I agree with Eden's comment about context but also remember that you can probably LEARN about 500 words a year if you have one or two lessons a week. When you start learning another language you learn perhaps 8 words in the first lesson ( perhaps "Hello, my name is .... I am .... years old" in English). You go home and think 'Fantastic! I've learnt 8 words.' - you go to the next lesson and remember most of them. Okay, so maybe you don't know them all but you are learning 8 words. You only make two or three mistakes and therefore you feel good. But many psychologists say that on average we need to see/use a word about 8 or 9 times (some say between 4 and 40 times!). So how many words are you learning at lower intermediate level? Thousands... How many mistakes do you make? Hundreds You don't feel so good. I think most students can relax a little, be patient and realise that making repeated mistakes - and repeatedly not quite remembering words (and needing a prompt from a friend or a teacher or looking it up in a dictionary) is all part of the process of learning. Read, listen, watch films, write and talk in the language, and eventually, slowly, slowly, those words will become part of your usable vocabulary.

Hi! If  you  put  out  a  list  of  vacabulary  and  try  to  memorize  it,  then  you'll  forget  soon.You  can't  remember  random  information So  it's  important  to  learn  how  to  use  a  word  in  a  context  and  try  to  memorize  new  words  in  phrases. That's  my  suggestion.

I would suggest that you study pictures often for all nouns vocabulary. You can google them and click on images so you can see them quickly. You can even try using google for verbs and it will also appear. Picture vocabulary is very effective because our brains are trained for both auditory and photographic memory. So when you are able to see the picture of the new word it would retain more quickly and even long term in your photographic memory. As for your auditory memory to work, you can try recording your voice while saying the word, it's meaning and the correct sentence for it. You then could play and replay it as often as you want. This will automatically store in your long term memory bank.. I hope this works for you cuz it works for me :) even in my teaching.

The best way to improve your vocabulary is to read many english texts like on bbc, the New York Times e.g. when i was preparing myself to IELTS or FCE besides doing many tests i have also read many englisn texts

Hi. It's everyone's trouble. Write short stories.