Published in · 6 min read · Feb 17, 2019
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As you may know already, English is not my first language. I grew up speaking Mandarin at home and at school. When I began studying for the SATs in the summer of my junior year in high school, my vocabulary was about 4,000 words according to random vocabulary tests found on the Internet. I got half of the total score on my first SAT practice test. Seeing this, my mother threatened to kick me out of the apartment if I did not stop trying to apply to U.S. colleges immediately. She thought I would squander my future because there was no way I could improve my vocabulary so much that I could get into any decent college, and I only had four months to prepare for the test.
Well, in your face, mom. Because that’s exactly what I did: learn 16k new words in 120 days. I started with memorizing 20 words a day, and eventually, I was able to learn 200 words a day without spending too much time on vocabulary books or losing too much hair. Here’s how I did it.
As I said, I started with learning 20 words a day, which meant learning 10 words twice a day or 5 words four times a day. My method in the beginning was: stare at a word for a few seconds to memorize its spelling, and then read its definition in Chinese out loud. I repeated this process until I felt the word had some grip on my mind. Once I’d gone over the list of ten words, I would repeat the whole process but faster. I also timed myself–it took me roughly 15 minutes on average to learn 10 new words. Learning 20 words only cost 30 minutes a day.
Once I got familiar with my process and felt comfortable speeding things up, I increased my daily target from 20 to 30, 40, and 50. You might wonder how I was able to decrease the time it took to learn each new word. The truth is, it’s easy for the mind to get good at something it’s used to. The key to improving rote memory is to practice it consistently, every single day. Your memory is like a muscle–it needs daily training and you have to keep increasing the number of reps to keep it strong.
My rote memory hit plateau at 50 words a day — learning them took me more than one boring hour every day, and I felt…
