When it comes to learning Spanish, sometimes the simplest tools are the best.  Sure, programs like Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, and FSI are amazingly effective and deserve a place on every Spanish learner’s bookshelf, but these so-called core programs all share the same weakness to a greater or lesser extent:  vocabulary.  Specifically, they don’t teach enough of it for my taste.

While the above-mentioned programs are great for teaching conversational skills, eventually you’ll need to branch out and discuss topics a bit more diverse than what you’d like for dinner or the weather.  By the time you’re in the intermediate-to-advanced stage of your studies, you should know a few hundred nouns, most common regular and irregular verbs, and the grammar tools to string them together.  Unfortunately, however, you can’t speak about politics, the economy, or any other advanced social topic if you don’t know the relevant vocabulary.  That’s where vocabulary cards come in.

For Vocabulary Building, Rote Memorization Still Works Best

There are simply no substitutes for rote memorization when it comes to vocabulary building.  But don’t worry, this aspect of the learning process isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.  It’s actually quite simple.

• First, purchase a good set of Spanish vocabulary cards from Amazon or your local bookstore.
• Every morning, take 10-15 vocabulary cards off the top of the deck and take them to work, school, or on errands.
• Whenever you have a free moment, drill with the vocabulary cards.  This could be anything from 15 minutes on your lunch break to 30 seconds in the elevator.  Every little bit counts and over the course of the day, those 30-60 seconds study breaks add up.
• Drill the cards both ways, from English to Spanish and Spanish to English, all day until you can do through them all without hesitation.  If there are words you still can’t quite get every time at the end of the day, put them in the pile to go over again tomorrow.
• Every two or three weeks, go through the pile of words you’ve already learned and spend a few minutes before bed each night going over them until you’ve reviewed them all.  Depending on how far you are through the deck, this could take a few nights or more.
• Continue until you’ve finished the deck.  Repeat if necessary.

This process, if done consistently, should yield excellent results over the course of two or three months.  If you learn 10 words per day like this, an easily-manageable number, you should be able to finish a standard pack of 1000 vocabulary words in just over three months.  Since just the 1000 most common words make up over 80% of daily speech, you’ll be well on your way to achieving a functional fluency by the time you’re done.  At this point, feel free to explore any specialty areas may be interested in.  For instance, if you are in the medical field you may want to learn medical Spanish vocabulary.  If you’re interested in guitar, learn guitar vocabulary, etc.  An excellent book for this, even though it’s not in vocabulary-card form (and thus marginally less effective), is Mastering Spanish Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach, which divides vocabulary lists thematically into different topics.  Choose a topic you’re interested in (business, entertainment, automobile parts, whatever) and get to work.

Ready to get started?  Purchase Modern Spanish: Bilingual Vocabulary Cards (Spanish Edition) from Amazon today.