Advanced Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Studying vocabulary is one of those things that can either take ages and be more than exhausting or be so entertaining that time passes without you noticing. Granted – studying vocabulary for exams and not only for fun usually has this taste of “working hard” to it. However, if you do it right, you can save time and not get stressed out. 

Since I am now in the 3^rd semester and teachers expect a lot from us, time has become a rare resource that needs to be spent wisely. This is why I am constantly looking for new ways to study more efficiently. Last semester, for the most part I used vocabulary books to study Russian and English words. However, the number of words we need to know has increased so drastically that I had to rethink my strategy. Some friends and I decided to work together and create a Google Doc spreadsheet. We not only add English and Russian words and their German equivalents but also definitions and collocations. One of our teachers gave us the hint to download an app called “gFlash+”. This smartphone app converts spreadsheets into flashcards and therefore helps you memorize every single word you’ve added to the list. This technique is rather new to us, but we have already used it to prepare for a Russian vocabulary test. Although we’ve not yet received the results, all of us were very optimistic.

In order to really know a word, you have to know the most common collocations and how the word is used. This is why we add this information to our spreadsheet as well. However, how can you find out how a word is used?
 Here is where one of my favorite websites comes into play. The Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) consists of 1.9 million words. You can type in a phrase and see how common it is in any English-speaking country. You can also look for the most common adjectives, adverbs, prepositions or other grammatical features that go with that word. 

However, I also use other very handy websites. Ozdic.com, for example, also gives you the most common collocations as well as fixed phrases. Collin’s Dictionary Thesaurus offers synonyms, which is very helpful when writing a text and struggling to use different expressions.

The absolute winner, however, among the vocabulary learning tools is Vocabulary.com. This website supports anyone interested in boosting their vocoabulary. It does so by estimating your vocabulary level and giving you only words that are neither too hard nor too easy. You can also create your own list of words or use lists other people have made, for example, the ones your teacher created for an upcoming exam. The website tests you by using the flash-card system, making sure you know most of the definitions of a word. I was so impressed that I decided to buy the app for my smartphone. It didn’t cost much and I am very happy to have it, although there are still some bugs. Unfortunately, this website is only created for English learners, so it can’t help with Russian.
Studying Russian is much harder than studying English due to the fact that students doing English are spoiled, thanks to all the excellent resources and websites they have at their disposal. You really have to dig if you want to find useful Russian websites. So far, I’ve found the Russian Academic Dictionary, which offers example sentences as well as English translations. The best website for looking at declinations of words is Wiktionary.  
While I tend to use bilingual dictionaries for looking up Russian words, I avoid doing this with English. Once you’ve reached an advanced level, German translations just won’t be good enough anymore, because they can never highlight every nuance that goes with a word. It is nearly impossible to translate a word by using only one other word and capture all the nuances. Connotations, for example, very often get lost when trying to do so.
 

I believe that vocabulary building can never be accomplished by using merely one source. The various meanings and different uses only become clear when you have different tools work together to help you. In the age of constant Internet connection, students should make use of  the free access to corpora and learner’s dictionaries. For me, due to their convenience and accessibility, such online reference largely replaced older methods such as vocabulary books or flashcards made out of paper.