Many times it is helpful to make a mental picture of the word you are trying to learn. For example, suppose you want to learn the German word “Hexe,” which means “witch.” You can easily picture a witch in your mind. You want to connect the witch (the meaning of the word) somehow to its representation (that is, the spelling) in German, “Hexe.” So you think a little bit, and then you remember that “hexagon” is the term for a shape with six sides. It’s not exactly the same as “Hexe,” but that’s okay – it’s close enough to remind you of the German word, since the first three letters in both are “h – e – x.” So, you can picture a witch with a six-sided (hexagon) magic wand. Or a witch wearing a hexagon as a hat. Or a witch turning someone into a hexagon with her magic spell. Come up with your own connection – the sillier, the better. The main idea is to connect the word’s meaning with its representation in the target language.

Here is another memory trick with association that you can use. Does the vocabulary word kind of remind you of a word in your own language? Does the word’s pronunciation sound similar to a word you already know? Then connect the meaning somehow to the sound. For example: “fjell” means “mountain” in Norwegian. Its pronunciation is similar to “fee-yell.” (Not exactly, because “fjell” is only one syllable, but “fee-yell” is two. But it’s close enough to remind you.) So, you could imagine somebody yelling from the top of a mountain. Or, you could think of the pronunciation of “fjell” as being similar to that of “fell” and imagine someone falling off a mountain. You could even imagine somebody yelling as he fell off the mountain! Either way, you want to use your imagination to associate the meaning of the vocabulary word you are learning with its representation or its sound / pronunciation. (Usually, the representation of a word is its spelling, but it doesn’t have to be – for example, instead of spelling, the Chinese use “characters” to represent words.)

The key is to use some sort of association. Association is a powerful mental technique that can help you learn and remember vocabulary.

Tool #2: Self-quizzing and Spaced Repetition

The human brain loves to sort, organize, and classify things. How can you take advantage of this love for order? Group vocabulary words by category, or “family.” Then learn these related words as a unit. Word families like this are easier to learn and recall than a list of arbitrary, unrelated words. So, for example, you might have a vocabulary list (a “word family”) based on the concept of weather:

Tool #4: Usage