Clever Ways to Use Vocabulary Flashcards, Part II: Games, Activities, and How to Perplex Your Friends and Family
One benefit of physical flashcards (as opposed to various electronic study tools) is that you can spread out and group your flashcards in a way that is not possible when you can only see one card at a time on a screen.
Here are some strategies that take advantage of the old-school properties of flashcards:
Grouping – Spread out a huge pile of flashcards, perhaps an entire kitchen table full (or use a bed, or the floor). Pick a category that you can remember having seen several words for (for instance, words for "talkative" or "not talkative"). Pick out all the words you can find that match the topic. This could take awhile – you’ll probably have to turn over a bunch of the cards to see if your "hunch" was correct. Once you’re satisfied you’ve got them all, glance at the backs of the other cards as you stack them back up and see if you missed anything. Here are some topics that work well for "grouping" GRE vocabulary words:
- words for arguing for or against something
- words about complaining or being stubborn
- words for "kissing up," giving in, and otherwise being wimpy
- words that mean "changeable" or "not changeable"
- words about money (a lot of these are about stealing and cheating!)
- words about praise
- words for working hard (and hardly working!)
You can also just keep it simple and try to pull out all the words that have "good" or "bad" connotations.
Whack-a-Word – Whack-a-Mole is an arcade game in which you have to hit a bunch of mechanical creatures with a mallet before the time runs up. Play Whack-a Word by, again, spreading out a huge pile of flashcards on a table, bed, or floor, and then trying to remove words from the pile by defining them without looking at the card. If you get a word wrong, put it aside in a "to review" pile. If you end up with words you don’t know anything about, make a stack and try the Winnowing technique from above. Once you’ve learned those words better, spread them all back out and play Whack-a-Word one more time. Whack-a-Word is also fun with a friend. Take turns defining words and removing them from the spread, working together to clear the space as soon as possible.
Storytelling – Take a stack of about 20 cards. Shuffle, and don’t look at the first card. Think of a topic for your story – something funny and interesting. (For instance: Robots! Monkeys! Ninjas! A war between robots and monkeys in which the monkeys train as ninjas!) Then look at the first card and compose the first line of a story, forcing yourself to use that word (this is "open book" – feel free to look at the backs of the cards throughout this activity). For instance, say we decide to write a story about a war between robots and monkeys. We turn to our first card and find itinerary (and then we keep going)....
The Robot/Monkey war began when a monkey went on vacation and misread an item on his itinerary, causing him to accidentally invade Robot Headquarters when he really just meant to visit the Monkey Art Museum. The robots were known as jingoists, so they declared war right away. They considered trying to bilk the monkeys, but decided that advanced warfare was more direct. Providentially, the monkeys discovered oil in Monkeyland and were able to sell it to buy weapons to defend themselves. One taciturn monkey finally got the courage to speak up and suggest that the monkeys engage in ninja training. A meal of sushi helped whet their appetites for the training.
You can see where this is going, and it’s ridiculous – but a fun way to learn! The brain retains information much better when it does something with that information (such as using words in sentences) rather than merely looks at information.
Here are a few more ideas:
Journaling
If you’re not so big on telling stories, try writing a daily journal entry using some number of words per day.
Vocab in Regular Life
You could even vow to work a certain number of words per day into your regular emails to unsuspecting colleagues and family members. (Use caution when dropping bombastic language on your boss, but why not try out your new lexicon on your parents? They’ll probably be glad to hear from you no matter how grandiloquent you become!)
Chat with a Study Buddy
Another fun technique is to find a study partner and agree to email or text each other every day using a certain number of GRE words in your emails (three seems about right – if you make the task too daunting, it might be too hard to stick with the plan).
Next Flashcards article: The Vocab at Home Technique