Vocabulary building and word study

It’s not a secret that you need to have a good command over vocabulary to master a language. This statement is not only true for learning English but also stands true for learning every single language in the world.

The stronger vocabulary you have, the better you can express your thoughts to others. After having a substantial vocabulary, you should focus on learning the grammar.

The plan seems quite straightforward!

However, there is an issue. While there is a structure or pattern to follow for learning grammar, you can’t follow any pre-designed learning path for vocabulary. Rather, you can only learn new words and build vocabulary as you go.

So, how can you work on your vocabulary building?

While many suggest following the flashcard method, it doesn’t bear fruit in the long run. It happens as you’re only memorizing the words for the sake of memorizing. And, your brain doesn’t store them in the long-term memory reservoir as you don’t need (or use) those words in your everyday life.

That means there are two major hurdles on our path to vocabulary building. We don’t have any structured learning path and our brains simply erase the (forced) memorized words after a while.

Today, we’d look into these issues and unravel how we could effectively work on our vocabulary building.

Vocabulary Building Strategies

You might be thinking about grabbing a dictionary and start memorizing words and their meaning from page one. After all, we already know that it takes about 50 seconds to memorize a word. By that logic, you can build a vocabulary of 1000 new words in under 14 hours!

Doesn’t it seem a bit too easy?

Yes! And sadly, this method will not work in real life, unless you have the brain-power of a prodigy.

As you memorize a word and its meaning, you’re storing the information in short-term memory or working memory. After a while, our brains throw most of these pieces of information into the trash!

Why?

Because we don’t need that information to serve any particular cause.

This is the science behind why cramming words from the dictionary is one of the least effective vocabulary building methods.

Hmm … It seems that we need to come up with some vocabulary building strategies!

Here are some good strategies that you can follow —

Diversify Your Reading Efforts

Despite being a tedious and passive approach to vocabulary building, reading is by far one of the most effective strategies. But you need to understand the impact of diversifying your reading patterns.

For example, the detective and spy stories will contain words that introduce the readers to words specific to the crime and crime-solving genre. A reader might stumble upon words like — espionage, homicide, vandalism, arsonist, bribery, embezzlement, etc.  

On the other hand, if you read a romantic novel, you’ll get exposed to words related to emotions and feelings. In this case, you might see words like — angelic, alluring, adore, cherish, passion, infatuation, etc.  

Even if you’re reading academic books, you’re getting exposed to words relevant to that particular subject or topic.

To have a stronger vocabulary, you should read books from different genres. Plus, your reading materials should contain both fiction and non-fiction plots or settings.

You need to diversify.

This strategy will introduce you to more words fitting to different scenarios and circumstances — creating an all-encompassing vocabulary building strategy.

You should start working on spelling and reading practice simultaneously as spelling supports reading. 

Be More Aware of Words While Reading

Do you feel like having a poor vocabulary despite you read a lot? You’re not the only one — many of us face the same issue.

This is because we only focus on reading but not on the — quality of reading. If you become more aware while reading, you start to focus on every word that the writer has used.

For example, let’s consider this sentence — “Sarah’s callous remark on Phoebe’s struggle with depression astounded everyone in the room.”  Now, let’s assume that you don’t know the meaning of callous and astounded in this sentence.

But you are very clever and can understand the context without knowing the meaning of every word in a sentence. Here, the context suggests that — Sarah made “some kind of weird comment” and everyone is in shock.

Although you’ve successfully guessed the meaning of the sentence, you just missed an opportunity to learn the word callous and astounded.

As you’re reading, you should try to gather as many words as possible into your vocabulary. This is one of the best ways for vocabulary building. Plus, you’ll not have to actively memorize words but use the context in your favor. You’ll see more effective results in this way.

Use Visual Cues

The fundamental of this vocabulary building strategy is quite simple — associate mental images with words. This strategy shares core philosophy with the mind palace memorizing strategy.

For example, let’s consider the word callous from the previous section. Now that you know the meaning of the word to be heartless or cold-hearted, you can associate a movie villain with this word.

Here’s an idea — think of Thanos (the villain in the Avengers movies) when you read or hear the word callous.

You can use scenes from movies or TV shows, comic books, memes, or events in your life. The only limit is your imagination.

This technique will help you memorize words and recall their meanings with ease. So, from the next time, associate newly learned words with visual images.

Implement the Newly Learned Words in Different Cases

If you don’t use newly learned words, you’ll eventually forget them. It doesn’t matter which vocabulary building strategies you’ve used. You’ll forget the words that you don’t use.

So, whenever you learn a new word, try to use that word in different cases. You could use that in essays, exams, journals, or even while talking to others.

For example, let’s again think of the word callous. We don’t use that word very often while talking to others. Rather, we prefer using cold-blooded or heartless. But that doesn’t mean you can use it. Use callous instead of heartless from the next time.

It will diversify your speech and make you sound smarter! But most importantly, that word will store in your vocabulary permanently.

Have a Dictionary by Your Side

If you want to improve your skills and work on your vocabulary building, you must have a dictionary by your side. A good dictionary can be your best English teacher. You could either get a physical copy of a dictionary or rely on an online dictionary. Most of the popular dictionaries now have apps too.

The main idea is to have quick access to your dictionary. In this way, you can instantly look up an unknown word. Apart from the meaning of the word, you should also check the synonyms and check how that word is typically used in a sentence.

Some of the good dictionaries also offer historical evidence of the words. For example, the word Callous comes for the Latin word Callus.  And, it was added to the English language in the 1800s.

These pieces of information also help you remember the word in different ways. The more information you have about a word, the more sources you’ll have to associate the word.

However, make sure that your dictionary of choice is a good reputation and comes with a wide collection of words. A cheap dictionary (in terms of quality) will do more harm than good.

Use the Common Vocabulary Building Activities

Apart from the clever strategies and vocabulary building examples mentioned above, you can incorporate the common vocabulary building activities too.

For example, having a strong sense of prefix, suffix, and root words will help you add a cluster of words to your word collection. For example, the root word, depend changes its meaning with the addition of suffix (dependent, depended, depending) and prefix (independent).

Then, you can learn more about the language families and the words coming from different languages. This vocabulary building activity is better known as the study of etymology.

You can learn about more vocabulary activities in this article. Make sure to check it out.

Consider Participating in Vocabulary Building Exercises

Vocabulary building is a long and tedious process. You can’t have a wide collection of words within days — it takes years to build up a strong vocabulary.

That’s why you should participate in vocabulary building exercises. These exercises will help you with spaced repetition and frequent exposure to the words.

The spelling section of SpellQuiz uses dictation as the key vocabulary building activity. Dictation will help your listening and writing skills as well. So, you’re basically practicing four skills at the same time — listening, writing, spelling, and vocabulary building.

With SpellQuiz, you can also participate in vocabulary building games online. The SBO or Spelling Bee Online is an online multiplayer game that allows you to showcase your spelling prowess as you play against players from all around the world. By showing you spelling skills, you can have your name on the leaderboard too.

Building vocabulary is a powerful way to enhance your life and career

Learning how to build a better vocabulary can be a pleasurable and profitable investment of both your time and effort. At least fifteen minutes a day of concentrated study on a regular basis can bring about a rapid improvement in your vocabulary skills, which in turn can increase your ability to communicate by writing, conversing, or making speeches. Acquiring a large vocabulary can benefit you in school, at work, and socially. It will enable you to understand others’ ideas better and to have the satisfaction of getting your thoughts and ideas across more effectively.

Of course, you already know thousands of words, and you will continue to learn more whether you work at it or not. The fact is that many of the words you know were probably learned simply by coming across them often enough in your reading, in conversation, and even while watching television. But increasing the pace of your learning requires a consistent, dedicated approach. If you learned only one new word a day for the next three years, you would have over a thousand new words in your vocabulary. However, if you decided right now to learn ten new words a day, in one year you would have added over three thousand to what you already know, and probably have established a lifetime habit of learning and self-improvement.

Four basic steps to a better vocabulary

While there are not any magic shortcuts to learning words, the larger your vocabulary becomes, the easier it will be to connect a new word with words you already know, and thus remember its meaning. So your learning speed, or pace, should increase as your vocabulary grows. There are four basic steps to building your vocabulary:

1. Be Aware of Words

Many people are surprised when they are told they have small vocabularies. “But I read all the time!” they protest. This shows that reading alone may not be enough to make you learn new words. When we read a novel, for instance, there is usually a strong urge to get on with the story and skip over unfamiliar or perhaps vaguely known words. But while it is obvious when a word is totally unknown to you, you have to be especially aware of words that seem familiar to you but whose precise meanings you may not really know.

Instead of avoiding these words, you will need to take a closer look at them. First, try to guess at a word’s meaning from its context—that is, the sense of the passage in which it appears; second, if you have a dictionary on hand, look up the word’s meaning immediately. This may slow down your reading somewhat, but your improved understanding of each new word will eventually speed your learning of other words, making reading easier. Make a daily practice of noting words of interest to you for further study whenever you are reading, listening to the radio, talking to friends, or watching television.

2. Read

When you have become more aware of words, reading is the next important step to increasing your knowledge of words, because that is how you will find most of the words you should be learning. It is also the best way to check on words you have already learned. When you come across a word you have recently studied, and you understand it, that proves you have learned its meaning.

What should you read? Whatever interests you—whatever makes you want to read. If you like sports, read the sports page of the newspapers; read magazines like Sports Illustrated; read books about your favorite athletes. If you are interested in interior decorating, read a magazine like House Beautiful—read it, don’t just look at the photographs.

Often people with very low vocabularies don’t enjoy reading at all. It’s more of a chore for them than a pleasure because they don’t understand many of the words. If this is the way you feel about reading, try reading easier things. Newspapers are usually easier than magazines; a magazine like Reader’s Digest is easier to read than The Atlantic Monthly. There is no point in trying to read something you simply are not able to understand or are not interested in. The important idea is to find things to read you can enjoy, and to read as often and as much as possible with the idea of learning new words always in mind.

3. Use a Dictionary

Most people know how to use a dictionary to look up a word’s meaning. Here are some pointers on how to do this as a part of a vocabulary-building program:

• Have your own dictionary: Keep it where you usually do your reading at home. You are more likely to use it if you do not have to get it from another room. At work, there may be a good dictionary available for your use. At home, most people do not have a big, unabridged dictionary; however, one of the smaller collegiate dictionaries would be fine to start with.
• Circle the words you look up: After you have done this for a while, your eye will naturally move to the words you have circled whenever you flip through the dictionary. This will give you a quick form of review.
• Read the entire entry for the word you look up: Remember, words can have more than one meaning, and the meaning you need for the word you are looking up may not be the first one given in your dictionary. Even if it is, the other meanings of the word will help you understand the different ways the word is used. Also, the word’s history, usually given near the beginning of the entry, can often give a fascinating picture of the way the word has developed its current meaning. This will add to the pleasure of learning the word as well as help you remember it.

4. Study and Review Regularly

Once you have begun looking up words and you know which ones to study, vocabulary building is simply a matter of reviewing the words regularly until you fix them in your memory. This is best done by setting aside a specific amount of time each day for vocabulary study. During that time you can look up new words you have noted during the day and review old words you are in the process of learning. Set a goal for the number of words you would like to learn and by what date, and arrange your schedule accordingly. Fifteen minutes a day will bring better results than half an hour once a week or so. However, if half an hour a week is all the time you have to spare, start with that. You may find more time later on, and you will be moving in the right direction.

In order to review words effectively, all the information on a word should be kept in one place—in a notebook, for example, or on an index card. Index cards are convenient because the words can be placed in alphabetical order, which makes them easy to find when reviewing; and the cards can be carried around with you, so you can study them anywhere. You should try to be systematic about studying, so that you are sure to review each word at least once every couple of weeks.

Do not throw cards away, though; you can get a great feeling of accomplishment by looking at the growing stack of words you have learned and by occasionally glancing at an old card and thinking, “Once I actually didn’t know the meaning of this word!”

Other vocabulary building materials

The steps we have just discussed do not involve the use of vocabulary-building aids such as books, tapes, or CDs; all that is required is a dictionary. But what about such materials? Are they worth using? We say yes.

The first advantage of vocabulary-building books is that they present you with words generally considered important to know, thus saving you time. Another advantage of many of these books is that they will use the words in several sentences, so that you can see the words in different contexts. A third advantage is that they usually have exercises that test what you have learned, which gives you a clear sense of progress.

The major disadvantage of many of these books is that the words in them may sometimes be too difficult for the person who does not have a large vocabulary. Such a person would have a hard time learning these words and could quickly become discouraged. We suggest, therefore, that you scan the materials you are interested in before buying. If most of the words are totally unfamiliar to you, you will probably not get very much out of it. If, however, you recognize many of the words but do not quite know them, then the material is probably at the right level for you.

Many books approach vocabulary building by teaching you word parts—prefixes, suffixes and roots—and showing you how these parts can go together to form many different words. You might find this approach useful, because it will make you sensitive to how words are formed, and this can often be a help in figuring out a word’s meaning from its context.

The important thing to keep in mind is that these materials are not a complete substitute for the process we have been talking about. One book will not give you all the words you need to know. Besides, you are establishing a lifetime interest in building your vocabulary, and just selecting one way to approach it may not be enough. However, the use of vocabulary-study materials as a supplement to the “Four Basic Steps” will reinforce your learning and speed your progress immediately.

Motivation

Perhaps the most important factor in a successful vocabulary-building program is motivation. It will be very difficult for you to study words month after month without a strong feeling that it is worth doing, that a larger vocabulary will help you in school and on the job, and that it can well lead to a more exciting and fulfilling life. We certainly feel that this is true, for nothing we measure at the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation contributes more to success in life more than vocabulary. Your time could not be better spent.

We know you can expand your vocabulary almost as fast as you wish. There are countless examples of people who have done so. Remember, you started out in life knowing no words, and now you know thousands. You can learn many more. Why not start today?

Vocabulary Wordbooks

The Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation offers a vocabulary development program of 1,440 words selected based on the results of studies of over 15,000 public and private school students. To learn more about this fantastic and fun way to learn new words, visit the Wordbook page.

Vocabulary Building Strategies

Being able to effectively communicate, both verbally and in writing, is a very important skill to develop. Effective communicators are highly sought after by organizations and companies. People are often judged by their vocabulary, whether negative or positive. Additionally, a strong vocabulary is the single best predictor of academic success in school. For these reasons, and many others, it’s important to take every opportunity to improve your vocabulary.

There are several strategies and concepts educators, teachers, parents and students can employ for building vocabulary. However, below we’re going to cover just a few of the proven strategies and concepts we believe are at the core of effective and life-long vocabulary building – for children of any age.

Read. read. read.

Independent reading is key!

In our opinion, the biggest factor influencing vocabulary is the sheer volume of reading performed. Studies show that regular independent reading, and reading a rich variety of texts, provides the most positive impact on vocabulary. Students who develop a habit of reading at a young age, develop large vocabularies and have a greater ability to understand written and verbal communication than students who don’t read regularly. It’s just a fact, people with extensive vocabularies typically read a lot.

Developing an extensive vocabulary requires reading publications covering various subjects and texts, including magazines, textbooks, novels, etc. We recommend spending at least 20 minutes a night reading. One night I read a novel. The next a magazine. And when you read, sometimes read aloud. Reading aloud from time to time provides the added benefit of hearing the words you’re reading.

Instead of consulting a dictionary every time you encounter an unfamiliar word while reading, try to determine word meaning by evaluating the context of the sentence and surrounding words. Searching for clues in surrounding text will not only help you decipher word meanings, it will cement in your memory what a word means and improve your recall for future recognition and use.

Make it personal through association

Relating words to your life will make them easier to remember and use again. The best way to do this is to associate newly learned words with people you know, places you’re familiar with, or important events in your life. Many people rhyme new words they learn with words they already know to improve retention. This is called «association». Associating new vocabulary with something already stored in your brain makes it much easier for your brain to recall the new word in future.

Make it fun!

Building vocabulary is a very important aspect of life-long learning, personal fulfillment and academic advancement, but let’s be honest, it’s not always the most enjoyable activity – especially for younger children. If you want to make building vocabulary effective, it needs to be fun.

Utilizing word games is an effective strategy for increasing vocabulary. Since games are engaging and fun, children will usually devote more time studying vocabulary when it involves a game. Word games are effective for helping anyone build their vocabulary, but can be especially effective with adolescents or small children who get with reading and other vocabulary building exercises.

Repetition

One of the best ways to increase vocabulary is through repetition. Throughout the day, repeat a word you’re trying to learn to embed it within your memory. You can also write down a word multiple times on a piece of paper to improve your memory. Writing a word down provides the added benefit of seeing the word again and again.

Another repetition strategy frequently used to improve vocabulary is to create a sentence using a word you’re trying to learn and then repeating the entire sentence several times. Repetition of a word, within a context that communicates its meaning, is a powerful strategy for enhancing vocabulary.