Showing posts with label Vocabulary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vocabulary. Show all posts

Thursday, May 29, 2008

How To-9: How to Enrich Your English Language Vocabulary


from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Read this article to learn how you can enrich your English vocabulary in just a few weeks.

Steps

  1. Love words. You have to really want to learn new vocabulary if you're going to succeed.
  2. Look up words you don't know whenever you encounter them. After encountering and looking up a word several times, you should eventually be able to remember its definition.
  3. There are many computer programs and websites that have ways of giving you a short "Word of the Day" list with new words every day. Try going to www.dictionary.com. Scroll down and click on "Get the Word of the Day e-mail". If you enter all of the required information, you will get a new e-mail every day with a word, its definition, and an example usage sentence.
  4. Get a personalized Google homepage and click on "Add Content". Search for "word of the day" in the search box, and pick some of the content choices that you'd like to have on your homepage. The author recommends Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com), Dictionary.com, and Wordsmith.org. When you log on to your homepage, there will be a list of new words every day.
  5. Read. Read all genres of books. When you come across a word you don't know, read the sentences around the word and try to figure out what it means from the context. Check your guess with a dictionary. This doesn't mean you should start reading medical textbooks or other books with lots of new words on every page. Set aside time each day to sit down with your book. Enjoy yourself!
  6. Play word games with friends. Try Boggle, Scrabble, or Catch-Phrase. There are so many great games out there to teach you new words. If a friend comes up with a word that you don't know, ask them what it means.
  7. Use the words you learn when you're talking to people or writing letters or e-mail. Using your new vocabulary is not only fun, but a great way to remember all these new words. Try to use at least three new words a day when communicating with anyone.
  8. Learn roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Many words in the English language come from Latin or Greek words. When you combine these Latin or Greek words, you get new words in English. For example: astro ("astron" meaning "star") + logy (logos meaning "speech") = astrology (meaning "telling of the stars"). Buy an etymological dictionary (meaning "a dictionary of word origins").
  9. If you learn any romance language (eg: French, Spanish, Italian), or Latin or Ancient Greek, these will help you immensely with improving your vocabulary, especially the two ancient languages here because so many complicated English words are derived from words that are simple and commonly used in them.
  10. Find a friend who speaks English. It's good to practice using your new words. With a web connection, your conversation partner does not need to live near you. You can email, chat, and even phone each other using your computers. A friend who understands that you are learning can help you practice, use new words in your conversations, and offer you advice. Since talking to a friend is fun, it won't feel like work! If your friend wants to learn your language, too, it will be easier for both of you to understand each other's mistakes.
  11. Listen to the radio, watch television, or find a podcast that you like in English, and practice understanding the language when spoken, too.

Tips

  • Have fun with words. Try all of the ideas listed above, but don't think that you have to do all of them to expand your vocabulary. Pick the ones that you like the most or are most convenient for you.
  • Learning more words should be exciting and interesting. It shouldn't seem like an English lesson. If you feel stressed out or under pressure, you're being too hard on yourself. This doesn't have to be a daily routine, just something to do when you have time.
  • Don't be afraid to make mistakes. English is a very difficult, irregular language, and even native speakers have trouble sometimes.

Warnings

  • Note that some words might have different meaning depending on the context. Learn more about how to use the new words that you learn.
  • Avoid using a new word - especially in business correspondence - if you are still not certain about its meaning and how to correctly use it. Sometimes, this might confuse your audience.

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Enrich Your English Language Vocabulary. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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How To-4: How to Build Your Vocabulary


from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

When you leave school or college, someone will inevitably point out that this is not the end and that it is only the beginning. Of course the speaker is right. No educational process is the end. It is always the beginning of more learning and more living. And that is the case here. What has happened to you as a result of your reaction to the material and suggestion in this site is only the beginning of your development. To stop increasing your vocabulary is to stop your intellectual growth. You will wish, we are sure, to continue to growing intellectually as long as you remain alive. And with the momentum that your weeks of hard work have provided, continuing will not be at all difficult.

Steps

  1. Become actively receptive to new words. Words won’t come chasing after you. You must train yourself to be on a constant lookout, in reading and listening for any words that other people know and you do not.
  2. Read more. As an adult, you will find most of the sources of your supply of new words in books and magazines. Is your reading today largely restricted only to the quick perusal of daily news papers? Then you will have to change your habits. If your aim is to have superior vocabulary, you will have to make the time to read at least one book and several magazines every week. Not this week and the next week, but every week for the rest of your life.
  3. Add to your own vocabulary the new words you meet in your reading. When you see an unfamiliar word in a book or in a magazine, do not skip over it impatiently. Instead pause for a moment and say it to yourself. Get used to its sound and appearance. Then puzzle out its possible meaning in the context of the sentence. Whether you come to the right conclusion or not, whether indeed you are able to come to any intelligent conclusion at all is of no importance. What is important is that, by that process, becoming super conscious of that word. As a result, you will suddenly notice that this very word pops up unexpectedly again and again in all you reading. For now your mind has been alerted to notice it. And of course after you have seen it a few times, you will know fairly accurately not only what it means but the many ways in which it can be used.
  4. Open your mind to new ideas.Every word you see is the translation of new idea. Think for few minutes of the areas of human knowledge that may possibly be unknown to you - Psychology, semantics, science, art, music, management, etc… Then attack one of these areas methodically, by reading books on that particular subject. In every field, form the simplest to the most abstruse, there are several books for the average, untrained lay reader that will give you both a good grasp of the subject and at the same time add vocabularies because they are required to expose themselves constantly to new areas of learning. You must do the same.
  5. Set a goal. If you do nothing about your vocabulary, you will learn, at most, twenty-five to fifty new words in the next twelve months. In conscious efforts, you can learn several thousands. Set your self a goal of finding several new words every day. This may sound ambitious, but you will discover as soon as you start actively looking for new words in your reading, and actively doing reading of a more challenging type, that new words are all around you. That is, if you are ready for them. And understand this -- vocabulary building snowballs. The results of each new day search will be greater and greater. Once you provide the necessary initial push, once you gain momentum, once you become addicted to looking for new words, for finding new words and for taking possession of new words, you'll find you can't stop.

Warnings

  • Never become obssessed with vocabulary. Vocabulary building should be a pleasant exercise.

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Build Your Vocabulary. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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