I’m new to learning Greek and my professor is going through our book very quickly. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to learn new vocabulary efficiently?
Flash cards and (more importantly) read the words in context, even if it is reading over the exercises in your textbook until you are very familiar with them.
In addition, spend at least thirty seconds looking at and considering each word; otherwise, you may be able to learn more words but you will not retain them.
It is better to learn the whole phrases both ways. From Greek to English and vice versa. Specially reverse translation, translating English back to Greek in order to get the original text, helps a lot.
I would say look at the translation once and then concentrate on the meaning of the word and try to associate the Greek word with that meaning using your imagination to its fullest. If you could find flashcards with images (but without the translation), that would be great.
Χαί?ε!
I hesitate to bring this up, since it has never worked well for me, but many people swear by this technique. The trick, they claim, is to make up little stories that help connect the word and the meaning in your mind. As an example, one of the first words you learn in Pharr’s text is
βουλή which means plan, will, wish, etc. You might think that the word sounds a little like the English word “bully” and your little story might be that the bully has a plan to beat me up. The funnier they are sometimes the easier they are to remember (maybe: the bully has a plan to beat up the guy who had the stupid vocabulary idea…).
The advocates of this method say that eventually the story itself fades away and you are just left with the association. It’s a little gimmicky, but the system is very similar to those “amazing” memory people that I have heard present at conferences, and they do seem to have pretty good results. Take it for what it’s worth.
Thanks, everyone!
Edonnelly, count me in as one of the advocates for the trick. It particularly works for me on words that are not representative of actual things. I have built up a vocabulary of French words of perhaps 800 or more in a short period of time partly with the help of this technique.
I’ve always been a fan of flashcards. The great thing is that you can use them in either direction (greek-english or english-greek).