You’ve been learning English for some time. You feel you can talk to people when it comes to familiar topics in everyday conversation. You are proud of your grammar because you’ve studied it a lot and you can express yourself accurately by using varied grammar structures. There’s one aspect that’s been bothering you, though. You feel that when you want to talk about more complex, less familiar topics or abstract things, you don’t have enough vocabulary to do that. That’s a little frustrating and you’ve been wondering about how to improve your vocabulary in English so you can finally feel secure to talk about anything that comes up. If this almost universal description applies to you, there’s no need to be worried anymore. Here are some wonderful tips on how to improve your vocabulary!
READ, READ, AND READ A LITTLE BIT MORE
Everyone knows that reading is a good habit that should be cultivated on a daily basis. Few people, however, do that. If you want to improve your vocabulary in English you shouldn’t underestimate the power books have. Reading is one of the most – if not the most – powerful activities you can engage in in order to develop your vocabulary. Not only will you review each and every word that you already know when they appear in the text, but you’ll also learn new words and their synonyms as you read well-written texts. Good writers never repeat the same words over and over again. They have a lot of strategies to say similar things in different ways. This is extremely important if you want to be able to convey information with appropriate words and in a beautiful, effective style. Try and set some time to read every day. If 1 hour is not feasible, try 30 minutes. But do it consistently. You should also diversify the types of texts that you read (or genres), because different types of texts will use different words and structures, and if you want to master the language as a whole, you should master it in different contexts. Try fictional and non-fictional books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, recipes, etc. The more you read, the better your vocabulary will be.
LISTEN TO PODCASTS AND AUDIOBOOKS
Besides improving your listening skills, podcasts and audiobooks are also a great way of improving your vocabulary. Especially because you can easily find tons of content to listen to in a variety of contexts. Do you like listening to the news? You can find podcasts about it. Do you like listening to historical facts? There are audiobooks and podcasts about them. Do you like learning new things about your hobby, whatever it may be? There are certainly audiobooks and podcasts about it. Most people don’t even try these wonderful tools that are available online, and that you can find for free. But I assure you, if you try it, you’ll love it!
WATCH MOVIES AND TV SHOWS
Similar to what is said about audiobooks and podcasts above, movies and tv shows can be great resources for you to improve your vocabulary. There’s even an advantage here: movies and tv shows give you visual clues to help you understand what’s being said. If you think these clues are still extremely important for you, you can focus on movies and tv shows! As you know, you can also find different types of movies and tv shows easily online. Do you like drama? You can find it. Romantic comedy? Animation? Sci-fi? Horror? Action? Crime? Western? You can find everything! Another feature you may enjoy when watching movies and tv shows is the subtitle that you can activate if you can’t understand everything that’s being said. Subtitles may be helpful especially if you are not an advanced speaker of the language yet. Try it!
USE DICTIONARIES AND THESAURUSES
All of the things that are said in this post are extremely important for those who want to improve their vocabulary in English. All of them help students to learn new words. But if you find a new word that you don’t know and you can’t guess its meaning by its context, what do you need? That’s it! A good dictionary. It’s extremely important that you look up new words in good dictionaries. You can also find awesome dictionaries online. Most of them will also teach you how to pronounce the new word correctly, and give example sentences using the word you are learning. You should create a habit of looking up the new words that you find in your everyday activities. Some good online dictionaries are The Free Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, among others.
USE FLASHCARDS
Flashcards are also an awesome way to memorize new words. Flashcards are small pieces of paper that you can create by cutting a sheet of paper into small cards. After finding words that you don’t know and looking them up in a good dictionary, you just need to write only the word on one side of the card, and on the other side you can write the definition of the word, an example sentence using the word, the translation of the word into your first language, or even all of these things. Now, what’s most important about flashcards is the fact that you’ll use them to memorize the words by using spaced repetition, which means that you’ll review them periodically. For example, you write cards number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. In the next few days, you should review these cards every day! If you remember the definition of the word in card number 1 for, let’s say, ten days in a row, you can stop reviewing it. But let’s say that you forgot the definition of card number 2 on day 4. What should you do? Well, you should start counting the 10 days that you need to accomplish in order to stop reviewing card number 2 all over again. This will make your brain remember the new words you learn every day for 10 days in a row. After accomplishing 10 days for a given card, you can be sure you’ll probably remember this word when you see it again!
SUBSCRIBE TO ‘WORD OF THE DAY’ FEEDS
Most online dictionaries offer a feature called ‘word of the day’. It chooses a random word (sometimes a popular one at the moment) and presents it to you with its definition and some examples of the word used in context. You can subscribe to this service and receive these words in your e-mail, for example. If you’d like to improve your vocabulary slowly but steadily, you should give it a try.
USE WHAT YOU LEARN
In order to really be able to use what you’ve learned before, practice is essential. If you don’t use everything that you’ve been learning, you’ll eventually forget many things. Remember that practice makes perfect! So, when you learn a new word, use it whenever possible. When you talk to your teacher, your friends, or other language learners online. When you are writing a text, or just texting your friends or classmates. When you are alone but you are trying to think in English. Just use every new word that you learn whenever you have the opportunity!
USE VOCABULARY.COM
Finally, there’s an awesome website especially designed for you to improve your vocabulary in English. It’s Vocabulary.com. It’s almost a game that you play while learning new words in the process. You can access specific lists of words that you are interested in (for example, adjectives of personality), or you can just play it and it’ll adjust to your current level of proficiency in English and give you words that you should learn at the moment. It’s really good for you to focus on practicing vocabulary. Activities vary. Sometimes you are required to choose the definition of the word, sometimes you are asked to type the word in a gap within an excerpt that is presented, and sometimes you just choose a synonym for it. It also ranks you according to how many points you’ve scored in the game. You should definitely try it out!
If you want more tips on how to learn English, click here!
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