Guest article on a technique to memorize words




Photo source: columbiasciencereview.blogspot.com

Sonya blogs over in the Tyrannosaurus Prep webspace: a small corner of the internet galaxy where articles, podcasts and games to practice vocabulary forthe GRE twinkle in the vast blackness.

Greetings, readers of the Preparing for the GRE blog. To build on the post Studying vocabulary for GRE a nightmare? I thought it would be useful to outline a step-by-step method for learning new vocabulary. The steps are at the bottom of the post, but read on for a little background on the research that supports this method.

There are two overarching keys to learning and retaining new vocabulary:

1) Elaborate processing of new words.

2) Repeated study of the word over long intervals.

Key (2) is easy to understand– anyone who has ever tried to commit a name, phone number etc. to memory knows that repeating it over and over is a tried and true method. It is less intuitive that the spacing between your vocabulary study sessions is important – but that is what has been found by Sobel et al. [1].

In this experiment, students were given eight words from a GRE list; four words were studied in two sessions spaced one minute apart, while the other four words were studied in two sessions spaced 1 week apart. After a five week period students were quizzed on all eight words and the results showed that students were three times more likely to recall definitions for words that were studied in the 1-week spaced sessions!

Key (1) is a fancy way of saying that how much attention, and the quality of attention that you focus on new words affects how well you learn them [2]. Pretty obvious, eh? Well, it turns out this goes beyond not having the TV on when you’re studying – there are lots of ways to add more depth to your study of a word. For example, try to picture a distinctive image that you associate with that word, or recall when it was used in a book or movie, or recognize a prefix or suffix and how it relates to the definition. Imagine your word as a new, isolated island in your brain. Every frill and detail you can associate with the word is a new neural pathway that you are hooking onto that island to help you reach it later and retrieve the memory.

One way to get your elaborate processing for free is by learning words in context. Grab a magazine like The Economist, or a classic novel like Jane Eyre and start reading. Whenever you encounter a word you don’t know highlight it and spend some time trying to guess the meaning from the clues in the sentence and paragraph (and any other clues like prefixes or suffixes). Once you’ve thought about it a while, look up the definition to see how close you were and then jot down the real definition and add the word to your word list. You’ll need to engage with the word again in future study sessions, but that is a great start! You may think this is too time consuming to be applied to 3000+ words for the GRE, but consider that reading high-level material is also great practice for the reading comprehension question of the GRE Verbal – double whammy!

Here is an example of a paragraph from Jane Eyre that is a goldmine of GRE words (highlighted):

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, "on account of his delicate health." Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.

Speaking of 3000+ words, how many words can you expect to stuff into one study session? Research has shown that for difficult words, studying smaller groups gives better long term recall [3]. A common number for word lists is 10, but if you are beginning your GRE preparation very early and can afford the time, consider even smaller groups of five words.

Now we’ll put all of this into a step-by-step method for learning words. You can organize all of your elaborate links to your words in a chart.

1) Generate your word lists:

                a) Read difficult material and note all unknown words (see above).

                b) Find compilations of GRE words, such as Barron’s list and the Kaplan list.

                c) Break your words into groups of 5 or 10.

2) Learning your word lists

                a) Tackle 1 list at a time, perhaps 2 or 3 total lists in a day.

v  For each word:

                                                                    I.            Read the word and definition out loud, pay attention to how the word sounds.

                                                                  II.            Identify roots, prefixes, etymology etc. and why they fit the definition

                                                                III.            Identify any synonyms or antonyms that you already know.

                                                                IV.            Picture a distinctive image that you can strongly associate with the word.

                                                                  V.            Picture anything from your memory that you can link to the word (for example, a friend who is perfectly described by the word).

                                                                VI.            Mime (physically act out) any action that is strongly connected with the meaning.

                                                              VII.            Again, repeat the word and its definition out loud.

v  For each list, write a short very distinctive story that uses all 10 (or 5) words.

                b) Wait 1 week

                                                        I.            Quiz yourself to recite the definition when prompted with the word.

                                                      II.            Revisit and expand your elaborate links for words you didn’t remember.

                c) Wait 5 weeks

                                                        I.            Quiz yourself to recite the definition when prompted with the word.

                                                      II.            Revisit and expand your elaborate links for words you didn’t remember.

                                                    III.            Cross off words you readily remembered – they are part of your vocabulary now!

                d) Repeat (c) until all words are crossed off

Every day you will tackle a few new word lists, revisit a few old word lists and more important, permanently cross off a few words that you have added to your GRE arsenal! 

1. Sobel, H. S., Cepeda, N. J. and Kapler, I. V. (2011), Spacing effects in real-world classroom vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25: 763–767. doi: 10.1002/acp.1747

2. Waring, R. and Nation, I.S.P. (1997) Vocabulary size, text coverage, and word lists. InVocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 6-19.

3. Crothers, E. and Suppes, P. (1967). Experiments in second-language learning. New York: Academic Press.