How to improve your English vocabulary easily.
Acquiring vocabulary is probably the essential thing foreign language learners should do. Not only because knowing a lot of words makes you sound smart but also because words and phrases are the building blocks of all languages.
As you’ve probably read in my “How to form sentences” article, we build sentences from words, and the more words you know, the easier the sentence-making process becomes.
However, we don’t only need vocabulary for making sentences; we also need a vocabulary to read. Fully understanding a text requires knowing at least 98% of all the words in the text (and this does include the non-content words like the, but, etc.), and you can only imagine how much time it takes to understand a text if you only know 70% or 50% of the words in a text.
Fortunately, I’m going to give you some tips on how you can expand and widen your English vocabulary based on language acquisition research.
Increase your exposure!
I cannot stress it enough: exposure, exposure, EXPOSURE! Exposure is essential for language learning, and research has shown that the more exposure you have to English, the faster you’ll acquire the language. The same goes for vocabulary: the more exposure you have, the more incidental learning will take place, and the faster you’ll expand your vocabulary. But: you’ll see later on that you need to do more to really widen your vocabulary.
Incidental vocabulary acquisition is when you acquire vocabulary simply by being exposed to it. This means that you encounter a word repeatedly (in a video, in a text, in a song) and at some point will understand what the word means. There’s one caveat with this: make sure you encounter the words in different contexts and more than once.
What’s even more interesting is that the more you encounter the word in a text, the time you’ll need to process that word decreases. It eventually “blends in” with the other words you already know, and you become familiar with the word.
Do you want subtitles with that?
What do you do with your subtitles? Should you have them on in your L1 or in English? The most effective thing to do is have English subtitles, as you’ll have the right combination of visual input and auditory input. Just make sure that if you’re watching something to improve your vocabulary, you’re not watching something that’s too difficult. Choose something that is slightly above your level.
The holy grail: a vocabulary notebook
A handy tool to widen your vocabulary is a vocabulary notebook. This is simply a notebook in which you keep track of new words and their meanings. There are diaries and notebooks made especially for keeping track of vocabulary, but a regular old-school journal will do the job perfectly fine as well.
Vocabulary notebooks stimulate language learning because they require more brain activity than only looking up a word in a dictionary. This is called the Involvement Load Hypothesis, which claims that “retention of unfamiliar words is contingent upon the involvement load of a task, i.e. the amount of need, search, and evaluation it imposes.”
When looking up definitions of the words for your vocabulary organiser, you’re searching for the word in a dictionary, and you’re evaluating whether that definition fits the context and whether it suits your need. This level of involvement makes this strategy extremely useful for expanding your vocabulary.
Research has also shown that using a vocabulary notebook increases the number of words you can use in your active vocabulary while practising productive skills.
By using a vocabulary organiser, you will accrue a personal dictionary with all the words, phrases, collocations, and phrasal verbs you don’t know. Bonus tip: try looking for synonyms of words you use daily and add them to your personal vocabulary too!
Interested in my favourite Vocabulary Organiser? Here’s an affiliate Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3zBU0Gi (affiliate link)
Use the words you’ve encountered
I believe that practising your productive skills is as useful to language learning as exposure, and there’s research to back me up. This also goes for vocabulary acquisition: you’ll internalise them quicker if you use the words you’ve encountered.
You could try to use the words in things you’re writing or when you’re talking to someone. You could also stick post-its with your words around your house to increase your exposure to those words.
Know all the words!
Hopefully, these tips will help you expand your vocabulary. Need more help? Consider using the Oxford 3000 or the Oxford 5000 word lists to see which you should know at which CEFR level. Excellent tools for preparing for Cambridge exams.
