It's my opinion, and all people have their own techniques, but I think it's really hard learn new words If you only try to memorize them.
I think it's better if you try to match the word with an image.
My teacher has told me, that the students should make a flash card where you can see the word, his meaning and a drawing of that word.
In my case I have improved a lot ( or at least, I think so) after that I started to read comics. It's the perfect combination between the texts (grammar) and the images ( that it's, in summary, other kind of memories about the meaning of the words).