What do I do to improve my vocabulary?
First of all, it is worth mentioning that there is a great variety of ways to improve your vocabulary. Some of my everyday techniques include reading books in English, watching English movies, perhaps with subtitles to assure I understand all the words correctly, or writing down unfamiliar words in my notebook for revising them later. However, the Internet has actually provided me with the greatest opportunities to improve my vocabulary.
When I started studying English last year, our teacher showed us vocabulary.com and from the beginning on I have been absolutely fascinated about this website. It contains an English dictionary where you can look up words, which may first not sound really special; however, this website gives you word definitions which are precise and really easy to understand. They are explained in an everyday context to ensure that everybody completely understands them, which I find absolutely great. I really get the feeling that I know the words better after looking them up on vocabulary.com as well as how to use them adequately. What is special, the website also contains a section where you can find the “word family” of a word. If you look up, for example, the word “access”, the website shows you relating words such as “accessible”, “accessing” or “accessed”. By this feature, I am able to expand my vocabulary. Another positive aspect of the website is that it is possible to create a “vocabulary list” which you can then learn by playing a game guessing the meaning of a word. What is more, since recently I am the proud owner of the “vocabulary.com” Android App on my smartphone and I am absolutely a great fan of this one! I am now able to learn my vocabulary lists whenever I have a short break between classes or while riding the bus. I’ll show you some example screenshots of this great app which I can totally recommend to everyone who wants to extend his vocabulary:
Another method of improving my vocabulary is reading vocabulary concerned books. These are books where you can find specific vocabulary relating to a particular topic, for example vocabulary concerning law, politics, health, or relationships. By the help of these books, I am able to learn new vocabulary in context, which, as for me, is an easier way to learn words than to learn various words without any context.
For my next university exam I am currently working with a book on Academic English by David Porter. As far as I know the book now, I really like it. One of the greatest advantages of this book is the variety of exercises in it. It is also one of the few books that, rather than listing up words, want you to straight become active by using the new words within the various exercises. By doing so, it is necessary to carefully think about the new words, which, in my opinion, really helps me to remember unfamiliar words better and to put them into my long-term rather than just my short-term memory. One slight disadvantage about the book is that it doesn’t contain a definite explanation or description of how a certain word is used, what words it commonly goes with or what things you have to be careful of when using it. Because it is definitely an exercise-focused book I have to look up the words up in a dictionary, for example on www.oxforddictionaries.com, and create my own glossary in a Google document. Adding collocations of the word and example sentences proved to me very helpful for me in order to understand how the words are actually used.
As far as Corpora are concerned, I unfortunately haven’t been able to benefit of them a lot yet. I hadn’t worked with them before we learned about them in university and I am currently trying to get them to know better.
In conclusion, improving my vocabulary is on my everyday schedule. Whenever I am reading anything in English, I try to inhale as many words as possible.
When I started studying English last year, our teacher showed us vocabulary.com and from the beginning on I have been absolutely fascinated about this website. It contains an English dictionary where you can look up words, which may first not sound really special; however, this website gives you word definitions which are precise and really easy to understand. They are explained in an everyday context to ensure that everybody completely understands them, which I find absolutely great. I really get the feeling that I know the words better after looking them up on vocabulary.com as well as how to use them adequately. What is special, the website also contains a section where you can find the “word family” of a word. If you look up, for example, the word “access”, the website shows you relating words such as “accessible”, “accessing” or “accessed”. By this feature, I am able to expand my vocabulary. Another positive aspect of the website is that it is possible to create a “vocabulary list” which you can then learn by playing a game guessing the meaning of a word. What is more, since recently I am the proud owner of the “vocabulary.com” Android App on my smartphone and I am absolutely a great fan of this one! I am now able to learn my vocabulary lists whenever I have a short break between classes or while riding the bus. I’ll show you some example screenshots of this great app which I can totally recommend to everyone who wants to extend his vocabulary:
Another method of improving my vocabulary is reading vocabulary concerned books. These are books where you can find specific vocabulary relating to a particular topic, for example vocabulary concerning law, politics, health, or relationships. By the help of these books, I am able to learn new vocabulary in context, which, as for me, is an easier way to learn words than to learn various words without any context.
For my next university exam I am currently working with a book on Academic English by David Porter. As far as I know the book now, I really like it. One of the greatest advantages of this book is the variety of exercises in it. It is also one of the few books that, rather than listing up words, want you to straight become active by using the new words within the various exercises. By doing so, it is necessary to carefully think about the new words, which, in my opinion, really helps me to remember unfamiliar words better and to put them into my long-term rather than just my short-term memory. One slight disadvantage about the book is that it doesn’t contain a definite explanation or description of how a certain word is used, what words it commonly goes with or what things you have to be careful of when using it. Because it is definitely an exercise-focused book I have to look up the words up in a dictionary, for example on www.oxforddictionaries.com, and create my own glossary in a Google document. Adding collocations of the word and example sentences proved to me very helpful for me in order to understand how the words are actually used.
As far as Corpora are concerned, I unfortunately haven’t been able to benefit of them a lot yet. I hadn’t worked with them before we learned about them in university and I am currently trying to get them to know better.
In conclusion, improving my vocabulary is on my everyday schedule. Whenever I am reading anything in English, I try to inhale as many words as possible.
The ideas in this post are fine, but you may want to have another look at the language.
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