How to Increase My English Vocabulary
The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary has almost half a million words. Even the compilers probably don't know them all. The average college graduate knows the meaning of 17,000 word families (the base word and inflected forms) and uses about half that number, Dr. Andreea Cervatiuc at the University of Calgary says. Dr. Cervatiuc's study examines the speed at which non-native English speakers learn vocabulary. She says 5,000 words make up 88.6 percent of English texts. There are many techniques to acquire a much greater vocabulary and use it well.
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Instructions
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Read
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List the unfamiliar words while you read. Find literature you know will challenge you.
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Remember not to skip over the unfamiliar word, as reading will not increase your vocabulary if do you at least stop to note it. Use the dictionary soon after you encounter the word.
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Read on unfamiliar topics, on business and science, medical and technical books, for example. Try to work out the word's meaning from the context, as an alternative to the dictionary.
Play
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Play vocabulary games, from the online ones such as Bookworm to the classic Scrabble. A top Scrabble player knows all the two-letter words and most of the 918 three-letter English words.
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Set aside time each day for a crossword puzzle that will challenge you. Look up the new words you come across to reinforce their meaning. Write them down.
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Use the words you learn in a sentence or in speech. Like learning people's names, repetition becomes reinforcement, becomes remembering. Repeat words over and over. Set a target. You can learn 10 words a day this way.
Reinforce
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Use a mental image to reinforce word's meaning. It is a great learning technique, especially if you are a visual learner. Children learn this way, associating words with pictures.
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Attach a familiar meaning or circumstance to an abstract concept, such as "ambience." You might find "hypochondriac" daunting until you link the imagined sickness to your aunt or some other close relative.
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Check your improvement with on-line tests that give you an accurate reading on your progress and introduce you to more words.
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Tips & Warnings
Some words and phrases have a shelf life. They become popular and then they get very stale and cliched. For example, "egregious," a fashionable word in the late 2000s, got old very soon. That phrase "got old" here is in itself a cliche.
