How to Choose Which Spanish Words Are Worth Saving
Do not save every unknown Spanish word. Save the words and phrases most likely to come back, matter, or help you understand something you care about.
Saving everything creates review debt. Saving selectively turns review into support.
Save words that meet one of four tests
Save a word if:
- It appears more than once.
- It blocks the meaning of the text.
- You want to use it yourself.
- It belongs to a phrase you keep seeing.
Skip a word if it is rare, decorative, or only useful for one article you do not care about.
Frequency is not the only factor
High-frequency words matter, but personal usefulness also matters. A cooking learner may need hornear before a business learner does.
Vocabulary knowledge includes use, context, and collocation, not only dictionary meaning (Schmitt 2008). That means a saved phrase is often better than a saved word.
Save phrases when possible
Instead of saving only:
- cuenta
Save:
- darse cuenta de…
- tener en cuenta…
Now you are saving Spanish you can recognize and reuse.
Repeated encounters help vocabulary grow (Webb 2007), so keep reading after saving. Review is only one part of the loop.
Stop studying Spanish. Start reading it.
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