Thursday, August 4, 2011

Tips to Enrich Your English Vocabulary

For ESL students, enriching vocabulary might be hard. A lot of my students tell me that their vocabulary is limited and they want to learn more words. So, what are the effective ways to enrich one's vocabulary? Well, there are a lot of ways, just choose one that works for you. Here are some that you might find helpful.

1. Right motivation. Everything starts from one's motivation to learn. Studying anything about English will be difficult if you don't have the right motivation. Study because you want to. If you like studying English, it follows that you enjoy it. When you enjoy doing  a certain task, it becomes easier, right? 

2. Read materials of different genres. If you are into business English, it doesn't mean that you'll only read business English materials. Read other books or articles. You need to be familiar with different words used in different situations. Besides, a business,man doesn't use business English ONLY in his conversations. For example, learn basic medical terms like, flu, asthma, allergy, antibiotic, etc.

3.Think in English. Sometimes, it's hard for an ESL student to answer right away in English because he thinks in his own language then translates his idea to English. If you train yourself to think in English, you can answer right away. You can train your brain to think in English even if you are walking on your way to work or school. For example, if you see a blue car parked outside your office building, think like this, "the car is blue" or "that is my friend's car". 

4. Play word games with friends. There are a lot of word games that can help you learn new words. Two of my favorites would be Text Twist and Scrabble. If you encounter unfamiliar words while playing these games, ask your friend or check your dictionary for the meaning of that word.

5. Practice using the words you learned. A great way to remember the words you learned is to use them whenever possible. It's not enough that you memorize words, you have to practice using them appropriately. Remember that one word can have different meanings depending on the context.



TRIVIA:  The English word that has the most number of definitions is the word SET.



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