vocabulary learning strategies

Vocabulary learning strategies

To expand my vocabulary, I have developed several methods and techniques over the past year. These methods include the extensive use of glossaries and many more sophisticated strategies because as advanced learner of English, simple bilingual vocabulary lists are just not sufficient.

A very important part of my vocabulary learning plan is reading newspaper articles. Whenever I use social media sites like facebook, articles from the New York Times and other newspapers appear and by reading them, I improve my vocabulary and general knowledge. When I come across new and interesting words and phrases in these articles, I always add them to my vocabulary list.

My expanding list of words is stored in the cloud and includes all the words and phrases that we have had to learn for the PC’s so far, plus my private collection. Whenever I have to study for an English exam again I revise the entire glossary. I believe that this is a very important step to keep the words in mind.

In addition to constantly reviewing new words, it is essential to look at them in some meaningful context like example sentences. To really understand a word and the many different ways it can be used, my glossary contains example sentences for every possible usage.

In order to find good example sentences, monolingual online dictionaries like the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary or Collins COBUILD are the perfect source. With the help of these dictionaries, you can find example sentences of all types as well as a clear explanation of the word you searched for.

To really etch a word on my hard disk, however, I like to have the German translation as well. To get the words and phrases into my active vocabulary, I just need a link to a German word so that I can associate it with something.

In addition to example sentences and the German translation, another factor is crucial to push words into your active vocabulary: Listen to it to know how to pronounce it. This step can be easily done with the help of most learner’s dictionaries or sites like howjsay.com.

In order to practise these words and phrases even more, the exercises in our Porter book, for example, are of course very helpful. By actually using the words in such exercises, they stick in your mind and maybe settle down there and stay for a while.

The Porter book contains academic vocabulary, which is necessary in a university setting. To be able to use these often difficult academic words correctly, it is a good idea to use corpora like the British National Corpus (BNC). There you can search for a particular word and see how it is usually used and in what contexts.

Trough the interaction of all these factors, my vocabulary has expanded exponentially since I started this adventure and if I continue to develop even more strategies, there is no end in sight.