Bex wrote:Reading and listening are going well.
Bex wrote:But the wordlists are becoming a problem, it makes me feel really stressed and stupid that I can't even remember 7 words, so I end up only doing the minimum of 1 wordlist a day.
I noticed something pretty important about those two thoughts. If the goal of memorizing words lists is to improve reading and listening and general understanding, why force yourself to do it (since you seem to dislike it) if your reading and listening are already going well? Word lists are a means to an end...but if you can work toward that end in a more pleasant way, is the unpleasant way necessary? Just a question.
I saw a Steve Kaufman video at some point where he said that he routinely learns, forgets, relearns, reforgets, and on and on until at some point the words stick. It's a normal and unavoidable part of learning a language. After seeing that video, I decided that I would not care if I couldn't recall a word that I'd known at some point. Eventually I learned something about myself: (1) I don't want to spend my brainpower attempting to memorize random words on a list because it's boring, I hate it, and then I have no idea how to use those words in context, and (2) I remember words best by looking them up repeatedly, seeing them in context over and over, and attempting to use them when trying to speak.
If you like memorizing lists of words, then don't let me talk you out of it, but it seems like you're avoiding it and disliking it, so...why bother? If you can reach the end by a more pleasant method (reading and listening) maybe the unpleasant method isn't necessary.
I only have 2 language learning rules: (1) consistency, and (2) don't do anything I hate or is boring. There is plenty of stuff in life that is awful and boring and we have to force ourselves to do. Language learning shouldn't be one of those...it should be something we look forward to!
If you are really bothered by not remembering words/expressions, there are plenty of other things you can do to help yourself...just as one idea, I'll share what I recently started doing with Italian. While reading an article, when I come across a word/expression that is really interesting, useful, or keeps coming up (and I keep having to look it up), I copy+paste the whole sentence containing that word into a word doc. I color code the word, and I write a definition. Everytime I come across that word in another sentence, I copy+paste the whole sentence until I have like 4-5. By the time I accumulate that many sentences, I generally tend to remember the meaning of the word without having to deal with any boring lists. Here is a screen grab so you can see what this looks like:
Italian.png
***guess which word I know by heart now???
The benefit of doing something like this is that I learn the word in context, which for me is much more useful. If I just tried to memorize that "trascorrere" = "to spend" I'd probably assume it was about spending money, and would probably not associate it with spending time, or spending an afternoon, or any other the other ways it's used. However, by focusing on the context of the way the word is used, it's obvious that it's about spending time vs. spending money, and it would never cross my mind to use this verb in the context of money (though maybe it can be used like that, who knows? I'll keep a lookout for it in that context to figure it out!)
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