Royane Real
Improving Vocabulary in Three Easy Steps
By : Celia Webb
Introductory comments by Royane Real
Author of “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative”
I still remember exactly how many words of the English language I knew on the day that I started grade one – Zero!
I had been raised in a refugee family that knew no English, and my first language was very hard to speak and write. For me, learning English words was a whole lot easier. I remember being fascinated by English words and grammar from the time I was about seven years old.
Today I know thousands and thousands of English words. I don’t really remember how I learned them all. The following article by author Celia Webb gives some good ideas that you can use to improve your vocabulary in English.
I can remember that I often used the very same methods to learn new vocabulary that Celia Webb recommends in her article.
Often I would try to figure out what the word might mean from studying the meaning of the words all around it. If I wasn’t able to figure out the meaning of the new word, I usually made a point of asking the teacher. For some reason, I never felt embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know a particular word. I know that many of the other children in the room didn’t want to show their ignorance by telling the teacher they didn’t understand something.
It’s quite likely that those other kids never developed their vocabularies very much. By not making it a priority to understand the meanings of new words, they probably never learned very many new additions to their vocabularies. By never admitting when they didn’t know something, they missed out on the chance to have it explained to them.
I remember that as a child, I did spend a lot of time looking at dictionaries, wondering if I would ever know all those wonderful words.
Eventually I outgrew my childhood dictionary and then I started to learn the words in a college dictionary.
Reading about the meanings of new words straight from a dictionary is not for every body. Only people who are truly in love with words in the English language are likely to enjoy this method of increasing their vocabulary.
Try one or more techniques to improve your vocabulary and see which technique works best for you. As the author states in her article, it’s always a good idea to actually use the new words in a sentence or two that you actually take the time to write out. By using your new vocabulary, the new words become a living part of your language.
( The above introductory comments were written by Royane Real. Learn how you can improve your brainpower in my popular ebook : “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative” It’s available at http://www.lulu.com/real )
Feature article
Improving Vocabulary in Three Easy Steps
By : Celia Webb
There are close to one million words in the English language. That's a lot of words! Too many words for even dictionaries to list (most dictionaries confine themselves to several hundred thousand words).
However, the more words you know and use correctly, the higher your perceived education level. In fact, most college graduates do use a wider variety of words. Not only is a broad vocabulary impressive, understanding the definitions and nuances of words helps you understand better and communicate more effectively.
The English language is constantly changing. Words go out of fashion and slip from common usage. New words are always being added. Words get adopted from other languages or are developed to describe a new technology or phenomenon. Keep up with the changes and broaden your basis in the large body of words which continue in usage.
You will certainly benefit from making a conscious effort to learn words which are new to you.
You can learn new words by sitting down with a dictionary and working through it from A to Z. You can also get word lists from vocabulary building books which are available at the library or bookstores.
However, in both of these methods, you learn words from someone else's priority list. Instead, focus on the words you need to know. Use the steps outlined below to enrich your vocabulary with the words which will mean the most to you - those you encounter every day.
Jot down new words. For the next twenty-four hours, write down any words you read or hear which you do not know. Read the normal items you read like the newspaper, magazines, books, educational material, work material, and advertisements on TV.
Any word you come across in your daily activities which you cannot precisely define, add to your list. Be honest with yourself. Most of us guess a word's meaning from the context in which we see or hear it used. If you could not explain the exact definition of the word to your best friend, add it to your list.
Try to find at least twenty words. As you write the words down, leave several blank lines before you write the next word.
Look it up. You may have heard your mother say this to you when you asked her what a word meant. Well, it is not an original idea, but it does work. Look each word up in the dictionary. Write down the definition in your notebook.
Look at the synonyms if there are any. Jot those down as well. If you want to be really thorough, annotate whether the word is a verb or a noun (it could even be both).
Be a writer. To firmly set the definitions of these new words in your mind, you now need to use them. Practice writing them so you get the spelling correct.
Write at least ten sentences which include the word using the definition correctly. After you have written it until you can spell it and can use it in a sentence easily, you will feel much more confident using the word.
Make this process of learning new words a part of your regular routine. If you repeat this process once a week for a year, you will have 1,040 new words in your vocabulary. You can improve your vocabulary. Get started today!
About the Author
Celia Webb is an author, illustrator, and company executive. She and her husband, Mack H. Webb, Jr., founded Pilinut Press, Inc., publishing advanced readers for children and ESL students. Their website http://www.pilinutpress.com offers more free articles on developing reading-related skills, word games and puzzles, and activity sheets for their entertaining and educational books.
Article source: Education Articles on http://www.ArticlesTree.com
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