Sticking to My Current Learning Method

More than three months have passed since I began learning French vocabulary from a dictionary in earnest. As of today, I have covered about 26 percent of its contents - a remarkable achievement, if I do say so myself.

I study French vocabulary almost every day, not out of a sense of obligation, but because I genuinely find it enjoyable. 

At first blush, studying words directly from a dictionary might sound like a silly and quixotic idea, as the popular belief has it that the meaning of a particular word tends to stick to your head more firmly if it’s memorized in the context of a story.

However, as I soon discovered after I started this undertaking, there are huge benefits to studying words in alphabetical order, even if the method seems mechanical or robotic.

One benefit is that the words that are derived from the same source tend to be shown right next to each other in the dictionary, so that I can study them all at the same time.

For example, the basic verb “déchirer” (to tear up) appears right after the noun form “déchirement” (tearing up), which is preceded by the adjective form “déchirant” (heart-breaking), allowing me to observe the patterns in which a word changes its form depending on its grammatical attribute.

Another benefit to this learning method is that it helps me identify the so-called “faux amis” (false friends), which have very similar, if not identical, spellings to English words and yet have radically different meanings from their English cousins.

For instance, while the word “affection” can mean a feeling of fondness in a way that’s similar to English, it can also mean an ailment or disease, which is hardly imaginable to an Anglophone. The same goes for the word “allocation,” which can be understood as a distributed amount as in English, but it can also refer to benefits or subsidies granted by the government.

If I faithfully follow the sequence of words in the dictionary, I can easily detect such various nuances of a word and obtain a comprehensive understanding of its possible meanings in a matter of minutes.

Conversely, if I stick to learning words strictly through a contextual method as advocated by some language learning specialists, it can literally take ages before I can grasp the whole picture surrounding a particular word, tiring me out in the process, with no end in sight.

Accordingly, I will gladly stick to my current method of studying and keep learning the dictionary entries word by word, page by page. At the rate I’m going, I expect to finish learning the entire contents by the end of the year. Even at that point, my French will still be far from perfect, but at least my reading and listening comprehension will be greatly enhanced compared to now, so it’s definitely something to look forward to.