Studying for Friday's vocab quiz...

So you have a vocabulary quiz coming up in English or for a foreign language course? As long as it's not Friday morning and you're looking at the words for the first time, you've got this!

Ideally, you'll make your plan and start preparing on Monday (or as soon as the quiz is announced). Here is an outline of what your study plan can look like, in the days leading up to the quiz. I am going to go with the hypothesis that the quiz is asking for straight recall where you're given the word in either English or the foreign language, and are asked to define or translate it.

Monday:
1. In your planner, write down that there's a quiz on Friday (or whatever day it is) in whatever the subject is. Then, write down to "study" for each of the days leading up the quiz.
2. Take a piece of paper and fold it into three columns.
3. In the left-most column, write the word that will be on the quiz.
In the middle column write the definition (in your own words) or the translation/meaning; use your resources to make sure you have the correct information or meaning to study! 
Fold the right side of the paper to cover up the middle column. Test yourself to see what you already know, by pretending this is a practice test, and taking the test. Then, look to see what you got correct. Read through the words again.
4. Fold over the paper so the first column is covered. 
5. See how you would do if that version of the word was presented on the test, by writing down your answers. Check your answers.
6. If you could correctly answer (pretty automatically) both versions of the word, cross out the word; you know this word. If you couldn't answer correctly, only knew one version, or if it took a while searching your brain to answer correctly, don't cross out that word.
7. Look at the number or words you need to learn, and divide by two (or however many days there are until the quiz, minus 1). That is the number of words you need to learn each night leading up to the quiz. You will need to review ALL of the words the night before.
Write down these details in your planner.

Tuesday
1. How many words are you supposed to learn today? Get another piece of paper, and set it up like you did yesterday, with three columns. 
2. In the first column, write the word. Second column: definition or translation. Third column: use a strategy to link the word to its definition or translation. Note that strategy here, either by explaining it or drawing a visual. See this post for more information on types of links or strategies to use when memorizing meanings for words. 
3. Learn those words; you'll know if you know a word by testing yourself again like you did yesterday. Make sure you assess your ability to recall the answer correctly when given the definition/ translation AND the English word.

Wednesday
1. Repeat yesterday's procedure with the remaining words.
2. If you have time, test yourself again on yesterday's words after you learn today's. 

Thursday
1. Review all of the words, mixing up the order, by making a practice test for yourself. Make the practice test look as similar as possible to what the real quiz will look like. Make sure that you can not only answer all questions correctly, but pretty quickly too. If you need to think for too long about a correct answer, go back and look at your strategy and either make it a stronger or more vivid strategy or come up with one that will work better.
2. Repeat this practice test again towards the end of your homework time, after doing something else for a while.

Friday
1. Ace the quiz!

The spread out studying, repeated practice of recalling the correct information, and use of active learning strategies like mnemonics and linking a visual to language, make this a study routine that you'll want to adapt and use for almost any quiz or test!

Try it and leave a comment below to let us know how it goes!

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