Can you give an example of the words that you cannot memorize and the sentence they are coming from (with a translation)?
Are those basic words or probably some rare ones?
Depending on the frequency of those words appearing again I would suggest either:
If they are fairly common, add some related words to force some redundancy.
I use Anki to memorize Japanese vocabulary, and in my case I pick words that share the same kanji than the hard word.
For example, the word 図書館 (library) can be made redundant and easier to remember by adding 図書係 (librarian) and 図書 (books).
Bigger words sometimes are composed of two (or more) smaller ones, which are easier to memorize and also help to remember the original one (I know it happens sometimes in German, but I’m not sure how frequent they are).
I guess that you can pick some words with the same roots in German, but I’m not sure how easy is to find them in a dictionary or some other source.
If they are somehow obscure, it might be better to drop them for now.
As you mentioned, you are spending much more time on those words than the others and it seems it is not helping to memorize them now.
That time could be used to learn other words, and it might be a better use of it.
And, if you are exposed to those hard words again in the future, with a bigger vocabulary, it may be easier to remember them by having a more solid base (for example, some words were very difficult to grasp in the past, but similar words now are much easier).
Sometimes seeing a word that was hard for me in a different context make a huge difference and I can easily remember them, and it is not just the effect of being exposed to it again.
Sure. These are the first 5 that came up on Anki that I didn’t know
erreicht/reached
Sie hatten das Haus erreicht/They had reached the house
gefährliche/dangerous
Sie begeben sich auf eine gefährliche Reise/They began a dangerous journey
bedrohlich/threatening
vorgestellt/imagined
aber es ist weitaus düsterer und bedrohlicher als Quentin es sich je vorgestellt hatte/
but it is much darker and more threatening than Quentin had ever imagined
bereit/ready
Aber dazu war er noch nicht bereit/But he was not yet ready.
It’s chance that no nouns came up, I have just as much trouble with them.
They are not too complex nor rare, so I suggest that you use some related words to increase your exposition to them in a slightly different way.
More concretely what I usually do for hard word is:
Pick the noun that derived the adjective/adverb, or the other one.
For example, dangerous (gefährliche) <-> danger (gefähr ??)
I rely mostly on the suffix like ‘lich’, because it preserve the original word.
There are other ones like in the case of imagine(d) → imagination, and as your vocabulary expands and you are able to recognize them easier the memorization gets easier.
Pick the antonym or some related words that strongly associated with the original word.
For example, danger → safety, or → accident.
As your vocabulary expands, you will probably be able to easily identify the other word to give the context you need to recall the hard word.
You can also employ some kind of code to denote that it is the antonym , like ‘danger <> safety’, or have a specific relation.
Pick some longer words that are composed by the hard one and a word you already know.
It seems counter-intuitive, but some of them are easier than the root word because each of them restrict the possible meaning of the other one.
It does not have to be a single word, but one that both words usually come together, like ‘finally reached’ or ′ ready for use’.
You can also “cheat” and just pick the words that appeared in the original sentence.
It feels like “over-fitting”, but it is amazing how can you sometimes remember where you read the word for the first time and what it was its context.
I also noticed that most words are already formed by a prefix.
I’m not sure how regular are the words in German when you remove or change their prefixes, but it might also help to get the shorter ones memorized, and then the ones built from them will be easier to learn.
Can you give an example of the words that you cannot memorize and the sentence they are coming from (with a translation)?
Are those basic words or probably some rare ones? Depending on the frequency of those words appearing again I would suggest either:
If they are fairly common, add some related words to force some redundancy.
I use Anki to memorize Japanese vocabulary, and in my case I pick words that share the same kanji than the hard word. For example, the word 図書館 (library) can be made redundant and easier to remember by adding 図書係 (librarian) and 図書 (books).
Bigger words sometimes are composed of two (or more) smaller ones, which are easier to memorize and also help to remember the original one (I know it happens sometimes in German, but I’m not sure how frequent they are). I guess that you can pick some words with the same roots in German, but I’m not sure how easy is to find them in a dictionary or some other source.
If they are somehow obscure, it might be better to drop them for now.
As you mentioned, you are spending much more time on those words than the others and it seems it is not helping to memorize them now. That time could be used to learn other words, and it might be a better use of it. And, if you are exposed to those hard words again in the future, with a bigger vocabulary, it may be easier to remember them by having a more solid base (for example, some words were very difficult to grasp in the past, but similar words now are much easier). Sometimes seeing a word that was hard for me in a different context make a huge difference and I can easily remember them, and it is not just the effect of being exposed to it again.
Sure. These are the first 5 that came up on Anki that I didn’t know
erreicht/reached
Sie hatten das Haus erreicht/They had reached the house
gefährliche/dangerous
Sie begeben sich auf eine gefährliche Reise/They began a dangerous journey
bedrohlich/threatening
vorgestellt/imagined
aber es ist weitaus düsterer und bedrohlicher als Quentin es sich je vorgestellt hatte/ but it is much darker and more threatening than Quentin had ever imagined
bereit/ready
Aber dazu war er noch nicht bereit/But he was not yet ready.
It’s chance that no nouns came up, I have just as much trouble with them.
They are not too complex nor rare, so I suggest that you use some related words to increase your exposition to them in a slightly different way. More concretely what I usually do for hard word is:
Pick the noun that derived the adjective/adverb, or the other one.
For example, dangerous (gefährliche) <-> danger (gefähr ??) I rely mostly on the suffix like ‘lich’, because it preserve the original word. There are other ones like in the case of imagine(d) → imagination, and as your vocabulary expands and you are able to recognize them easier the memorization gets easier.
Pick the antonym or some related words that strongly associated with the original word.
For example, danger → safety, or → accident. As your vocabulary expands, you will probably be able to easily identify the other word to give the context you need to recall the hard word. You can also employ some kind of code to denote that it is the antonym , like ‘danger <> safety’, or have a specific relation.
Pick some longer words that are composed by the hard one and a word you already know.
It seems counter-intuitive, but some of them are easier than the root word because each of them restrict the possible meaning of the other one. It does not have to be a single word, but one that both words usually come together, like ‘finally reached’ or ′ ready for use’. You can also “cheat” and just pick the words that appeared in the original sentence. It feels like “over-fitting”, but it is amazing how can you sometimes remember where you read the word for the first time and what it was its context.
I also noticed that most words are already formed by a prefix. I’m not sure how regular are the words in German when you remove or change their prefixes, but it might also help to get the shorter ones memorized, and then the ones built from them will be easier to learn.