My Vocabulary Log

In order to actually study not only new words (such as the lovely words from the Porter book :P), but also the ones I already know but only vaguely, I’ve been keeping a ‘Vocabulary Log’ for the last one and a half years. I decided back then that it would be much more useful to keep a folder rather than a notebook, simply because you can add any further information to the existing entries if you need to.

The rationale behind my organizing principle is basically really simple. Whenever I find a word or a phrase (from the course, lectures, books, etc.) I am not really familiar with, I choose to record it with the help of a style I think is the best for this entry. Personally, I do like the formal/informal tables a lot as they can be extremely useful for my writing tasks; the word/ semantic fields maps, because you can easily see all the words that belong to one topic/group; the entry on preposition usage; the pictures with the descriptions; and last but not least the idioms tables. To put it in a nutshell, all learning styles (and entries) used in my Vocabulary Log are of great use to me as they make it easier and, more importantly, less boring to study with. Depending on which aspects of the word I need or want to know, I just choose the most appropriate style to write down the item.

And because I started with this Vocabulary Log a while ago, it was not difficult at all to keep writing down words from the Porter book whenever I needed to…that is, in addition to the exercises in the book, of course. They’ve been very helpful, and especially the ones with the collocations and the synonyms. What’s more, even though I am not the biggest fan of studying vocabulary online, I have to admit that I love www.vocabulary.com! I think it’s a great site for language learners, mostly because of the clear and detailed (and sometimes hilarious) explanations, but also because of the pronunciation tool that display both accents.

So, that is practically all I’ve done, all I do to study vocabulary; and I guess I will keep it that way because it’s seems to be working out well enough for me. 

(BTW, sorry for the bad quality...it's Samsung, not iPhone, obviously! Haha)