Buy or make your own set of flashcards. Flashcards are excellent study aids for building vocabulary. Look for ready-made flashcards that have themes, which make the interrelated words easier to remember for beginning Spanish students. Try making your own flashcards, too. On one side of an index card, write the Spanish word; on the reverse, draw or write a visual equivalent. Avoid using direct translations if possible. Memorize the vocabulary words by practicing English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English. As you practice, create two piles: the cards you know, and the cards you don't know or hesitated to get correct. When you have run out of flashcards, go through the remaining pile until you've cycled through all the flashcards successfully. Then do it again! Increase your flashcard collection as your vocabulary expands. Flashcards are portable and versatile and lend themselves to rote repetition, which is essential for memorizing vocabulary words.
Enlist a partner to help you study Spanish vocabulary words. Give your partner a list of words, with their English translations, and ask him to quiz you. See how quickly you can provide your partner with the correct word or translation. If you're studying Spanish together, switch roles to get more practice. To engage different areas of your brain used in language acquisition, try quizzing aloud and then writing down your answers.
Use magazines and picture books to build your vocabulary. Glossy magazines or news publications are great for studying Spanish vocabulary. Using a fashion spread from a women's magazine, see how many articles of clothing you can identify in Spanish and look up the ones you don't know. Use old magazines to cut out pictures to attach to your flashcards as visual cues. Picture books are great for this purpose, too. Because they're usually for children, they generally contain lots of clear, basic illustrations that you can refer to for practice.