Memorize words by connecting them to things, not to their corresponding word in your mother tongue. And when you read you should force yourself to understand and get a mental picture of the sentences in the foreign language directly, and not translate them into your own language first. 

A normal mistake many do when they are about to learn a language is to in their minds translate the foreign language into their mother tongue. When they work on vocabulary they connect - consciously or not - the foreign word to a corresponding word in their own langauge. And when they read foreign language texts they stop after each sentence and translate it before trying to get at the meaning.

But this is not a very effective way of learning. The more you manage to "think" in the foreign language, without having to take the detour your own mother tongue, the quicker you will acquire the new language.

So when you work on new words and phrases, the secret is to try to connect it to a mental picture of what it means or represents. If you like using flash cards, make a drawing of what the word represents instead of writing the equivalent in your old language.

This will speed up your language learning. It will also make your understanding of your new language more accurate. Words and phrases in one langauge never corresponds on a one-to-one basis with words in another language. Each language "divides up the world" in words and phrases differently. When you take detours to your mother tongue, you will never fully understand and master the other language.