I think learning words does not require memorization. You must use your mind more efficiently to learn. You will notice when studying, that some words you will remember very easily, and some words are harder to remember. An unusual or cool sounding word you might remember very fast, but others do not seem to stick to your brain. You must figure out which words are harder to remember and focus on those. Once you identify those you should try to think of similar words that will help you remember these more easily. Also you should sometimes point to an object that the word means, and then it will stick more. Try to associate ideas , pictures, or other things to recall the harder words. Also what might help is learn groups of words at once and memorize them all at once. What I do is sit down and learn 30 words in one hour. Then I review those words, I will notice that about half of them are harder to remember, so I focus on those ones more and I try to compare those chinese words to english words, or I try to find patterns in those words which help me to remember them. Hope this helps!
