Five shortcuts to memorizing words

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The five best shortcuts for memorizing words. The most important point is: ...if you want to be more successful than others, you must take shortcuts. Don’t expect to be luckier than others, nor assume you are smarter or more diligent than them. In terms of intelligence and opportunities, there isn’t much difference between oneself and others. To surpass those who are on a similar level, one must take shortcuts – shortcuts, shortcuts! The first tip for memorizing words quickly is to memorize a large number of words each time. Since I’m not smarter than others, after memorizing words, while others forget one-fifth of them, I will never forget any less than them. However, while others memorize ten words a day, one can memorize a hundred; forgetting one-fifth of them leaves eighty, which is ten times what others can achieve even at their best. One hundred per day is the minimum. In fact, as you keep practicing, you’ll find that this requirement isn’t that high; after a month, you might naturally be able to recite three hundred or five hundred items. These four hundred need to be divided into four groups for memorization: thirty in the morning, ten at noon, thirty in the afternoon, and thirty in the evening. On the morning of the second day, review the words that were not memorized before. When memorizing, try to cover ten words at a glance (note: ten, not more or less). Don’t memorize carefully, as there’s no time for that. Read while looking, pronouncing each word; silent reading is also fine. After reading it, recall it; if you can’t remember, read it again. The purpose of memorizing this time is to get a general idea, so that one can recognize the word next time they see it; therefore, it’s sufficient to be able to recall most of them, and the remaining words should be written down separately. The second shortcut for memorizing words is: use a dictionary! Why learn to memorize dictionaries? Because the explanations for each word in the dictionary are quite comprehensive, and words that start with the same letter are grouped together. Not any dictionary can be used for memorization; one must find a dictionary that contains only the words one wants to memorize. Additionally, it would be best to have explanations and example sentences in English. And, phonetic symbols are a must! If you are preparing for the TOEFL or GRE, make sure to choose a dictionary with the American pronunciation. The vocabulary lists at the end of texts in regular textbooks are meant for those students who pay close attention in class; those looking to take shortcuts should definitely not try to memorize those lists. When memorizing the dictionary, learn it in the order of the initial letters: (z, y, x, q, j, k, u), (v, w, n, o, l), (f, g, i, t, h, m, b, d, e, r), and (c, p, s, a). Each of the letters c, p, s, and a needs to be learned in three separate parts. There are several advantages to memorizing in this way: (1) it can increase a sense of achievement and boost interest. As for why, just look it up in a dictionary and you’ll understand. (II) It makes it easy to clearly know which words have been memorized and which have not. (III) It is possible to master the most basic words first. Within the 30,000 words, there are three levels: 3,000 to 4,000, 8,000 to 10,000, and 22,000 to 30,000. In other words, you need to prepare three dictionaries separately. These different levels each have very distinct characteristics, so they need to be memorized using different methods. I didn’t realize this at the time, so I took a detour between 10,000 and 30,000, wasting some time; otherwise, I might have been able to reach 50,000. So, the item below on the shortcut to memorizing words has three branches. The third shortcut for memorizing words is: to come into contact with them more often. Whether a word can be remembered depends on the frequency of encountering it in different situations, not on how long one looks at it each time (the same principle applies to soaking mm as well). Generally, to remember a word, one needs to encounter it three to four times a week in *different situations*. What I meant in the previous text, when talking about memorizing a large amount of content, is not to focus on whether you remember each individual word or not. Because whether it’s love at first sight doesn’t matter; what’s important is having more different types of opportunities to meet. However, the ways to increase the chances of encountering words vary depending on their difficulty level. First branch: Listen blindly! The 3,000 to 4,000 word range includes very commonly used words, and it covers almost all the vocabulary needed to express the most basic ideas. Eighty percent of each article consists of these words, and they are all the most basic morphemes (or \"roots\"), that is, elements that cannot be divided any further and have little in common with one another. The best way to deal with these words is to do a large amount of continuous, simple basic listening practice*. Since there are also 20 percent of other words in the reading materials, it’s not possible to understand those texts using only the words at this level. However, listening practice involves the most basic conversations, and the pronunciation is generally quite standard. Listening more can increase the frequency of encountering words, and it also lays a linguistic foundation for memorizing words at the level of eight to ten thousand in the future. When listening, it should be divided into intensive listening and extensive listening. Intensive listening, of course, means understanding every single word; I’ll focus on extensive listening instead. Extensive listening is the most important, as mastering the speaking speed and tone, as well as gaining an overall impression, all depend on it. And all of these are the foundations for mastering 8,000 to 10,000 words. Extensive listening helps to train your ear to recognize the words that are used frequently – namely those that it’s most necessary to know – so that you can figure out their meaning just by hearing a faint sound of them. The words you hear during extensive listening are the ones you really should remember, so don’t be afraid if you don’t understand everything during intensive listening. What exactly is extensive listening? Passive listening means that while listening, your attention should be distracted; you should do other things at the same time (such as eating or discussing eating loudly with others), while listening in a half-hearted manner. For passive listening, it’s essential to use earphones; listen whenever you get the chance, and it’s best to keep the earphones in your ears at all times. The purpose of intensive listening is to identify those words that you didn’t hear clearly. Ahaha, that’s the word you’ve memorized but are not yet familiar with. Write down these words separately in another place, so they don’t get mixed up with the words you haven’t memorized yet. Extensive listening involves listening to content that has already been heard in intensive listening. For example, if intensive listening involves listening to the second tape, then extensive listening can involve listening to the first tape – that’s perfect. I’d like to remind you not to use English broadcasts as your listening material!!! By the way, I’d like to recommend a set of listening materials: Step by Step published by Wuhan Normal University. The content is structured in a gradual manner, and the music at the beginning of each lesson is also very pleasant. Second branch: Watch obsessively! The range of eight thousand to ten thousand essentially covers the remaining 20 percent. These words are hard to find in listening materials. But don’t stop practicing listening, because listening helps to reinforce your sense of intonation, which is key to memorizing words at this level. However, to memorize words at this level, one needs to add visual input in addition to listening. See, it also needs to be divided into intensive reading and extensive reading. Just like listening, extensive reading is also more important. For extensive reading, one should choose articles that are not too long, ones that can be patiently read through, and those with not too many unfamiliar words; two or three unknown words per article is sufficient. Under no circumstances should you start by reading English newspapers, magazines, or novels; such materials are not only difficult to understand, but even if you manage to comprehend them, they don’t help much with memorizing words. :Extensive reading also requires a lot of practice*; as long as you have patience and enough time, keep reading on! When reading, don’t try to read it carefully; just take a quick glance to get the general idea. Then mark the words that you didn’t understand at first glance, but don’t worry about what they mean – keep scanning! After reading everything, when you look at these words again, some of them might come back to mind, while others... still haven’t? Then look it up in a dictionary. If you haven’t memorized it yet, discard it; if you have already memorized it, write it down separately and put it with the words that were not heard during the listening practice*. My experience shows that a suitable sequence is: Books 1 and 2 of New Concept, then the first two volumes of the college reading textbooks, followed by an additional introductory reading course, then Book 3 of New Concept, Book 3 of the reading textbooks, the teacher’s guide for the advanced listening section of a certain listening textbook, and then Book 4 of New Concept, as well as Books 4 and 5 of the reading textbooks... This order works well. Third branch: Nonsense! This is only suitable for memorizing 22,000 to 30,000 words. Because the other words have already been memorized without needing to say them. Words of this level are very rare in reading materials; it’s possible to read ten articles without encountering a single word of this level. So relying on reading to increase opportunities for meetings no longer works. There are even words that foreigners have never seen in their entire lives; how can we expect them to be able to write them down? Especially GRE vocabulary terms like “to dress a horse,” “thugs from New York,” “the wind blowing from Africa to Southern Europe”... These are all sophisticated rhetorical expressions; in other words, if you use only such words in your speech, you can pretend to be a scholar. Most foreigners won’t understand what you’re saying, so it’s possible to convey the same meaning without using those words. Well, your chance has come – you can use these words when talking to foreigners, and then proudly, while pretending to be modest, explain their meanings to them. It’s enough to explain one or two words to foreigners each time; they will admire you greatly. Just explain it to WS, hl! Be bold and patient, especially bold. At this stage, you should stop practicing listening, as progress will be minimal. Do you remember the first sentence? To succeed, one must take shortcuts. There is no need to waste time on any action that cannot achieve significant progress in a short period of time. However, reading materials become a problem at this point: you’ll find that what you used to read seemed too superficial and uninteresting, while more in-depth material is beyond your understanding. You will also notice a new and interesting phenomenon: the articles you want to read are now filled with words from the first level; you know exactly what each of those words means, but you still can’t understand the entire article. ;q So what should you watch then? It’s just those simple articles at the second level. Although simple, it can help you from forgetting what you learned in the past. As for those articles that you can’t understand, don’t worry; as you interact with foreigners more often, you will naturally come to understand them. They are simply articles made up of phrases, slang, or grammatical structures. The fourth shortcut for memorizing words is: association, association, association,..... What is the first step in memorizing words? Take a close look at its appearance. What about the second and third actions? Look at its meaning and pronunciation. And the fourth step should be to make associations, keep associating... think about whether it has any similarities in appearance with other words that have been memorized Read words with similar pronunciations? Similar or opposite meaning? If there is, write it down right next to it, and add this word next to those other words as well. In this way, when encountering other words in the future, one will also think of this word, which is equivalent to having another chance to encounter it. Moreover, among the words at the second and third levels, many are formed by combining \"prefixes,\" \"roots,\" and \"suffixes.\" Prefixes include words like \"re,\" \"in,\" \"pseud\"..., while suffixes include words like \"er,\" \"a,\" \"oid\"...; together they form new words. If you master these prefixes and suffixes, it will be easy to figure out what a new word means. Furthermore, there are many words with similar pronunciations that also have similar meanings, a phenomenon that is more common in slang, poetry, and children’s language. If you memorize 80 words per day, you can only learn 2400 words in a month. But once you grasp these patterns, your memorization speed increases significantly, and it becomes possible to know almost over 10,000 words without having to memorize them one by one. However, among GRE vocabulary words, there are many that have no relation to other words and no prefixes or suffixes; they seem simple yet difficult to remember. Among these words are Greek, Italian, German, Latin, and even Japanese transliterations. One can only master it by explaining it to others. (hl must pay attention! ) The fifth shortcut for memorizing words is: repetition*! What is remembered quickly is also forgotten quickly; this is a very normal pattern. In the process of memorizing words, plurals become extremely important. The pattern I’ve identified for repetition is: repeat ten words once, then thirty words, and then all the words that weren’t memorized before. When repeating it, there’s no need to go into detail either; a quick glance is sufficient. But you must think about its pronunciation (since English is a phonetic language). The words that one can’t memorize in the end are surely not commonly used, because foreigners can’t memorize them either. After memorizing a word that starts with a certain letter, one must repeat the word that starts with the previous letter. Then, after memorizing the initial letter in the parentheses from the previous text, repeat the word in the previous parentheses. When reviewing*, first read the English translation to understand its Chinese meaning, and then look at the Chinese text to recall its English word. As mentioned earlier, words that are forgotten during extensive listening or reading should be noted separately from those that are difficult to remember when trying to memorize them, so as to treat them differently during review. For the words that have been forgotten, review them every day; once you know them, cross them off. As for the words that remain difficult to remember, study them separately after mastering all the letters, and there’s no need to review them regularly. The method for pluralizing GRE words is very strange: it involves a crossword puzzle. In other words, cover part of a word and then try to figure out how the whole word is spelled. Additionally, one must also think of its synonyms, near-synonyms, and antonyms. By the way, the vocabulary needed for the GRE and that needed for the TOEFL are completely unrelated to each other; in other words, even if you don’t know the words from the TOEFL test, it’s still possible to score high on the GRE. Original poster, based on the requests from the commenters, I have edited the post. Increase the line spacing and switch to green, which is less irritating to the eyes. Try to avoid using red, black, yellow, and light blue in the future; these colors are too bright or have too strong a contrast, which is eye-straining! This post was last edited by wsts00100 on 2008-3-28 00:05.]