Question

Learning vocabulary doesn’t have to be boring

Many students have problems with vocabulary when preparing for tests like the SATs. Last week, TEENS offered advice on how to memorize new words. If you’re now familiar with those methods, why not try moving on to the next stage by using the following tips to build up your English vocabulary.

Repeated encounters (反復(fù)遇見(jiàn))

The usual way of “memorizing” new material is through repeating it while it’s still in your mind. However, simply repeating a word seems to have little long-term effect.

But one kind of repetition is effective: repetition of encounters with a word. Words stand a good chance of being remembered if they’ve been met at least seven times in your reading, at intervals (相隔一段時(shí)間). So, read English magazines, newspapers, and websites regularly.

Spacing and review

It’s better to distribute (分配) memory work over a period of time rather than do it in a single session (一段時(shí)間). This is known as the “principle of distributed practice”, where new vocabulary introduced in one lesson is reviewed in the next, and then in later lessons.

Use it or lose it

Putting words to use in interesting ways helps add them to your long-term memory. In a study of vocabulary learning, students who made up their own sentences with new words and read them aloud remembered them better than those who learned the words separately and silently. Best of all, students were given the task of silently imagining a picture in their minds to go with a new word. So it might help if learners link words with a mental image.

Mix it up

Let’s face it — learning words can be really boring, but it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to the Internet, there are more interesting ways to get the job done. Try watching videos from English-speaking social media celebrities and copying the way they speak. You could even upload your own videos and try becoming a star yourself.

1.According to the passage, a good way of memorizing new words is ________.

A. simply repeating them

B. learning the words silently

C. reviewing them in one lesson

D. reading English magazines regularly

2.To make learning words more interesting, we can ________.

A. try to become a famous star

B. read new words on websites

C. make and upload our own English videos

D. draw a picture on the paper with a new word

3.What does the passage mainly talk about?

A. Where to use new words. B. How to memorize new words.

C. When to learn new words. D. What to write with new words.

Answer 1