One of the tools of vocabulary practice, that I found useful while studying foreign languages and advise my students, is Anki, a spaced repetition system. A spaced repetition system, or flashcard software, is a great tool for vocabulary memorization.

In this program, you make your own deck of flashcards, or download the ones available on the Net, and begin your study. You set how many words you want to learn each day. You customize the feedback you want to have: whether it is a translation of a word or a phrase, an example sentence, or the pronunciation, or all the mentioned.

Every day you start revising your vocabulary, and the software shows you a word or a phrase. You have to remember its translation, context, or pronunciation, then check the right answer and choose one of the options given. If you don’t remember this information at all and choose this option, the programme will present this very word again soon. If are doubtful, the word will be repeated in a few days. If you had no problem recognizing it, the repetition will be put off for a longer period.

The advantages of this kind of vocabulary practice are the following:

1)      You can do it whenever you have a free minute, on your computer or on your smartphone.

2)      You can quickly enrich your vocabulary, at least, at the recognition level.

3)      It’s free.

However I would like to warn everyone, that if you don’t revise words for some period, say, several days, flashcards seem to accumulate, so the revision should be on a regular basis. Also, I would advise to supplement such kind of vocabulary work with extensive listening and reading to help noticing.

As this kind of vocabulary work requires a high degree of autonomy, I recommend it to young adults and adults. You can learn more at: http://ankisrs.net/ . I know ABBYY has a similar software, but haven’t used it, unfortunately.