How are YOU going to improve your treasury of words?! vocabulary #1

Hey guys!
I know it’s been awhile since my last post but I am back with a hopefully helpful  topic. 

As year two is well underway, it's high time to intensify on efforts to boost our vocabulary. I’ve realized already that this year will require a more concentrated effort and it is absolutely necessary to keep on improving our treasury of words. Well, I have given some thought to the various strategies I use to boost my vocabulary and would like to share some of them with you.

I usually always have a vocabulary book with me where I can write down all the words and phrases I am unfamiliar with which come up in an English class or in one of the articles I read during the day.  I started using this method last year when studying Spanish. It was unquestionably necessary to write down every Spanish word I heard as my vocabulary was as tiny as a grain of rice. Haha! 

So write down all the unfamiliar words that may come across you during the day and read through them again before you go to bed. This helps memorizing it better. 

What I find helps me remember new words or phrases is creating funny or even ridiculous sentences containing those phrases or words. This way you will never forget them again and studying vocabs may even become an entertaining exercise. At least it might.
Some people find it more helpful to construct example sentences that are true or relevant to your life as this creates a personal connection to the new word. Your choice!

I bet every one of you is listening to at least one English song per day, right? Well, you might have realized (like I did!) that memorizing lyrics is so much easier than memorizing stuff you need to know for uni/school. Annoying! But why not combine music (which is fun!) with studying (which is not so much fun)? All the more when you study foreign languages. So why don’t just look up the lyrics of your favorite song and see if there is any vocabulary you are unfamiliar with (and there are for sure a couple of words as it is sometimes hard to understand the sinders). If so, write it down! Then, As I  listen to this song many times (as I like it), the words I looked up usually get etched onto my brain. Try it out!

Another trick I have is writing vocabulary on post-its and putting them in plain view everywhere around my flat. This forces me to look at them nearly every day and it doesn`t take long until I have memorized whatever is on them forever. 

As every language learner should know by now, there are plenty of books and tools on the internet to boost your vocabulary. One book we are using at university is the David Porter book for Academic English. After doing a few exercises i could tell it is going to be helpful! Many of the words in this book were new to me so I had to look them up in an online dictionary before doing the exercises. Each unit has five exercises. The ones I find most challenging are the b-exercises where you habe to decide which one of the two words given is more suitable. The words given have very similar meanings that's why you need to know the exact definition of each one. The very last exercise (the f-exercise) of each unit is difficult too as you need to know certain collocations. The only thing I would criticize is that they do not provide a German translation of the words. I personally always need German translation in order to completely understand a word. 



I would also advise you to sign up at the website vocabulary.com. There you can find plenty of vocab lists created by teachers and other users, plus you can create your own lists which is very helpful too. Additionally, there are quizzes for every vocabulary list which will help you to really get to know a certain word.



I am not totally convinced yet by the corpora websites. Many of them are just very confusing and difficult to navigate through. What's more, the long example sentences provided (i.e. at just-the-word.com) are sometimes very difficult to understand and often the website does not even provide full sentences.


One website I use very often, however, is thesaurus.com. I love this one and can really recommend it as it shows you plenty of synonyms for every word. This definately helps to broaden your treasury of words! Of course I would recommend using monolingual dictionaries such as Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) which provides fantastic explanations of each and every word as well as useful example sentences. 

Anyway, extending your vocabulary will always be a strenous process. It's time-consuming and a lof of hard work but with the right techniques you will soon see progress! :)

Have fun trying out the very different methods of boosting your treasury of words!

(This is already the corrected version!)