# 2 Recording and organising vocabulary

It is useful to find what system of recording and organising vocabulary works best for you. Here are some suggestions that you may want to try:

#### Reading

- grouping vocabulary and phrases according to topic (furniture, clothes, a particular hobby that you are interested in, etc.)
- word families: trabajo (work), trabajador (worker), trabajar (to work), trabajoso (laborious), etc.
- grouping according to structure or use, e.g. sequence organisers: primero (first), después (later), luego (then), finalmente (lastly), etc.
- collocations, i.e. words that tend to go together, like un calor espantoso (a terrible heat)

(Adapted from Hurd and Murphy (2005), pp. 113–14)

Here is an example of how you may note down the various phrases in which you can find the verb ir.

Figure 1 Example of a vocabulary mind map

OpenLearn - Getting started with Spanish 3
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