How do you learn vocabulary?

I learned English and German as a second and third language. Both were studied at school and in the beginning stages(up to B1) we were made to memorise all words that we encountered in texts or exercises. We kept list of them and had exams solely on recalling those words. This was extremely hard, boring and inefficient(or so I thought).

After B1 we were given some freedom to how we learn the language. I found that just reading books or things on the internet, while only checking some vital words and noting them in my head, without any effort whatsoever to memorise them, worked best for me.

Now I’m in the beginning of learning Dutch. People say it’s very similar to German, but actually there are quite a lot of differences in the vocabulary. I tried using my method of just reading some beginner friendly texts on LingQ, but I’m not feeling any progress. I simply cannot memorise that many words at once. Then I tried the plain old method of studying the words one by one. It’s extremely boring and tiresome, but effective. I’m noticing progress, because I recognise the words, studied so, in new texts, while the words that I just momentarily noted in my head, I cannot seem to remember even after encountering them more than five times!

So my question is: what is the best way to study new words in the beginning(A1-2)? Should I focus on just reading and hope to have some progress or should I torture myself by trying to memorise the words one by one?

submitted by /u/markoffy
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