6 Steps to learning new vocabulary by yourself

When it comes to memorising unknown words, most of the time students find it quite troublesome and may need to find a tutor to help them in their language classes. The thing is that our memory works in a specific way and just looking in a dictionary to find the  meaning of the word in our native language doesn't really help to learn it long-term. 

Here are a few tips taken from my teaching experience how to breakthrough in memorise the new vocabulary in order to recognise it next time you come across it.  If you find yourself still struggling to learn new vocabulary in your native or second language, you could consider private tuition. 

• Analyse it: The first time you meet a new collocation, try to guess or figure out the meaning on your own from the context - think about what part of the word it is and how it affects the structure of the whole sentence. It is totally worth to spend more time working with the vocabulary by writing the definition down with a few striking examples, rather than getting back to the same words on and on as you just fail to remember what they mean.
• Say it: When you have your fresh thesaurus written by hand or typed in your notes, try to practice pronouncing it a few times, build your own sentences that could be related to yourself.

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• Spell it: Spelling practice can also be a crucial part in learning vocabulary. Adults might be as delighted as young learners to play the Hangman spelling game in order to familiarise themselves with the way the word looks, as the spelling could be tricky and quite different from the way it sounds. 
• Guess it: Another fun way to build up your newly-learnt vocabulary is to write the bunch of words all together on the white-board and guess them from the given definitions. Don't forget to somehow mark them by circling, crossing out or wiping the guessed words off. The more people are involved into this learning process the better, working in pairs only makes it easier and much less boring. 
• Activate it: Eventually, start using this particular word or phrase by making as many questions and answers as possible, and if you have partner around, practice together. If you are learning on your own find a text where this word is used and practice asking Yes/No and general question, providing full sentence answers both orally and in a written form  (Ex: Was he a scientist? No, he wasn't a scientist. Who was he? He was an astronomer.).
• Revise it: The more you keep getting back to your notes later on the more chance you have to stick it in your mind long-term and recognise it for sure when you see it again.