How to learn vocabulary fast for a test

You have a test tomorrow and an hour left tonight. This is what works, in order of what it gets you.

Test yourself, do not re-read

Reading the list ten times feels like work and is the least effective thing you can do. What does work is testing yourself: look at the word in your own language, come up with the answer, and only then check whether you were right. That awkward moment where you know nothing is exactly the moment you learn something.

Overestimating yourself while you do it is normal. That is why writing or typing the answer beats thinking "yes, I knew that one".

Practise both directions

French to English is much easier than the other way round: you recognise the word and the meaning follows. A test usually asks the hard direction, and that is when it turns out you only recognised it.

So practise from your own language into the foreign one, and add the other direction once that has stuck.

Spread it over two evenings, even if there are only two

Two lots of twenty minutes on two evenings beat one lot of forty minutes. It is one of the best-studied findings in the psychology of learning, and the difference is real: between two sessions you forget part of it, and pulling it back is what makes it stick.

Only have one evening? Then do two short rounds with a break in between instead of one long one.

Spend your time on the words you do not know yet

Most people practise the whole list over and over, including the ten words they have known for a fortnight. It feels good and gets you little. Set aside what went wrong and practise that.

As a rule of thumb: a word you got right three times in a row does not need to come round again tonight.

Watch the small things that cost marks

In French the accents and the gender of the noun. In German the article and the capital letter. In Spanish the tilde. Those are the marks you lose on words you actually knew.

So practise by typing rather than clicking: with multiple choice you recognise the right answer, with typing you have to know it.

And what to skip

Saying the words in your head while you read down the list. Leaving all of it until the evening before. And copying the list out: that costs half an hour and it is your hand practising, not your head.

With Toetsklaar you photograph your list, pick the direction and practise in rounds of ten. The app keeps track of what is still shaky and tells you where you stand before the test.