Vocabulary building and learning
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Vocabulary building and learning
Developing a broad vocabulary range is a crucial element excelling in the English language. Besides accurate interpretation and comprehension of various types of text, expanding your knowledge and use of words is essential for speaking and writing clearly and concisely, enabling people to understand you more easily and to give the perception (and reality) that you are an intelligent person.
This article looks at ways to improve your vocabulary and learn new words.
1. Read and write.
The more you read, the more words you’ll be exposed to. Novels and literary texts are great for descriptive language and inspiring adjectives and adverbs, but magazines and newspapers also contain a wide range of useful vocabulary. As you read and uncover new words, try a combination of attempting to derive meaning from the context of the sentence as well as from looking up the definition in the dictionary.
Try writing your own poetry or short stories, which will give you a chance to use many adjectives, adverbs as well as nouns. You can be as colourful and imaginative as possible, playing with words and seeing which synonyms work best for different descriptions.
2. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy.
When you some across a new word, look it up in the dictionary to get both its pronunciation and its meaning(s). Online dictionaries, such as www.dictionary.com, are very convenient for showing the pronunciation of words and many include a thesaurus tab too. Go to the thesaurus and find similar words and phrases and also look at their respective antonyms.
3. Use a journal.
You can have a “word journal” to write down any words that you don’t know from your daily reading. Record the definition and then you can refer back to the list and slowly build them into your everyday vocabulary.
4. Play word games and watch TV.
Word games that challenge you and help you discover new meanings and new words are great for expanding your vocabulary. Examples include crossword puzzles, anagrams, word jumble, word searches, Scrabble, and Boggle. Watch TV in general- channels such as BBC, ESPN, CNN and National Geographic are informative and interesting to watch too.
5. Learn a word a day.
Using a word-a-day Website or developing your own list of words to learn is an effective technique many people use to learn new words.
Finally, don’t be afraid to try out new words you’ve learned- it’s necessary to practise putting them into your writing and speaking, or risk not retaining them in your brain.