility for poetry. Children love learning animal words whether adults tend to focus more on vocabulary for small-talk and socializing.
Language teachers, have you noticed the same patterns?
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I love flash cards and apps like Memrise. They seem to work best for me. I often carry a little purse with flash cards in one language or another with me, and when I have a moment of “dead” time, I’ll get it out and revise the words. When they stick, they go in a different pocket, thus constantly reducing the pile of cards. When it gets too small, I’ll add more cards to it again. And when a word won’t stick, I say it out loud, play with it, whisper it, shout it, sing it, use it in short sentences and repeat this at ever longer intervals. I talk to the cats or to myself in all the languages I learn about everything I can think of - what is happening right now, what happened yesterday, what I’m planning to do or what I would like to do. That’s a handy way of practicing tenses as well.
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Hi Sarah, I believe the method you apply makes perfect sense. What method is the best, each person has to decide individually. I normally decide what group of words I would like to learn first, what purpose they could serve best for my studies and apply my time by learning my new vocabulary from online or newspaper articles. Books are many people’s favourites, I am aware of that. Since I am more interested in current affairs, I prefer my method. Decide on this basis: what works best for you? I love listening to music in different languages. I find it extremely relaxing.
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I swear by Anki, if used properly it supports vocabulary learning in context
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I will be summarizing some scientific research that has been done on vocabulary acquisition and retention in my talk on October 22nd. There have been some empirical studies on what is most essential in studying vocabulary in order to make it stick. I hope you’ll come!
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Hi Billa, your methods are definitely worth copying. I let DuoCards do the memorizing for me. My mind seems to adequately and successfully adapt to it. But your ideas appear to enhance the standard methods. I find them inventive and clever. On another issue, certain comments lead me to believe that for some students, the pleasure of learning a new language takes a back seat. That should not be, in my humble opinion. Why are so many so competitively minded? Does it really matter if you are a Polyglot or just a language enthusiast? Just remember, as Socrates said: WER GLAUBT ETWAS ZU SEIN, HÖRT AUF ETWAS ZU WERDEN!
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I usually learn vocabulary through reading so that I don’t just get the dictionary meaning but rather how is the word being used in different context and nuances which the dictionary don’t and cannot show us
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For me, flashcards seem to create a mindset that their content is disposable! That is, they don’t lead to acquisition, to long-term learning, or (curiously) even to short-term learning.
My idea of ideal vocabulary learning: meeting a word multiple times in interesting contexts where not knowing it’s meaning doesn’t impede general understanding. After a fuzzy impression is created, a context comes along that clarifies the meaning AND that clarified meaning adds to the context: pure gold.
Next best: as above, but after a fuzzy impression is created, a context makes me SO curious that I look the word up–and the definition both clarifies the word’s meaning AND that clarified meaning adds to the context.
Also: etymology–that is, gaining a sense of how a word sits in the larger tree of related languages–is the best mnemonic, for me. It is an overarching context.
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@Billa thank you for reminding us we can talk to ourselves or pets! Off to practice the couple of irregular Irish verbs that are challenging me with my cat! 
I’m not a fan of flashcards (though I am working a little with the Goldlist method ).
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@Bando I just realized as I re-read your post that one of my Irish teachers has been using the TPRS method with us. Sharing a short story up on the screen with us and then asking us questions like this. I liked the approach, as it’s having us be more proactive in responding to the story. And it’s been fun, helping me to solidify some vocab I hadn’t totally absorbed. 
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Yes, I tried the Goldlist method as well. Found it a bit tedious after a while, but it worked surprisingly well.
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Totally agree. When you learn a language, the destination of your journey is the journey itself. It’s not about learning to speak a language like a native speaker as quickly as possible. That’s a very frustrating attitude. The more you learn the more you realise how much more there is to learn. We might as well enjoy the process of learning and make it as fun as possible. And somehow we will be getting better automatically if we do it right.
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Hi Lea, I like your article a lot. My experience of teaching English as a foreign language (TOEFL) originates from after the unification of Germany (from 1993 till 2015) when I was teaching Grammar School students from the old DDR (German Democratic Republic) in London. Mostly from Berlin and Brandenburg. Nowadays I only teach adult professionals in Slovakia. They are keen on English but the German language is still popular because Slovakia’s direct neighbours are Austria and Germany. Switzerland is not far away either. In effect, those are the three countries where German is a native language. Alright, the Swiss-German people do like to speak in Schwitzerdütsch, a dialect that is impossible to understand for students who studied German at University. I was born near the Swiss Border (I do understand and speak their dialect) in the Allemanic area of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (in the Rhine Valley / Bodensee or Lake of Constance), generally regarded as the most prosperous areas of Central Europe. Liechtenstein is also part of this special area.
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Yes, I did too… my biggest problem is that I’m sloppy with my handwriting and found there was never enough room on a line for both a sentence in my language as well as the translation. Also that it took me alot of time to write and 20 sentences would take me forever. Thinking of trying to restart though and lower my standards to 15 or 10 sentences. Right now I have two other smaller notebooks where I write down vocab from conversations that I don’t know, and I have hundreds of pages of those to pull from.
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I am also intrigued by this. Could you possibly share an example of how you do this? I have not used wheel charts before but have just googled them and think they could be an interesting option.