Words that won't lock in

As I complete the 16th lesson of the FSI German books, I am intently integrating sentence writing into the process. As I said in my previous post, my hope is that the practice will commit words to my memory and reinforce my comfort with the sentence structure. Already certain advantages are emerging--I spend a great deal of time struggling with the same nouns and verbs each day that I practice the lesson. They are mostly words that are new for that chapter, and occasionally words from previous chapters that I forgot over time. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten the English meaning or German translation of the same words in the last few days.

Some verbs are:  

• eintreten - to occur, to arise;
• aufschieben - to delay, to put off
• sich etwas ansehen - to take a look at something
• sich lassen etwas entgehen - miss something, fail to do something

 Some nouns are:  

• die Einladung - invitation
• die Bescprechung - the conference
• die Bedeutung - the meaning, significance

Notice that all of the meanings of the words are fairly basic--not remedial--but basic. I believe it's important to be able commit them all to memory and summon them whenever I need them in speaking or writing. They challenge me, though, for various reasons. Some are rather long words with a few syllables but are similar to other words (e.g. Besprechung, Bedeutung). Some verbs are variations of common words but add reflection (sich etwas ansehen - literally, for oneself something at look.) The fact that ansehen is a variation of sehen - to see, tends to give me difficulties because I don't remember if it's ansehen, or aufsehen, or perhaps aussehen. The second turns out to mean stir, which I haven't yet encountered, and the third means to appear, to seem. This might all be perfectly logical if I had a better sense of what the prepositions mean. Of course, prepositions are often one of the hardest things to master in a foreign language because so many don't translate directly to and from English. Finally, there are some verb constructions, like sich lassen etwas entgehen, where I have to remember the reflection (sich), the helper verb (lassen - to let/leave), and the main verb entgehen (literally ent - away, gehen - go). So the whole clause might translate literally to on oneself let something away get, or simply, to miss, fail to do.

As you would imagine, it helps to write about these trouble words here and break apart their components. I would like a way to commit the words to memory after only forgetting them two or three times. I don't want to look something up 10 times and have to write a sentence with it 10 times because I've keep forgetting. I'm wondering if there is something sort of shortcut I could slip into the process, such as drawing a picture, that would commit it to my memory in fewer attempts. Given that I already have the sentence mnemonic devices for each word, it seems ill advised to also draw a picture that might confuse me further. I need to give this more thought, maybe in Chapter 17 :)