Are you struggling to memorize new words?
Gold list methods can help you to improve your vocabulary without much effort.
According to the Gold list method you need to write down the lists of new words or expressions you would like to learn in a notebook. You need to do it every day for two weeks. In two weeks you rewrite them excluding the expressions you already remember. Sounds a bit fantastic but this method is quite popular among many polyglots so I also decided to give it a shot.
Our long-term memory works subconsciously, and every time rewriting these words you’ll find you that you’ve already known at least 30% of them. This is what the author, David James, says about this method.
So, let’s start. We need:
— a notebook. An author insists that this must be a notebook you really like. The process of the learning process should be pleasant.
— some color pens
— source of new words: you can choose new words or a vocabulary list you’ve already covered before
— free time
Step 1. Open your new notebook (the first double-paged spread), write the date in the left upper corner, and the number of the list.
To make things easy we divide the double-paged spread into 4 zones:
In Zone 1 write down 20-25 words and their translation in your native language. Now read the words aloud, just read, you don’t need to learn them now, and that’s all, you’ve just made your first gold list
Step 2. The next day you write 26-50 words on the next double-page spread. Please, don’t look into the first list. Let magic (you consciousness) workJ))
Step 3. You do the same things with your new words every day for the next 12 days without looking at the previous lists.
Why 2 weeks? Because your short-term memory stores information for 14 weeks. If you can remember these words in 2 weeks, be sure, they’re in your long-term memory.
Distillations
On the 15th day, it’s time for the first distillation.
Take the first list (the first page), cover the foreign translation, and translate them into your native language. Copy the words you don’t remember into the second section, and don’t forget to mark a date to keep track of your distillations. After completing the first distillation you create a new list in section #1 (day 15-th). Apart from making distillations of the headlists (1-14) you create new headlists (15-29). And this is what you need to do for the next 2 weeks.