8 Awesome Ways to Increase your English Vocabulary

Increasing your vocabulary is one of the most effective ways which help you improve your English and help you to communicate effectively with native and English spoken people. Now, and this lesson, we have for you 8 supreme and effective you to increase your vocabulary, let's go:

1 - Reading

The most important thing that you can do to increase your vocabulary is read. Read a lot. What should you read? Anything and everything, but the most important thing is read what you are interested in. Okay? If you like sports – read a sports magazine, if you like movies – read a movies magazine, even better – read the script of the movie. If the movie is based on a novel – read the novel. For example, recently the movie “Life of Pi” was very famous in the theatres, it’s based on the novel. Read the novel, it’s a pretty good book. My favorite movie “Shawshank Redemption” based on a novella by Stephen King. Read it, the best way to increase your vocabulary.

2 - Writing

Also, don’t just learn the new words and try to remember them, write, write a lot. Use the words you’re learning, right? Every time you learn a new word, you should have a notebook with you all the time anyway; write the words in a sentence, but not just any sentence, make sure that the sentence clearly shows that you know the meaning of the word.

So let’s for example (I know everybody knows this word) but ‘beautiful’ (everybody knows this word) but let’s say it’s a new word for you. Don’t write “The sky is beautiful”. It doesn’t tell anything about the word “beautiful”. The sky is also blue. Does beautiful mean blue? No. Make sure you are using something. “I love to see a beautiful sky that has pretty clouds in the sunshine and are nice color, nice shade of blue because it makes me feel happy.

It isn't the best example it’s a very long sentence but you get my idea.

3 - Deriving new words

Now, again coming back to that notebook. Always have a notebook with you, always have a pen with you and don’t limit yourself to one new word. When you learn a new word make sure you learn different forms of the same word. for example, the word “beautiful”: let’s say this is a new word for you, you learn the word “beautiful”. Put it in your adjective column, it’s an adjective, that’s what you want. But why not learn the other forms? For example, what is the adverb form for the word “beautiful”? I think most of you know it. It’s beautifully. So now you have two new words. What is the noun form of “beautiful”? It’s beauty. You now have three new words in your vocabulary. Is there a verb from of “beautiful”? Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. “Beautify” means to make beautiful. You now have four new words. Think of other words. “Beautician” Beautician is a person who works making people more beautiful. She does facial, the manicure, the pedicure and wax and whatever else beauticians do. Anyway, try to find other forms, learn many words instead of just one word.

4 - Study the word "root"

Now some people like to study roots, suffixes, and prefixes. Personally I’m not a huge fan of the recommendation. But first let me explain what the root is. For example, you have the root “ject”, so you learn inject, eject, object, subject – all the different words that come from the root so many people only study the word or the root “-ject” and think that it will help them understand all the words with this root. It’s a good idea if you have the patience. I think most people who are studying English don’t like studying root because it’s like studying another language. If it works for you – do it, if it doesn’t – don’t.

5 - Listening

And now another thing you can do. Listen. Listen to any spoken English that you can. I think some of you might have heard of TED.com. It’s a good website; people give talks and lectures about different topics. Listen, listen carefully, anytime you hear a word you don’t recognize – write it down. If you don’t know the spelling, no problem, write it phonetically, write the word just like it sounds. Then if you have an access to the transcript (it means all the words that were spoken are written down) check the transcript, find your word and put it down, if you can’t, if you don’t have the transcript – go to a dictionary.

Recommended dictionary:  oxforddictionaries.com

6 - Use English to English dictionary

Now I know I’ve seen a lot of students use like their electronic dictionaries they go like from English to Korean or English to Japanese, English to Spanish. Don’t do that anymore. English to English. This way you are learning more words as you’re learning one word. I don’t know this word, I’ll look at the definition, and in the definition I might be learning other words. You will maximize how many words you learn by using English to English dictionary. Now again about those electronic dictionaries, sometimes (like) especially when the people you are trying to write, they will write a sentence in their native language and then press translate on this dictionary and get a sentence in English. Now, I’ve seen sentences that I knew came from the electronic dictionary because they made no sense. They were terrible, terrible sentences. Don’t do that. The people who made these dictionaries might not know English very well. Keep that in mind.

7 - Using cards

Get yourself a stack of cards, maybe this big, not too big because you want to carry them in your pocket, take them with you everywhere you go. On one side of the cards you going to write words, four maybe five words that are new words for you. You going to write sentences on the back, on the other side of the card. You going to use these words in sentences so you have a clear meaning or you can write the meaning of the word, dictionary meaning – both okay. Now, you going to split your cards into three piles. You going to have a pile of cards of words that you know, words you are very comfortable with. Eventually you will have a pile like this. Words that you are very comfortable with, you know them very well, you don’t need to look at these words very often. Now, before I continue, where do you get these words?

 Get it from the TOEFL site or IELTS site, an SAT site or an SAT book, for example, they have a list of words that you need to learn. Put all these words on cards, you know these words very well, don’t need to look at. These words you’re almost sure or at least you recognize these words, you’ve seen them before, you’ve heard them before. You can guess what they mean maybe in context.

You will study these words as they become more familiar, you move them to a pile. This pile you study also very regularly. You take this… This pile is the one you put into your pocket and take with you when you go outside. On the bus – look at your words. Long line at the bank – pull out your cards, look at the words, okay? When this word becomes very comfortable for you, when you know what this word means, move it over to this pile, leave at home. Don’t know, almost sure, know. Study – move, study – move, put aside. Once in a while look at them to make sure you remember, because if you never look at these again, you will forget them. So, it’s all the time, continual, you have to practise, practise, practise, practise. Vocabulary is a lot of memorization. That’s the way it is.

8 - Grouping words (Brainstorming, synonyms and theme)

Now here’s another thing you can do. This is the last one I’ll show you today. What you do is you make yourself groups of words. You take… You can do it many ways: you can make yourself a little like a brainstorm. For example, if we’re looking at the root (you write the root in here “-ject”) and then you write reject, inject, eject, subject etc. or in a list, however way it works for you. So three ways that I will recommend to group words. Again if you like the roots – rip them like that: eject, reject, object, subject, inject. Now the reason you going to make groups is because maybe you don’t remember “object” or “Object” (remember, noun or verb) but you remember –ject, you remember this group. You sort of remember what “ject” means so you can apply it to “object”. “Ject” is like “push” in most context. “Object” is “push away, refuse”. Okay? So if you don’t remember the word, hopefully, you will remember the idea of the group, then that will remind you what the word means. Another group you can use is similar meanings, so synonyms (words that have similar meanings) or similar function.

 So for example I’m going to look at this function “increase” – extend, expand, accelerate, intensify, reinforce. All of these have some sort… In the meaning have some sort of connection to “increase”:

 “Extend” – make longer, increase length or time, duration.

“Expand” – increase size or scope.

“Accelerate” – increase speed.

“Intensify” – increase intensity.

“Reinforce” – increase strength.  

So maybe you see the word “reinforce” (you’re reading something, you see the word “reinforce”) you are not exactly sure what it means but you remember the group it was in. The group was the “increase” group. So reinforce means increase plus the context of the sentence you saw it in will help you understand increase strength or in… sometimes it could be increasing number like number of soldiers. Reinforce the position.

The last group is theme. For example, let’s say that for today the theme is technology.

So you write the words that have to do with technology:

obsolete, state-of-the-art, update, downgrade, cutting edge.

All these words we can talk about like computer soft, if you don’t remember one word, you’ll remember the group, it’ll help you understand the word you’re looking at. 

You can practice what you read through the following video