Learning 5 words a day

[Bigdumogre]

I hear this a lot but how do you:

1. Choose the words? Are they something you are interested in? Common words you thought of?

2. How do you memorize them? Also memorize the character?

3. Do you work them into sentences? Only use one new word per sentence?

Really need to up my vocabulary

[Mr John]

1. Usually from my textbook, occasionally from other reading materials or language exchanges.

 

2. I look up the components which make up the words and note relevant links with other characters or words I have learnt. I write each word five time on paper, before visualising the character using the method described by Imron. (Effectively part to whole).

 

3. Generally, if available, I pick one or two example sentences from Pleco and write them in my book as well.

 

4. Lastly, like many others, I add them to Pleco.

 

Best of luck with your vocab boost mission.

[imron]

1. Choose the words? Are they something you are interested in? Common words you thought of?

Always from context and never from a list someone else has created.

 

The context can be a book, a tv show, a podcast, a graded reader, a textbook, a conversation you had with someone, a we chat message, or whatever.  This also ensures you are doing some other activity related to Chinese beyond just flashcarding/vocab acquisition.

 

2. How do you memorize them? Also memorize the character?

Absolutely memorise the characters.  Learning words doesn't mean ignoring characters, it means using words to learn characters, rather than characters to learn words.  I add them to Pleco when I first encounter them, and then when I come back later to learn them properly I learn them by breaking them down in to components and then visualising the parts over and over (see here be sure to keep reading for the follow up posts). 

 

3. Do you work them into sentences? Only use one new word per sentence?

If from point 1 you've been learning from context, then they're almost certainly in a sentence already and I'll probably go over the sentence a few times to get familiar with how the word is used.  More than one new word per sentence is fine, but ideally you don't want a sentence to be made up mostly of new words.

 

Really need to up my vocabulary

The biggest way to improve this is to learn a little bit everyday.  Don't try to do too much at once - you'll burn out.  Make sure you go at a sustainable pace that you can easily do *every* day - even on those days that are really hectic and can barely find the time to do the things you need.

 

You also need to make sure you are getting enough exposure to how the words are used - that's the best way to make things stick.

[Wurstmann]

1. Choose the words? Are they something you are interested in? Common words you thought of? 

 

I learn words I encounter in the books I read.

 

2. How do you memorize them? Also memorize the character?

 

I use Anki to remember them. Of course I also memorize the characters. Otherwise how could I read the word the next time I see it.

 

3. Do you work them into sentences? Only use one new word per sentence?

 

I use the sentence I encounter them in or a sentence I find online. Whichever is shorter and better shows the meaning of the word in this context.

And yes, one new word per sentence.

 

 

Also, I learn 20 new words per day.

[Lu]

1. Choose the words? Are they something you are interested in? Common words you thought of?

Like others, I pick words I encounter, usually in whatever I've been reading.

2. How do you memorize them? Also memorize the character?

I usually only learn the characters passively. By the time I've looked up the word, grasped the full meaning and found one or two example sentences, and made an Anki flashcard with all that information, I know what it means and next time I only have to recall.

3. Do you work them into sentences? Only use one new word per sentence?

As I usually use words I find elsewhere, that gives me one example sentence. I usually look for another one from another source (Pleco, Line/Nciku, Baidu Zhidao/Wikipedia, Jukuu [that last one is not ideal, as it gives sentences translated from English]).

 

Like Imron, I usually learn words from context. I haven't learned from a textbook for a long time, but if I would be doing that, I'd start with those instead. I think there is not necessarily something wrong with learning from a list, as long as you look for context and are sure you grasp the whole meaning before you decide to study a word. I have a list of chengyu that I study from sometimes, and there I just look for the context and then study.

[querido]

Assuming you want listening comprehension too, now or later, I would say not only "always from context" but always from materials for which you have the audio (at least whole sentences or better whole lessons like podcasts or chapters from a textbook). The flashcards could be text but be sure you can understand these words in the audio before pressing forward, again, assuming you want listening comprehension too, now or later. [And if you're still with me here is another opinion on that subject: Reading aloud quite fast and with good pronunciation and seeming to understand the sound of your own voice is *not good enough* for training listening comprehension; it is much too easy.]

[Shelley]

I have to agree with all the above replies but would add that I memorise characters/words by writing them a lot.

 

Use the example sentence you have from the context you have taken the new character/word and write it out several times.

 

Also invest in Hanzi grids, put in the new characters and write them out 8 or 10 times or so.

 

Writing is the biggest help to me because it really makes it stick and you get "muscle memory" which can help remembering them.

 

I write all the Pattern Drills in each lesson of NPCR. Each pattern with all its substitutions written out fully. This combines writing, sentences, grammar and new characters.

 

Remember vocabulary on it own is not much use, you need to be able to use it.

[Bigdumogre]

Thanks for all the great advise already

 

@wurstmann how do you actually do 20 words a day? Seems a little much to get  the meaning and keep the memorization of new words and characters.

[Wurstmann]

By the time I read the book and put the words into Anki I know a lot of them already from looking them up while reading.

Authors tend to repeat a lot of the same words, so it's like a natural SRS. 

 

When I was studying for the HSK5 I was learning 50 new words a day for a time, including writing. But that creates to many reviews so I went 

down to 20 after taking the test and now I'm just doing recognition. 

[Pingfa]

Personally I think limiting oneself to 5 a day isn't a good method. Just do what you can. When I started learning Japanese, I learned all the sentences in a kid's show called Chi Chi's Sweet Home (with the aid of dual Chinese-Japanese subtitles), and watched it repeatedly. How many times I repeated depended on the amount of new vocabulary.

if within the span of 5 minutes there were too many to keep track of, I'd watch those segments repeatedly until I felt ready to move on to the next. It was amazing how much I understood after just a few days.

 

The way I started out in Chinese was with free online lessons that would teach a few a words plus example sentences each video, and would repeat these videos until I felt ready to learn more. Later on I picked out movies to learn and would leave them on loop (Raise the Red Lantern was playing on the DVD Player all day long).

 

In short, frequency, frequency, frequency. If you heard 10 short sentences in Chinese all throughout the day, over and over, even with poor memory those sentences are going to be well ingrained by the end of it.

 

Now for characters, I wrote new characters on a post-it that I would have in my pocket at all times. I would take only seconds to review them, but would review them frequently throughout the day - when I'm in the bath, waiting for the kettle to boil... once you've learned to visualize them, you can review them with your mind's eye whenever.

[Mouseneb]

I pick up my daily new words from context too. I try to stop if I have a minute and write the characters, pinyin, and definition in my notebook, as well as adding the word to Skritter. 

 

Recently it's been things like:

I'm in the office and I hear a new word from a coworker, or I need to look up a word to communicate something to them. 

I'm listening to a Chinese language podcast on the bus and I hear a word I don't know, but want to, or need to to understand what's going on. I stop the podcast to check the dictionary on my phone, then continue listening.

I am reading a page or two of 三体 every day and there are always lots of new words on every page. I don't choose to try to actively study all of those, just the ones that seem useful or common or interesting or are on the HSK list and I don't know them already, d'oh!

I need to run some errand, say get my computer fixed, and in the process need some words I didn't know before, say motherboard, and when I look it up it's made of characters I already knew, 主板, awesome, love it when the Chinese word is made of components I already know, and makes total sense as to how it is formed. Goes in the daily new word list. Then I sigh really big because yes, it IS the motherboard that needs replacing, and that costs too much! But at least I learned a new word, and so today isn't going to be completely in the loss column. Hooray for that.

 

^this method generally yields more than 5 new words per day. But it's ok, it's all context driven, and need based, and that really does make it so much easier than just memorizing a list of words you have no connection to.

[querido]

Yay Mouseneb and Pingfa! (And everybody else too of course!)

[Video Vocabulary]

1. Choose the words? Are they something you are interested in? Common words you thought of?

 

I learn new words mostly from the movies, documentaries and tv-shows, anything that has a video and sound.

Rarely from the text, since for me it's easier to memorize the word when I hear it, rather than when I read it.

 

2. How do you memorize them? Also memorize the character?

 

I try to use them in a conversation as much as possible, the more I speak out the word in a real conversation, the better it sticks to my brain.

Writing down the word doesn't help me to memorize it, so I don't practice it.

Moreover, I don't have pinyin keyboard on my phone, I got used to use stroke keyboard, so I just automatically memorize the character whenever I type it in wechat.

 

3. Do you work them into sentences? Only use one new word per sentence?

 

As I said before, I always try to use it in a real conversation, because I want to be able to use the word, not just understand it's meaning. So, my answer is yes, I work them into sentences.

Also yes for the second question, because in a real conversation I'm concentrated on a conversation itself, I can not communicate with someone and at the same time think of the words I'm going to use, so for me would be more than enough if I use correctly one word several times during the conversation  ))

[chineseadam]

I have been using flashcard to enrich my vocab learning recently

they even provide strokes so i can practise writing as well.....

 

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-15-Minutes-Flash-Cards-ebook/dp/B01HI1CIGC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1467083449&sr=1-1&keywords=chinese+in+15#navbar