My Thoughts on Vocabulary Learning

My Thoughts on Vocabulary Learning
Like many other students, I have already learned English vocabulary for more than ten years and I have many thoughts on vocabulary learning.
Since my first English class, I have been told that the vocabulary is one of the most important parts in English learning. From the beginning of the pictures memory method in the primary school, the words dictation in the middle school to the targeted university entrance exam vocabulary book in the high school, I came to find that the mechanical memorizing became more and more useless in vocabulary learning. Especially when I started my English learning in the college, facing the flood of the new words, I had to change my learning strategies.
After the Learning Strategy lesson last week, I tried to use the new learning methods to remember words. Through a series of experiments, I found that the following method is the helpful and suitable one for me. Then I took the unit4 Fourteen Steps in the An Integrated English Course for example.
First，I read through the whole text two times and got the general idea of the content. According to the development of the story, the text could be divided into four parts, each of which focuses on one topic. Respectively, these topics are about aut hor’s first life, his second life, his third life and his reflection on the auto-repair incident.
Then, I collected the new words according to the story line.
Third, I found that the most of the words could connect to the mean idea, such as “spent” in part2. It means extremely tired, which can reflect the bad mood of the author. This method is suitable for the article which is logical and vivid. Meanwhile, vocabulary learning can improve the comprehension of the article.
Actually, I have some vocabulary learning methods which are created by myself. I’d like to share them with you.
When I learn a new word, I always use it to make a sentence, writing down or speaking out are both practical. In essence, vocabulary learning is using more words, not just to recite their spelling, meanings or pronounces. First, I like to make some strange sentence to consolidate memories. For example, I use “spent (extremely tired)”to make a sentence------I spent too much money so I felt spent. It not only makes me remember this word, but also let me distinguish the past tense ”spent” and the new word “spent”. Second, I try to use these new words in my daily life. On campus, my dormitory has English time so I can talk with my roommates and use my new learning words. At home, I talk with my mom in English. She is an English teacher and she is willing to talk with me. I teach her my new words and then I consolidate memories again. Even if there are many good methods to vocabulary learning, I have to admit that not every word can use in our daily life and our cerebral cortex needs stimulate repeatedly to really remember the new things. So sometimes I still use the mechanical memorizing. This method could never be out of style.
All in all, facing flood of the words, I am not afraid because of the good learning methods and my persistent heart.
English Class3
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郭问弦。