Of notebooks and other strategies for studying vocabulary

There is probably no other field of studies where approaches and study techniques differ as much from one person to another as with learning vocabulary. While some prefer reading words and their definitions just as they would read a book, others need to have the words written down by themselves once, twice or even three times before they know how to use them correctly. I would perhaps find my method somewhere in between the aforementioned strategies. More precisely the plan I formulated for myself is the following. I compiled a notebook whereto I transferred the words I wanted to become familiar with. When it comes to verbs I always try to put another expression next to them, which was either higher or lower register in order to get an overall impression of its meaning and the context it will most likely be used in. For nouns, I tried to look up possible synonyms or if there weren’t any I helped myself out with acronyms. The same method I applied to adjectives. The corpus of contemporary English was a useful source as far as research the context in which words are often found is concerned. As far as looking for synonyms and acronyms or other words of other level of register goes the ‘Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learners’ proved tremendously useful to me. I am glad that after some initial struggle I eventually figured out the most suitable and useful way of coping with new words. Render studying more efficient and successful is a precious gift to yourself.