How to expand your vocabulary?

My dear readers, I’m happy to welcome you on the pages of our useful and informative website – http://motivational-tips.com!

English is probably the most expressive language in the world.

Each of us has to think how to expand our vocabulary and show off our knowledge in front of friends and relatives.

By the way, don’t forget to subscribe to my useful articles emailing if you don’t want to miss anything! Let’s make a habit of nourishing our brain only with educational material instead of littering it with informational trash which can be found all over the Internet! Start developing and self-improving daily!

How to improve your vocabulary: raise your IQ level

Obviously, you will never be able to memorize all five hundred thousand words. Moreover, you don’t even need to know all of them because you are not going to use them in your everyday communication. However, I can guarantee that after reading this article you will want to learn a few more thousands of new words. Keep in mind that this will happen only in case that you will use my recommendations and start working on your vocabulary.

Let’s start. In order to make a short entry into our topic, I’d like to mention the fact that there are two types of vocabulary: active and passive.

Passive vocabulary includes all words that we know but never use in everyday life.

On the contrary, active vocabulary consists only of words which are the part of our daily communication.

Usually a person’s passive vocabulary has more than four thousand words, but his/her active vocabulary doesn’t exceed three thousand of words. That’s why your goal is to improve your vocabulary as much as possible.

Let’s go!

Tip 1: Use retelling for the improvement of your vocabulary

If you didn’t like retelling while studying at school, you’d regret about it in the future. Paraphrasing other texts is very necessary, it’s not the whim of school teachers, and it is actually aimed at the widening of a person’s vocabulary. You may understand and estimate the main point of retelling when you become an adult.

What should you do?

Read a short story or a chapter from one book and retell aloud what you’ve just read. Try to avoid parasite words. Use as many details as you can recollect and use the language of the original text.

After that compare your narration to the text from the book and underline the words which you haven’t used in your retelling. If you aren’t familiar with these words, try to memorize them.

Read also: What books to read to become smarter?

Tip 2: Read aloud and expand your vocabulary

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
J. K. Rowling

Interesting facts:

• There exists the so-called Basic English language, which consists of only 850 words. They say that this amount is enough for everyday life;
• The vocabulary of works by Pushkin includes more than 20 000 words.

If you think how expand your vocabulary, start reading books aloud.

What is the use of it?

When we read aloud, we also expand our vocabulary.

I can explain this to you: if you run your eye hastily over the book, there is a huge chance for you to miss something. However, if you read the story aloud, all rarely used and unfamiliar words will be better memorized and mastered by you.

If you read aloud a lot, you will not even notice how quickly you’ll be using more new words and expressions in your everyday communication.

Tip 3: Use unfamiliar words and increase your vocabulary

You should remember the following rule: you’ll never memorize any unfamiliar words if you don’t use them.

That’s why you should choose a different method.

Every evening pick up 2-3 new words and try to use them in your conversation with other people on the next day.

For example, take the word “suffragist” and use it whenever it is possible. If your friend refuses to walk through the opened door, ask her: “Are you a suffragist, or what?” (I can only imagine your friend’s reaction, it must be hilarious! 🙂 )

Remember that unfamiliar words are memorized much quicker if they are used in everyday communication!

Keep in mind: Self-development: key to success

Tip 4: Learn poems by heart and improve your vocabulary

When you memorize poems or extracts from your favorite book, you are also expanding your vocabulary. When you learn the poem by heart and narrate it aloud, you memorize new words and then subconsciously start using them every day.

As you can see, it is very easy to expand your vocabulary. You simply have to pull yourself together and start using at least one of the abovementioned recommendations.

You may start reading aloud right now, for example, when you use a bathroom. And who knows, maybe tomorrow you will start using these unfamiliar words in everyday communication!