My Vocabulary Memorization Routine
A 10 minute daily exercise
Sometimes, you just have to memorize. I don’t like it, especially for math. Memorization often leads to math debt, which can slow you down, hurt your accuracy, and make you hate math1. But on some tests – like the ISEE and SSAT, which have sections dedicated to verbal reasoning – it’s unavoidable.
Now that SAT has a form of sentence completions, it’s become important for SAT students too. That’s why I put out a word list earlier this year, based on the most common questions from official SAT material. And it’s why we’ve added a “Words In Context” section to the SAT version of Grammarchops.
If you are going to memorize lots of words, I recommend using a variation of this system outlined below. It only takes about 10 minutes per day, and you’ll be amazed by how many words you learn – well over a thousand, if you practice every day for several months.
1) Create a daily goal and a weekly goal. In this example, the daily goal will be 10, and the weekly goal will be 50. But you can adjust these numbers.
2) Memorize 10 words every day. You may find it helpful to break these 10 into two groups of 5. Go through the group very rapidly. Look at the word, guess the definition, then check if you’re right. Keep doing that until you’ve learned all 5. Do the same thing with the other 5. Then go through all 10 until you know all of them. Now you’re done for the day.
3) At the beginning of the day, review the words you’ve learned so far this week. For example, on the second day of the week, you’ll review the 10 you learned the day before. Let’s say you forgot 2 of them. Those 2 will be part of the 10 you’ll be learning today. The other 8 will be new words. On the third day, you’ll have 18 words to review. Let’s say you forget 3 of them. You’ll review those 3 plus 7 new ones. Then on the fourth day you’ll have (10 + 8 + 7) → 25 words to review. And so on.
4) At the end of the week, review all of the words you’ve learned recently. In effect, you should have four piles: known, learned recently, active, unknown. If you are able to remember a word for several weeks in a row, you should move it to the ‘known’ pile. But if you only learned it two weeks ago, it should be in the ‘learned recently’ pile. Any questions you don’t remember from your ‘learned recently’ pile should go to the back of the ‘unknown’ pile.
Some notes:
I’ve always liked physical flashcards, but you can use tools like Quizlet, or even spreadsheets, if you prefer.
Make sure that you are actively attempting to retrieve the definition when you see the word. If you immediately look at the answer without thinking, you’re wasting your time.
Everyone’s memory is different. Some people remember very quickly but then forget a lot by the next day. Others take a long time to remember initially, but then don’t forget for a long time. Your memory may be somewhere in-between, or work very differently. It’s important to tweak this plan a little to match your memory.
It’s often helpful to create sentences to help you remember the words, particularly sentences that involve images. The sentences don’t have to make any sense. For example, when you see “pugnacious” you might think of the face of a pug dog, associate that face with a boxing trainer, and remember that pugnacious = eager to fight.
while I believe there is a time for memorization, memorizing vocabulary in a silo not within context or application serves little purpose for long term memory. Your methods of memorization will work for many, and I love your recommendation for chunking, but for retention and comprehension, the understanding and ability to apply will be limited.