Tons Of Words

Tons of Words, but where to put them? — Well, the very essence of fostering good language speaking and writing skills is training. This training turns out to be quite dependent on the individual. Some like it hot learning new phrases directly in conversations, others need a specific example written down right in front of them to really pick it up (long-term).

Learn more about how to improve your performance concerning language skills. This picture actually made me crack up, because whenever I studied for some test in high school, I had some popcorn pop in the microwave. You wanna know why? Pretty easy. For every right guessed vocab, I “was allowed” to have one popcorn. Yummie. It’s psychologically shown that goodies can help you learning. Just like a dog wants its bone after making some super-magic trick.In my opinion it’s important to gain new vocabulary but also it is particularly essential to maintain and not forget the vocabulary that you learned a couple of years, months or days ago (depending on how good your memory is). To avioid Schwund leaking knowledge of words, definitions and translations, you now can use this genius Web 2.0 service, called Quizlet. The idea is quite simple: You add definitions of terms and then have the application test you — without mercy.

I so would have wanted this for annoying French vocabularies, but yeah, now that I am out of high school, I will only use this for English vocabularies and maybe some important German Fremdwörter (foreign words).

So, unless you’re a sponge that soaks up every single word you picked up randomly (just like me), you will most definitely find a useful Web 2.0 page. You can print your vocabulary lists in various forms: 1 - Flash cards or what we call it Karteikarte (index cards) 2 - Term lists and tables. Interesting thing and very Web 2.0 of Quizlet is the sharing of your lists and word sets (Here the most common SAT words). I know that pons.de also offered that, but it didn’t do it in a way that is as beautiful.

Besides, here is just another tip for educational issues. For searching translations (German-English and vice versa), you can use dict.LEO.org — Looking up definitions in English? Go and give it a go to ninjawords.com! — Storing words lists and definitions at Quizlet!The funny fact about Quizlet is the story behind this work of a genius. A 17-year-old high school student had to learn more than 100 French words and it went boom (No allusion to todays Apple Media Event that turned out to be rather disappointing – No iPhone in Austria -updated information!). There was the idea. Read more about the story.

UPDATE: Test here my latest Quizlet-Vocabulary list. Definitions (Some do contain German translations, though)

Picture of the dictionary and the smarties by kruggg6