Porter Words

For our upcoming Vocabulary exam on Thursday Vanessa and I decided to prepare the vocabulary we were assigned to study together. We first split the units up into two sections and each of us had to prepare one section  according to the following criteria: We needed to find a definition, a synonym or an antonym and a helpful example sentence for every word.

Preparing the vocabulary like this is undoubtedly time-consuming but for me it is also incredibly helpful: While I prepare the vocab, I subconsciously start to process and save bits and pieces. I  only realised how well this worked for me after I finished preparing my part. I realised that I could already remember the majority of the words and therefore only had to properly study the 160 ones Vanessa prepared.

I used to need only very little time for studying vocabulary because it was one of the things I managed to remember quite well. But ever since I came to university, my concentration has deteriorated and nowadays I tend to need much more time. Regaining my ability to concentrate hasn't been easy and for that reason I had to find a way of studying that would save me as much time as possible. For me personally, studying with the help of recordings or with pen and paper turned out to be most effective. Some people study with the help of the Internet or they use cue cards. I don’t really want to invest my time into cue cards and studying with the help of the Internet just doesn’t work for me because I can’t keep up my concentration. What I like to do, though, is to record myself phrasing the information I want to remember but I only ever choose to study this particular way when studying vocabulary. It is a quite helpful technique because all you need is a decent smartphone to record yourself and a little time to listen to your recordings afterwards.

Another way that has always proved to be a success is to write learning material down. Things that I can’t learn by heart by simply reading them over and over need a different approach: I need to take a pen and write the information down. The written record of what I write down is unimportant and I usually bin them afterwards. It is the simple process of writing it down that helps me save the information and in 99% of the cases this method is effective. 

Currently, I am still studying for the upcoming (or rather "postponed") exam and I have to say that I am making quite the progress. I'll just have to keep studying  and hope, fingers crossed, that all will go well.