Learning Vocabulary

Here are some comments by students about learning vocabulary:

1. I will use these words and phrases frequently in my note-taking, research or discussions. Then, I will learn them. I think when I try to learn some useful words or phrases, I check the meaning firstly, and, if they are rather difficult, I write them down on a piece of paper again and again. It generally doesn’t help so much, I feel, because using a word or phrase in real context or speech is better than writing it as a single word. Especially, using a word or phrase in speech is good, I think, because if you try to use a word in your discussion or presentation, you need to understand and remember it accurately.

2. When I was in junior high school, I only focused on words, and I tried to memorize their meanings by writing words many times. But I found out that it is not useful for understanding or using those words in conversation.

3. My way of vocabulary learning is doing a review. If I make a wordbook, I can review. But, if I do not make it or just write down meanings on a text, I will not review than easily. However, the more people review vocabularies, the more easily they can learn them. So I think the best way of vocabulary learning is, firstly looking up in dictionaries, including the English-English, secondary, making a wordbook and, finally reviewing.

4. I’ll learn vocabulary by making notes. I mean notes will be small and I can carry it on train or wherever. Whenever I have time to look at it, I’ll memorize the vocabulary in my brain. There are words, means and examples in it. I think the most important part is examples. Even though I remember words and meanings, I do not know how to use the words. If I do not know how to use the words, it’s going to be all for nothing. When I have some chances to use the words, I try to use them. Especially in class, it’s better to use them by speaking. They might be remembered by my brain through my ears. So, I’ll try to learn vocabulary by two ways, through my eyes and ears.

5. I check a lot of words, but I can’t memorize those words and I have a feeling of panic.

6. I thought that I need to have a large vocabulary to have better or deeper discussions. So, to meet this need, I decided to do something for vocabulary outside class. For example, I will try to read some articles in English; take notes, and choose the words or phrases that I think are useful for my English or whose meaning I don’t know (but I use only an English-English dictionary to check the meaning). After these actions, I will do the same thing that I wrote at the beginning part of this paper. I will write down the words and phrases that I have chosen down to in my notebook so that I can memorize them smoothly. I use Longman Handy Learner’s dictionary which is small and light, so I can take it everywhere I go and research the words or phrases I don’t know. I will also review the words and phrases everyday from today to Thursday.

7. I’ve only learned the words and phrases by using English-Japanese dictionary. I think that way is very good and useful. But I really have not tried other ways of vocabulary learning. In this English class, I tried using an English-English dictionary once. First, I thought “This way is very difficult, all the words are explained in English, and all the words are English.” Then I checked the words which I didn’t know in an English-Japanese dictionary, too. When I used both dictionaries, I found that I understand much better than ever. So, when I find the words which I don’t know, I’ll learn them by using an English-English dictionary and an English-Japanese dictionary. But this way takes a lot of time.

8. I have read and memorized some vocabulary books in which words are listed. Until now, I just was doing that. But one of my teachers said that raising my voice with words or phrases or sentences is the most important point. So, I changed my mind, and now I try to read and say those words out loud.

9. Everybody only has 24 hours in a day. This might sound like an excuse, but obviously I can state that I don’t have much time in a day to develop my knowledge of English vocabulary in spite of my wish to do so.

10. Recently, I have been trying to learn words in phrases, in other words, as collocations. Previously I was just trying to memorize the word meaning, and I did not much care about how to use the words I was memorizing. But I realized that it does not help me if I know only the meaning of the word; I have to learn them as phrases. To speak or write fluent English like native speakers do, I have to know both the actual meaning of the vocabulary and the effective words that go together with that specific vocabulary.

11. My current way of learning was taught to me by an English teacher who works for a juku. He told us that we should read one English sentence a day, marking the words that we can’t understand, then write them down in our wordbooks, repeat these words out loud until we remember the meaning of them, read these sentences at least 5 times a day, and read these sentences for three days. This is my current way of learning vocabulary, but it has some defects. First, it is very difficult to find the time to study English because I have to study other subjects. Secondly, I can remember the meanings of these words perfectly. However, after a few days I forget the meaning partly, and after a week I totally forget the meaning.

12. I depend on an English-Japanese and a Japanese-English dictionary and articles and homepages in English these days. If I use them well, I hope I can develop my vocabulary more.

13. To check if I have remembered vocabulary, I will take a test. The test will be made by my friends from my vocabulary notebook. If I can’t get the answers right, I will test myself again.

14. My major concern about learning vocabulary is ‘time’.

15. First, when you find a word that you don’t know in a book or newspaper, you can look it up in a dictionary. I often use an English-English dictionary first. If I can’t understand what the dictionary says, I use an English-Japanese dictionary next. It’s a good way to understand the exact meaning of the word.

16. One of the ways to learn vocabulary is to make the most of English classes. I take three kinds of class - speaking, reading and writing.

17. Recently, I have sometimes felt, ‘Though I checked it before, I still can’t translate it…” and I have to look it up again. That is not an efficient way.

18. I have to change my way. One of the good things to do is to get used to writing down various phrases and sentences and related words with new words. This should help my vocabulary increase, and dictionaries are also useful.

19. If I encounter words which I don’t understand when I read English sentences in classes or personally, I look then up in an English-Japanese dictionary. To learn them, I make word-cards and I can learn many unfamiliar words by going over the word-card many times. And I look up very common words in an English-English dictionary in order to have the same image of such frequent words as a native speaker. But the most important thing is to grasp the meaning of unfamiliar words in sentences. So I think I should continue reading English a lot.

20. After you know the meaning of the word, you can research it on the internet. By doing this, you will understand more details of the word’s meaning, and you will also know how the word is used in a paragraph or in an essay.