Language learning has several different aspects to it. One of the main areas is learning vocab for a new language. This can be a difficult, frustrating time, however, there are certain things that can help you know your vocabulary words and with your vocab practice.

The backbone of any good language learning regime is learning vocab for your new language. There are many ways to go about this process, however, there are also many mistakes and errors that can stop you from progressing. There may also be more ways than you realise to learn vocab for your new language. This article will take you through what you need to know to make sure that you are learning vocab in the best way possible for your new language.

What Is A Vocab List

A vocab list is a list of words you have learned or are trying to learn. These could be words in your native language that you were wanting to practice so you can learn their meanings, or they could be in another language. Traditionally new vocabulary in a foreign language is learned using a flashcard system as well as practising the word in sentencesor as part of a spelling test.

In order to learn words for a new language, it is best to have a system in place. Without having a structure for learning words, you will find it very difficult to consistently practice new ones so they stick in your head. Won’t know which words you have already learned and need to practice, and words you have never met before. Even more so, you won’t have a set system in place to even practice the words you are trying to learn.

You’ll notice when you speak in your own language that you don’t need to think about the words you are wanting to use, because they are right there at the front of your mind. This is a skill you learned as a child while you were learning to speak in your native language.

Having a vocabulary list to consistently practice will help to put the words of another language within easy, effortless reach.

Keeping a vocabulary list and consistently practising it via flashcards and other methods, is the number one way that you can learn your language. Takes time and effort, discipline and persistence, and at times can feel that you’re not achieving or learning. Persistence is key to learning a new language.

What Is The Best Way To Learn Vocabulary?

The very best way to learn vocabulary is through language immersion. The reason you’re so good at speaking in your native language it’s that you have spent years learning to speak with your friends, family, and people you meet. If you have the opportunity to live overseas in a country that speaks another language, you’ll find that this is much better than any time you have achieved at home.

You can read more about travelling abroad for language learning here.

Assuming that you are not able to travel overseas to live in another country there are still some options you can do at home to learn your language. I have listed them below and will discuss each one further down.

• Taking part in the language class
• Finding a language exchange partner or tutor (either online or in person)
• joining a social group that includes people in the learning that language or native speakers of that language
• Practising vocabulary at home

Language Classes

Taking a language class can help you find an immersive experience without actually going in-country. In language classes, you will need to interact with other people in your target language, which in turn insurers that you actively use vocabulary in the language.

Quite often these language classes will be run by a native speaker or somebody who has lived in the country for a substantial amount of time. This means they can give you personalized knowledge of the grammar, but more importantly information about the culture and way of life in that country. This is the main benefit of being out to immersive oneself in the country, not only is the language, the cultural experience to complement the language comes along as well.

Local Social Groups

It is possible that there are local language groups of language learning enthusiasts, like you, in your local area. By joining one of these groups, you’ll gain mutual support and encouragement to continue learning your language. You’ll also have people with whom you can practice the language, as well as get clarification for any areas in which you might be having trouble.

A local social group will help the language come alive for you so that even though you are not in the country, you can still experience and be reminded of the reason to continue learning the language.

Language Exchange Partner/Tutor

There are so many websites available that will help put you in touch with a wide range of native speakers to practice the language with. Now some of these websites like iTalki do cost money for lessons because to some degree they are tutoring you in your language learning. That being said, the cost can vary greatly depending on what that person is offering and what their skills are and they are usually not trying to learn your language from you.

Websites such as Tandem give you the opportunity to connect with native speakers to speak to them, which has both a free and a paid version to use the app. Keep in mind, the reason there is no cost to interact with other people is that they also trying to learn your language at the same time.

If you want to find out more about using language tutors, you can go to this post here, which will help give you some pointers for maximizing your time with your tutor.

Practising Vocabulary At Home

When all else fails, you can always practice languages by yourself at your home. You don’t need to wait to meet the right person to speak to or the right opportunity to go abroad, you can start learning right now in your own home. Best of all, this way is free and can be done as long and as often as you have time.

You may have noticed a trend that language learning takes persistence, dedication, and discipline. It’s very easy to start and then realise the amount of time and effort you will need to put into a language to be fluent. It can be done.

You can read more about the best ways to practice languages at home here.

How Many Words Do I Need To Learn To Be Fluent?

For someone learning English and wanting to achieve fluency would only to know somewhere between 5,000 – 10,000 words. A native English speaker would know between 15,000 – 20,000 word families (ie: fast, faster, and fastest are one word family). It goes to show the vast amount of words that are in the English language, and in all languages.

You don’t need to know every word in your target language to achieve fluency.

Presuming you are a native speaker, see if you could define the following words or put them in a sentence. Bastion, defenestrate, guffaw, maelstrom, penultimate, ubiquitous. You may have seen some of these words or used them yourself, but perhaps not all. Hopefully, this shows that even though you are a native speaker of English, you may not know every word yourself.

If that’s the case, go easy on yourself for your expectations for learning a foreign language and try to not compare yourself to native speakers.

Which Words Should You Learn First In A New Language?

The best bet when learning a new language is to learn common words. You will be able to find frequency lists all across the internet of commonly used words for just about any language. This should be your first point of call and will help you get comfortable with the language in the least possible time.

After this, the world is your oyster. If you were to pick a list of the first 1000 – 2000 most common words, you will be able to take part in most conversations. Next, it would probably be best to learn specific vocabulary that is relevant to you. This may mean subject-specific words, such as body parts, medical terms, Scientific terms, or sporting terms.

There is no wrong order of learning words, but there is an efficient and effective way of going about this.

Before you can start learning words that are most relevant to you, I would recommend learning common words. There is no point in learning all the words for different body parts if you don’t have the words to create a sentence to talk about the body parts or to be able to communicate with other people.

How Long Will It Take Me To Learn 1,000 Words?

Learning 1,000 words is no small feat, and can vary depending on the language you are learning. The total amount of study time that is expected to be needed to achieve fluency can vary greatly across different languages.

To quickly start and learn 120 common words and phrases could take about 4 hours of dedicated learning time. These are phrases and words that you could use to fumble your way through a foreign country with some language. It’s very easy to compare the number of words that we know in a foreign language to the number of words a native speaker knows.

If we extrapolate this out, learning 1,000 words would take you just under 34 hours of dedicated learning time. That’s almost the same as a 10-week course of 3 hours per week, with no homework. From this perspective, it is very achievable.

Remember, it’s not only the number of words that matters, but the type of words you are learning. Make sure the words you are focusing on learning will either give you a solid base for everyday communication or are relevant to you in your circumstance. There is no point learning the different tools and machines a cabinet maker would use if you’re never going to need those words.

How Many New Words Should I Learn In A Day?

This would depend on both your time availability to put towards learning a language, as well as any deadline you may have before you need to use the language. Let us say your goal is to learn 5,000 words as quickly as possible. This would put you in the almost fluent, highly competent side of most languages and would give you a pretty good command of the language, presuming you have accompanying grammatical knowledge alongside this.

Time To Learn	Goal	Words Per Week	Words Per Month
1 Month	5,000	1,250	5,000
2 Months	5,000	625	2,500
3 Months	5,000	417	1,667
6 Months	5,000	208	833
12 Months	5,000	104	417
18 Months	5,000	69	278
24 Months	5,000	52	208

Now obviously learning 1,250 new words in a week is a bit unrealistic. That’s the same as learning one new word every 8 minutes, without sleeping! Before you fall asleep from exhaustion, your mind would quickly become too overloaded to effectively learn a new word so that you could use it when the time came.

A slightly more sedate pace of perhaps 3 or 6 months would be much more reasonable, particularly if this is not your first time learning a new language. If this was your first language, perhaps aim for 24 months and if after a few months at this pace, you feel that you could increase the number of words you learn, go for it!

Remember that just knowing the words won’t be enough to effectively use the language. You’ll also need to know enough grammar to put those words into a recognizable sentence before you can start communicating in that language.

How Should I Learn Vocabulary?

Now that we’ve established that you should be learning new words and using a vocabulary list, the next question becomes how you should be learning these new words. What app, or tool should you be using to do this? There are so many different options for you, that I have previously mentioned such as Duolingo for starting a new language, Clozemaster when you are feeling slightly more confident, Anki or Memrise for creating your own or using premade vocabulary lists, as well as LyricsTraining when you are wanting to try some immersion through music. I would recommend that you have a look around and see which one works best for you.

There are different ways of learning vocabulary, such as via flashcards where one side is the German word and the other is the English version of that word. Another way is by using mnemonic flashcards where one side is German and the other side is a picture instead of the English word. Another method is using cloze sentences, in which you need to fill in the blank using the word from your own memory. It is best that a combination of these learning processes is used, to the words are being learned through a variety of methods to help promote long-term recall.

Why Should I Create My Own Vocabulary List?

There are a few reasons but I’ll recommend that you create your own vocabulary lists. The main one is that creating the list is in itself a learning method. This means that when you come to the words you will already have some idea of what the answer is because you created the flashcard. It also means that while you are looking up the way to get the definition, or perhaps to create sentences of the word used in context, you may also find other words that you wish to add to your list at the same time.

The other benefit of creating your own vocabulary list is that you are able to format them exactly as you wish. I would recommend that you include the plural form of the word as well in some way, as well as the gender. You may also wish to add the prepositions that are used with that word or anything else that is relevant to the word.

Creating a vocabulary list yourself also means that you’re able to add as many or as few English words to the other side of the flashcard as you wish. I personally try to add somewhere between three and six English words to each German flashcard depending on the German word. This is to try to capture the nuance of the word and pick up any connotations that the word may have as well.

An example of why this is useful are two German words for cheap; billig and geizig. The translation in English for both words could be cheap, however, geizig comes with a negative connotation while billig does not. My flashcards need to have enough words to be out to pick up this nuance to try and help me not accidentally offend somebody by using a word incorrectly.

How Should I Create A Vocabulary List?

I can only recommend the creation of the vocabulary list the way that I have been creating mine. This is using an online dictionary (for German I use Dict), and creating flashcards within Anki. I used to manually create a new flashcard within Anki, however, the app also supports importing flashcards from Excel. What I now do is will create a list of 50 or 100 new flashcards in Excel and then I will import them all into Anki all at once.

While you’re creating your vocabulary list, if you are ever unsure how to pronounce a word, I would recommend that you go to Forvo. This is a great website that contains audio of individual words spoken by native speakers. You’re able to download these audio clips and use them with your flashcards the audio plays automatically when the flashcard appears.