How to learn English Vocabulary fast and effectively?

English vocabulary carries the meaning of the communication using English in writing or speaking. As an ESL learner, we have to learn and practice using the vocabulary words so we can gain the sucsess in delivering our speech.
How do people learn and practice their vocabulary words?
It is very common that people learn the new words by writing them down as many times as they can remember the spelling of the words. But in my opinion, this is a not really good way because it takes us a lot of time and paper,:).
What do I do to learn and practice my English vocabulary?
I always do 3 steps to learn a new vocabulary word which I see when reading, watching movies with subtitles, listening to the news....etc.

1. I spell the as many times as I want that help me remember the order of all letters to make up this words.
2. Next, I may look it up in the dictionary, English - English Dictionary first, and billingual dictionary if needed. Or I can guess the meaning of the word from the context where I saw it.
3. And now I begin to practice using the word, by saying it in a sentence, or trying to write something and use this word in my writing.

These 3 steps are completely simple that everyone can do, but they are a lot of effective than the traditional way of learning English vocabulary you do.
Try this, I hope you will get the good results as I do!