A lecture titled“2023 Postgraduate Entrance Examination Lectures—Preparation for English”, jointly held by the School of Civil Engineering (SCE) and New Oriental University Student Learning and Development Center, was successfully carried out in room X4358, Xipu Campus, Southwest Jiaotong University. Deng Li, a lecturer from New Oriental was invited to introduce the English test for Postgraduate Admission Examination. Many students, especially sophomores and juniors were attracted and interacted actively with Mr. Deng.

Mr. Deng, as a famous English teacher in New Oriental, has 14 years of teaching experience and got a high grade (83 out of 100) in the postgraduate Entrance examination. He also obtained TKT (Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test) certificate. He focused on the preliminary stage of the test preparation—vocabulary learning and answered questions from students.

First, he listed two stages for word memorizing: Memorizing words with your ears and the contexts. Using your ears to learn pronunciations and spellings, and using the context for understanding meanings and usages. He also explained context mnemonics, the most difficult part for most students, in detail and stressed the importance of practicing the tests papers in previous years.

Then, Mr. Deng criticized two popular memory methods: Harmonic mnemonics and associative mnemonics. He strongly recommended a more common way, that is to remember pronunciation first, then spelling, which makes full use of listening, speaking, reading and writing ability of human brains. In the following part, he answered the third question from students: How many words do we on earth have to remember? Mr. Deng said that we have to base on, but not be limited to the test syllabus and pay more attention to word frequencies.

Finally, he recommended the study should start from the most difficult words and then move to vocabulary books. Students who have enough time even can read more English materials. It is important to learn vocabulary in daily life, to lay a good foundation for the Postgraduate Admission Examination.