QA29. How do you learn new vocabulary?
Learning vocabulary is a very
important part of learning a language. The more words you know, the more you
will be able to understand what you hear and read; and the better you will be
able to say what you want to when speaking or writing.
Every day you hear or read many new
English words. You also find them in your dictionary when you are translating
from your own language. You can’t possibly learn all these new words, so your
first problem is to decide which ones to concentrate on. Here are some
suggestions:
Some students put a tick or cross in
their dictionary next to every word they look up. The next time they turn to a
page with a marked word, they quickly check to see if they remember the meaning
of that word.
In all of the above ways, you are
doing something with the words. It’s usually not enough to just read through a
list of words with their definitions or translations and try to remember them.
Most students find that they memorise words better if they do something with
them. Even better is to try and learn the word in a typical combination with
other words. Learning that to apologize means to say sorry is a
good start, but it's much better to learn a whole expression containing the
word, e.g. He apologized for being late. Not only is this often easier
to remember, but you are also learning some very important information on how
the word is used
The way you learned very many of the
words in your own language was by meeting them in the books and magazines you
read. The context of a new word in a sentence or story was often enough for you
to guess the meaning. Meeting the word again and again in your reading helped
you learn it for use in your own speaking and writing. Doing lots of extra
reading for pleasure - both fiction and non-fiction - is an excellent way to
learn new English words, too. But choose books that you find quite easy to
read.
