This can be difficult. First, because depending on the genre you are reading there may be made up terms. (ex. Harry Potter series), secondly, you may have to be aware of colloquial speech used by specific gender/age groups (ex. Wimpy kid series) and you may also encounter a lot of idiomatic language. You should have access to several dictionaries to always cross-reference terms if you can find them. Colloquial, idiomatic and contemporary slang are not usually found in most dictionaries. It is better to use newspapers because the grammar is correct and you will be less likely to run into the other issues as well.

never wright translate word...its help you memorise this word in your mind not in paper...and watch movies and animation more with english Subtitles... i hope useful...^_-

There are many ways to learn new vocabulary. I wrote an article for italki about this problem. You can read it here: https://www.italki.com/article/481/How-To-Learn-And-Remember-New-Words I hope it helps!

Hello Widia, I found it is good to have the same book in two languages and compare them. When I started to learn Malay, I looked up all the words I did not know and I wrote the translation just above the Malay word. At the beginning, just do one or two paragraphs. With time, you will recognize the words and you will look up less and less and understand more and more. When it comes to remembering the word, I divide up the word and attach an image or meaning to it. For example, I want to remember the word 'meyakinkan' which is a verb in Malay that means 'to be confident'. So 'me' means the word is a verb in Malay, 'ya' means yes to me and 'king' is someone who is very confident because he is a king. So when I read the word 'me-ya-king-kan' I imagine saying 'yes' to a very confident 'king'! So, 'Saya menyakingkan diri sendiri' means 'I make myself confident' and I imagine I am making myself a very confident king. Take time to creative with sounds, images and meanings and you will become very good at remembering new English words. You can use http://www.memidex.com/ to look up the words and also find out the origin of the word or its etymology summary. The links also have audio links for pronunciation. http://mnemonicdictionary.com/wordlist/GREwordlist is a good website where you can see how others have used their imagination to remember words.

Emma's article has great ideas. I also find inspiration in Paul Nations's book, "Learning Vocabulary in Another Language". This book reminds us about the many aspects of a word (or word family) we should know before we can say we actually "know" it. As a practical matter, I recommend keeping a word file, one page for each word family, in which is recorded definition, pronunciation, and an example of usage in a sentence. The word file needs to be periodically reviewed to reinforce learning.