En resumen (the short version)
- New words fade fast when you only read them. Pulling a word out of your own head is what makes it stay.
- Give stubborn words a silly picture to hang on to (un burro aburrido), and learn words in families (pan, panadería, panadero).
- Use every new word out loud within a day, then meet it again a few days later, before it's gone.
✌🏼 ¡Hola aventurero!
Monday: you sit down with your notebook and learn ten new Spanish words. ¡Genial!
Friday: you remember… mesa. And you already knew mesa 🙃
If that sounds familiar, it's very unlikely to be your memory. It's usually the way the words went in. So here's how to remember Spanish vocabulary so it's still there next week, and the week after.
Why new words disappear
Most forgotten words have one of these problems:
- ❌ You only ever read them. Recognising aburrido on a page is one skill. Finding it when you need to say "I'm bored" is another.
- ❌ They've got nothing to hang on to. Just a sound, with an English word next to it.
- ❌ You met them once. Your brain keeps what keeps coming back, and quietly lets go of the rest.
None of this means you're bad at languages. Es normal. Forgetting is what brains do with things they've only seen once. Each section below fixes one of these problems.
Test yourself instead of rereading
Rereading a word list feels productive, because everything looks familiar. But familiar isn't the same as "I can say it".
What makes a word stick is the small effort of finding it yourself. Even when you can't find it, the trying helps, because when you check the answer, it lands much harder.
| Rereading | Testing yourself | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | Read la sartén: frying pan again | Look at a frying pan and say la sartén |
| How it feels | Easy, so it feels like it's working | Harder, sometimes a bit annoying |
| What it trains | Recognising the word | Finding the word when you need it |
Set a timer for two minutes. Pick one topic, like your kitchen, and write or say every Spanish word you can remember about it. Then open your notes and check. The words you missed are the ones to work on this week.
Flashcards are a great way to test yourself, as long as you make them the right way. I explain how in how to make Spanish flashcards that actually work.
Give stubborn words a hook
Some words just won't stay. For those, invent a silly picture that links the sound of the word to its meaning. The sillier, the better 😄
| Spanish | English | The hook |
|---|---|---|
| aburrido | bored | Un burro aburrido: a donkey yawning on the sofa. |
| caro | expensive | A new car is always caro. |
| la mesa | the table | Your table is always a mess. |
| la ventana | the window | You open the window to vent the room. |
| el ajo | garlic | "Ah-ho!" is the noise you make after biting raw garlic. |
Make your own. They don't need to be clever, they just need to be yours. A picture you invented yourself sticks much better than one you read somewhere, even this one.
You won't need the hook forever. After you've used aburrido a few times in real sentences, the donkey quietly leaves and the word just comes 🫏
Learn the family, not just the word
Teacher bit 🤓 Spanish builds lots of words from one root and a few endings. Two endings are suuuper useful for everyday life: -ería is often a shop, and -ero / -era is often the person who works there.
| The thing | The shop (-ería) | The person (-ero / -era) |
|---|---|---|
| el pan (bread) | la panadería (bakery) | el panadero, la panadera (baker) |
| la fruta (fruit) | la frutería (greengrocer's) | el frutero, la frutera |
| el zapato (shoe) | la zapatería (shoe shop) | el zapatero (cobbler) |
| el pescado (fish) | la pescadería (fishmonger's) | el pescadero, la pescadera |
| la joya (jewel) | la joyería (jeweller's) | el joyero (jeweller, and also a jewellery box!) |
Learn pan and the pattern, and you've got three words for the price of one. The same thing happens with verbs: comer (to eat) gives you la comida (food, lunch) and el comedor (the dining room), and leer (to read) gives you la lectura (reading) and el lector (reader).
When you look a word up in a dictionary, glance at the words just above and below it. They're often its family, and you'll pick up one or two extra without trying.
Use it within a day
The fastest way to make a word stay is to use it, the same day, in three different ways:
| How | What to do |
|---|---|
| Hear it | Listen to it in a dictionary app or a video, and repeat it out loud. |
| Say it | Put it in a sentence about your day: Hoy he comprado pan en la panadería nueva. (Today I bought bread at the new bakery.) |
| Write it | Use it in a message or a diary: ¡Qué reunión más aburrida! (What a boring meeting!) |
What matters is that you use the word for something real in your day, not just in an exercise.
If a word you need keeps going missing in conversation, try describing it instead. There are phrases for that in why your Spanish won't come out when you speak.
Come back before it's gone
Even a word you've used once will fade if you never see it again. The trick is to come back to it just before you'd forget it.
A simple rhythm: look at new words again the next day, then a few days later, then a week later. Every time you find a word in your head, the gap before you forget it gets longer.
Don't learn 50 words on Sunday and then nothing for the rest of the week. Ten words you come back to will stay. Fifty words you see once mostly won't.
If your week is already full, here's how to fit short reviews into it: a Spanish routine for busy people.
Try it this week
Do a two-minute brain dump on Monday
Choose one topic, like your kitchen or your job, and write every Spanish word you can remember about it in two minutes. Look up two or three words you were missing.
Make a hook for your most stubborn word
Pick the word that keeps escaping and invent a silly picture for it, like un burro aburrido for aburrido. Say the word and picture the hook three times.
Use one new word in a message, then check on Thursday
Write one new word into a message today, to a friend, a teacher or your language exchange partner. On Thursday, see if you can still remember it without looking.
Recap ✨
- New words fade when you only read them. Testing yourself, even when you get it wrong, makes them stay.
- Give stubborn words a silly hook, like un burro aburrido for aburrido.
- Learn words in families: el pan, la panadería, el panadero.
- Use a new word the same day: hear it, say it and write it.
- Come back to it the next day, a few days later and a week later.
If you'd rather not spend your time deciding which words to learn next, my Roadmaps lay out the everyday topics in order, with games, speaking prompts and cheat sheets to practise them 🗺️
Now I'm curious 👀 Which Spanish word do you always forget, and have you got a hook for it yet? Cuéntame in the comments!
¡Un abrazo aventurero!
Lucía 💛
Lucía · Linguist, translator, Spanish teacher and author of the Visual Spanish Grammar Book.
Come and learn Spanish with me and other aventureros like yourself at skool.com/learnspanish 🎉