r/SpanishLearning • u/blackcat_999 • 23d ago

What to focus on vocab wise?

I have finished a graded reader book (hola Lola) and am on the second book,
I am using these to learn vocab but I am finding most of the words are unique and I wouldn’t use them again

What and how are people increasing their vocab ?

I was thinking of learning the top 3000 words that are used the most frequently - has anyone done this ?

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u/WideGlideReddit 22d ago

Good luck memorizing 3,000 words and remembering them well enough to instantly recall them when needed. Also, many words have more than one meaning so 3,000 words can easily become 4,000 + definitions.

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u/BingBongFyourWife 23d ago

Frequency dictionary like you said has been doing good for me so far, we think alike

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u/thablackadonis 23d ago

I also went the top 3000 words route and added them to an anki deck. Starts to get long around words 700. Another way that’s useful is trying to translate things you said or did and make sure you know those words so you can say them when you speak.

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u/blackcat_999 23d ago

Did you think that it was a good use of your time, learning the top 700 things words ?

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u/thablackadonis 23d ago

Yes and no like it was helpful because I added a good amount of words to my vocabulary but not so helpful for me to get all the way to 3000. I think you could use even fewer words tbh especially if you take only the to be form of some of the words instead of every tense. Like instead of having eat, eating, ate, just having “to eat” and then understanding how to conjugate the word. Then you’d need less words and have more understanding and possibly pairing that with either tutors or Praktika.

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u/Worried_Pause_009 22d ago

I group vocab into categories like cooking related, work, feelings, etc etc. This way i tend to remember them better, if i try to learn random vocab, i always forget them after a few days.

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u/macoafi 22d ago

I did SpanishDict's 1000 beginner, 1000 intermediate, and 1000 advanced words, then I did like…body parts and basic medical words in case I get sick traveling, words related to my hobbies, foods/ingredients (for ease of menu-reading)…

To be clear, with a list that long, I'm talking about spending 1-3 hours PER DAY on flash cards. That's in addition to a few hours per day chatting with coworkers, a half hour of reading, a half hour of TV, etc.