How to learn Vocabulary easily?

Learning good vocabulary is one of the foundations of learning English, and it comes with several benefits. I listed some of them here.

1. You create a great impression: In a conversation, when you use a good word, you instantly make a great impression and it could be very beneficial depending on who you are talking to.

2. You can convey exactly what you want: Knowing great Vocabulary is like having access to a plethora of useful tools. It will help you connect with your coworkers, friends and family on a deeper level, by conveying exactly what you mean.

3. You can understand what others say: Imagine having a conversation with a bunch of colleagues and you hear a word that you don’t know. And it is even worse if that new word is a part of a joke. Learning vocabulary will help you participate in more sophisticated conversations.

4. Success in career: At work, when someone has a chance of promotion, one of the important factors that the managers check is, how you communicate with others. The way you talk in emails, meetings, discussions, phone calls, etc., the words that you use will automatically create an impression of your communication skills. Excellent vocabulary creates an instant great impression. No doubt about it.

Here are tips and guidelines for you. There may be 100 Vocabulary learning tips on the internet, but I assure you that these tips are practically proven, guaranteed to work if you are willing to put some effort.
Let’s get started.

1. Develop a habit of reading.

I am sure you heard this advice a million times before. Yes, reading is good, reading helps a lot, we all know that. But, what I am about to say is different.

The most common mistake that people make is, out of the motivation to read, they force themselves to read something, like a newspaper or an online article. But here is the problem, anything you don’t enjoy, will not be repeated by you.

That is why this reading habit will not continue for most people. You can force yourself to read for 1 day, maybe a week, but that’s it. It will stop, eventually.

Do this instead. Read what you like, don’t read editorial columns in newspapers if you don’t like them. You don’t like reading the newspaper? don’t read it.

Take a moment and ask yourself. What do you like? There are going to be at least 2 or 3 things that every single individual personally likes.

Do you like movies? Read movie news, actor interviews, movie critic reviews.
Do you like horse racing? Read newsletters of casinos, history of horse racing.
Do you like cooking? Read cooking books, different cuisines all around the world.
Do you like kids? Read some books about child psychology.
(Your kids or future kids will thank you.)

Use this technique:
Let’s say you made plans to read for an hour in the evening today. When you think about the reading time, how do you feel? Do you look forward to it? or do you feel like “Oh, no I have to read today? ”

If you look forward to it, it means you found the right topic. If you don’t look forward to it much but also you don’t hate it, that is still ok.

But if you feel like, “Oh no, I don’t feel like reading”, then you need to rethink your favourite topics.

Now coming back to the topic of developing vocabulary, when you start reading frequently, you will find new words. And, when you find new words right in the middle of your favourite topic, it will be super easy to learn it and remember it.

Let me give you a real example.
I am a great fan of TV shows, so I read a lot about TV shows. Last week I read an article about my favourite show “Dexter”.

This is what I read exactly, “Dexter: New Blood is set almost a decade after Dexter fled Miami“

I found a new word “Fled”. I googled it and found that Fled is past tense of Flee.
Flee = run away from a situation of danger.

Now Dexter is my favourite (I even named my dog Dexter) and I am reading that “Dexter fled Miami”. Now, it is impossible for me to forget the word “Fled”. Ask me after 100 days and I will still remember it. That is the power of a memorable context. Just read whatever you like, when you find new words, you have an excellent chance of remembering them.

Not just for learning Vocabulary, but reading has several other benefits which we will discuss in another post.

That is why you should read. A lot.

2. Use a real notebook.

When you come across a new word, if you just read it and move on, that is not a great way to learn vocabulary or learn anything. When you move on without making notes, you are signaling to your brain that this stuff is not important, so no need to remember it.

If you have a habit of making notes of new words in an excel sheet or a notepad on your laptop. That is a very good idea. You have a better chance of remembering them.

But if you want the best results, write down the new words in a real notebook with a pen or pencil, with your own hands. When you write down the new words yourself, you will engage your senses more and there are excellent chances of remembering the new words. You are automatically saying to your brain, “This stuff is very important to me, please remember it.”

This is not just my opinion, there have been several studies conducted on this and it has been proven many times.

Therefore, if you want to see results, get a pretty notebook and note down your new words. You will see excellent results.

3. Timely revision.

This will only work if you have a habit of noting down your new words, at least on a computer.

Once a week or whenever you get a chance, do the following.

Step 1: With your hand, cover the meanings of part of your vocabulary list and try to recall the meanings of the new words. If you don’t remember some of them or all of them, absolutely do not worry. That’s ok.

Step 2: Now remove your hand and revise the entire list of words slowly and put a little extra focus on the words which you were not able to recall.

Step 3: Now try to recall the meanings of the words which you were unable to, in step 1. That’s it.

After doing this a couple of times, your mind will completely absorb those words and you will start remembering them better and better. Eventually, they will permanently become yours.

4. Don't learn too many words at a time.

Don’t focus on more than 1 word at a time. If you come across more than 1 word at the same time, make a note of it and learn it later. Focus on 1 word at a time, fully understand it, read the example sentences, write some of your own examples. When you try to learn a bunch of words at a time, your attention will be divided and your learning will be ineffective.

Even when you are trying to achieve something in life, don’t work on too many things at a time. For example, if you want to start a YouTube channel, a blog, a twitter account, an Instagram account and a Facebook page, it will be very unwise and ineffective to start working on all of them simultaneously. To achieve success, always focus on one thing at a time, and give it your 100% attention.

5. Learn useful words only.

Many people think building vocabulary means learning as many words as possible. That is not true at all.

Learn words that are still in usage. Yes, there are some words, phrases and idioms that people don’t use anymore. If you use those outdated words in your conversations or writings, it will look bad.

A simple trick for this: When you come across a new word, google it and select the option “news”. If there is a recent news article with this word, it’s a good word to learn.

For example, Let’s suppose you came across the word Brabble.

Brabble means arguing stubbornly. It may be a good word but nobody uses it anymore. You will not even find any new articles that use this word.

Learn useful words only. When you start reading, you will come across many useless words also.

Let me give you some examples,

Abomasum means the 4th stomach of animals like cows and sheep.

Are you kidding me? We are never ever going to use this word in a conversation, so when you see a word like this, ignore it and move on immediately. Don’t let your brain allocate any space for this word.

Colossal means very large. This is an excellent word, write it down in your notebook.

6. Learn the opposite word immediately.

When you learn a new word, take a minute and also learn its antonym(opposite). This has 2 direct benefits.

One, you will learn 2 words at a time.

Two, your chances of remembering this word become better because you made an effort to find and learn the opposite of the word.

Here are some examples:

Significant (important) X Trivial (unimportant)
Persuade (encourage) X Dissuade (discourage)
Replenish (refill) X Exhaust (empty)

7. Learn from stories.

This is by far the best way to learn vocabulary. Chances of remembering a new word are great when you learn it using context. And, if you are learning a bunch of new words from a story that engaged you for a few minutes, your chances are excellent and those words will be hard to forget for you. Check out these awesome stories to learn vocabulary.

The Golden Toilet – 5 new words.
John went fishing – 5 new words.
Give me a push? – 5 new words
The helicopter ride – 5 new words
Happy Wife – 6 new words
The Dentist’s office – 6 new words

8. Use stickies.

This technique is simple and brilliant at the same time. Once you start using it, you will see the magic for yourself. Simply, get a pack of sticky notes and write the word and its meaning. Then, stick them on a wall or around your computer, or in a place where you frequently look. This method works great because you will be automatically but gently forced to revise the words, many times a day for many days.

If you want to use an even more advanced technique and take it to the next level, do this:

Take a piece of paper and write down 20-25 new words that you learned and their meanings. Stick it on the wall. At least once a day read that list and make a new list once every 2 weeks. If you use this method, your Vocabulary learning will undoubtedly skyrocket.

Conclusion:

I will keep adding more tips to this list as I discover and test them. If you take even 50% of this advice and apply, I guarantee that you will see amazing results. If you need more guidance, or if you have questions, you can leave a comment or directly reach out to me on my Instagram. Good luck.

2 Comments

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Vedant Ambekar

4 years ago

Hey💫, this blog is amazing, I really learn many of things. I do lot’s of mistake when I’m trying to speak and learn new words from other platforms. But still I realised that what mistake I did and I never going to do that again. Thankyou….for creating this amazing blog which helpful for me and other people.🤗