How to Improve Your English

Vocabulary
Many posts about improving your vocabulary have really obvious advice.
These articles tell you to read, write down new words, and practice using
your new vocabulary as much as possible. These are good tips, of course,
but you’ve probably already figured these things out on your own. In this
article, I wanted to cover specific tips for improving your English
vocabulary that you probably haven’t heard a thousand times already.
Here are 17 specific things you can do to acquire more vocabulary.

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1) Use Anki Flashcards:

Anki is the Japanese word for memorization, and there is nothing better than
Anki digital flashcards for committing things to memory.

Anki flashcards use spaced repetition This means that you study your
flashcards at gradually increasing intervals.

So if you have a flashcard for the word ecstatic in your Anki deck, you might
see that card four times in week 1, twice in week 2, once in week 3, and then
not again until week 5 or so.

Here is the front of an Anki flashcard for the word ecstatic:

Once you select “Show Answer” you’ll see the answer (and also hear any
audio files that you upload to the back of the card):

Here is what a good Anki card should have:

• A fill-in-the-blank sentence you can relate to. If you’d like, you can give
yourself a hint after the sentence. Make sentences about real, important things
in your life. (Research shows you are much more likely to remember
something that you have an emotional connection to.)

• A picture (do a Google image search and copy and paste a relevant image)

• An audio file of the pronunciation of the word. You can use forvo.com to
download audio files of native speakers pronouncing just about any word in
English. (You will have to create a free account before you can download the
files.) Your Anki cards should not include your native language at all. They
should be 100% in English.

Personally, Anki has helped me increase my Spanish vocabulary. If you create

a card for a word, it’s nearly impossible to forget it (assuming you’re using
the software, of course). I strongly recommend that you get started with this
powerful tool.

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 Also, note that Anki isn’t the only spaced-repetition flashcard program. Some
similar programs are Memrise, Quizlet, Brainscape, and Cram. If for some
reason you don’t like Anki, try one of those programs.

2) Relate new vocabulary to things that are important to you:

I included this advice in tip #1, but it’s worth repeating. Even if you don’t use
Anki or another flashcard program, you can still benefit from creating
sentences which you have a strong emotional connection to.

Let’s say you want to learn the idiom to draw a blank, which means to not be
able to remember something.

Which of these sentences do you think will help you remember the idiom
more?

It’s common to draw a blank when you’re trying to think of someone’s name.

I was so embarrassed last week when I ran into a former coworker and
couldn’t think of her name. I totally drew a blank!

The second sentence involves a personal, emotional connection (assuming it

actually happened to you). This connection will help you remember the idiom.

3) Read, watch, and listen to everything more than once:

This sounds like obvious advice, but when was the last time you watched a
movie in English multiple times just so you could pick up more vocabulary?
Or when was the last time you read a news article multiple times because you
wanted to read the new vocabulary terms more than once?

if you’re serious about learning vocabulary, you need to give yourself the
repetitions you need to really learn new words. The repeated exposure will
help you tremendously.

After reading, watching, or listening to something multiple times, you can

create Anki flashcards for the new terms you’d like to learn.

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4) Learn the subtle differences between words:

Do you know the definition of synonym?

It’s not a word that is exactly the same as another word. A synonym is “a
word or phrase that has the same or nearly the same meaning as another
word or phrase.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

What this means is that there is usually a subtle difference between synonyms.

Here are some ways two similar words can be different:

• Words can have different levels of intensity (e.g. to run vs. to sprint or hot
vs. scorching). We call this shades of meaning. For more examples, see these
shades of meaning in adjectives and these shades of meaning in verbs.

• Some words are direct/impolite while others are indirect/polite (e.g. poor
vs. underprivileged or to die vs. to pass away). For more, see these 100+ polite
euphemisms you should know.

• Some words are more common than others. Controversial and polemic
have basically the same meaning, but controversial appears 39,320 times in
BYU’s Corpus of Global Web-Based English, while polemic only appears
1,420 times. This means that controversial is about 27 times more common
than polemic. This is important to know!

• Some words are more formal than others. Relaxing and chillin’ have
similar meanings, but you probably don’t want to use chillin’ in formal
settings.

• Words can have very different connotations. Connotation means “the

feelings or ideas that words give in addition to their meanings.” (Cambridge
Dictionary) Some words have a positive connotation (inexpensive), while
others have a negative connotation (cheap). It’s important to know the
difference.

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 • Words can have slightly different definitions. An example of this is cheap
and stingy. We use cheap to talk about people who are unwilling to spend
money, but we use stingy to talk about people who are unwilling to share or
give things to other people. They’re similar, but different.

So how do you learn the subtle differences between words? You ask, of
course. Ask someone who speaks better English than you, or ask Google.
Never assume that two words are 100% the same.

Thesaurus.com is a great resource as long as you realize that all these words
are just a little different.

5) Learn collocations:

A collocation is two or more words that go together and sound right to people
who have spoken the language all their lives.

For example, if you’re spending the winter in New York, and the weather is
warmer than it normally is, you are enjoying a mild winter.

Mild winter is a collocation. It sounds right because it’s what we normal say.
Soft winter and light winter both sound unnatural.

When you’re learning English terms, you also need to learn the collocations.
Otherwise, you’ll sound unnatural.

To find natural-sounding collocations, you can use the Oxford Collocation

Dictionary.

It works like this: You type in a word, and the dictionary gives you natural-
sounding collocations and example sentences.

Here is a screen shot of what you get if you search for vocabulary:

All the words in bold sound natural with vocabulary.

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 Once you learn the collocations, you can create Anki cards for them. Here is
an example of an Anki card with some sports collocations:

You’ll want to pay particular attention to English collocations that are

different from the collocations in your native language. For example, in
Portuguese and Spanish you make a party, but in English you have a party.

6) Focus (mostly) on one topic at a time:

You may have taken an English course where each unit was organized around
a central theme (food, travel, family, education, etc.).

There’s a reason textbooks are broken into thematic units like this—it makes
it easier to learn vocabulary. You see the same words over and over again, and
you can relate the new terms to each other.

You can take advantage of this when you learn English vocabulary on your
own. Pick a topic that you need more vocabulary for, and then find books, TV
shows, articles, podcasts, etc. related to that theme. Then move on to another
theme.

7) Learn the entire word families of new words you learn

Let’s say you’ve just heard the word enroll and you want to remember it.
Instead of just creating an Anki flashcard for enroll, find other words in the
word family, such as enrolled (adj.) or enrollment (n), and add them to your
flashcard as well.

8) Learn Greek and Latin root words

Learning root words will help you identify unfamiliar words.

For example if you see the word geothermal, you can make an educated guess
about its meaning if you know some common root words. Geo normally refers
to the earth (geography, geology, etc.), and therm normally refers to heat, so
you can conclude that geothermal probably has something to do with the

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 earth’s heat. (You should also be able to identify that it’s an adjective because
it ends with al.)

Learning these roots will help your vocabulary immensely by allowing you to
logically deduce the meaning of words.

Here are a few examples of roots and their meanings:

anti = against
jur = law
graph = write
terr = earth

9) Keep your native language out of it:

If you know a word in your native language and would like to find the English
equivalent, by all means use Word Reference to find a suitable word. (Word
Reference gives you example sentences so you have enough context to be
reasonably sure you’re choosing the correct word. Google Translate, not so
much.)

But if you come across a new word or expression in English, don’t look up its
translation in your native language. Instead, use an English dictionary to find
its meaning.

A dictionary that I particularly like for its easy-to-understand definitions and

example sentences is YourDictionary.

10) Consider getting a picture dictionary:

Picture dictionaries, such as the Oxford Picture Dictionary, can help you
accelerate your vocabulary by breaking vocabulary into thematic units with
pictures.

For some advanced learners, the terms may be too basic, and investing in a
picture dictionary might not be worth it. If you’re considering getting a picture

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 dictionary, look through some of the sample pages to determine whether it’s
a good fit for you.

11) Listen and read at the same time:

Reading is wonderful, but it doesn’t help you with your pronunciation. But, if
you read a book while listening to the audiobook at the same time, you will
hear the correct pronunciation of the words as well as the rhythm and
intonation of the sentences. Reading and listening at the same time will also
prevent distractions and keep you focused on reading.

12) Listen to podcasts on your commute:

What do you do during your daily commute? Do you listen to music? Do you
sit in silence?

One way to be more productive and learn some vocabulary is by listening to

podcasts on your daily trip to and from work. If your commute is 45 minutes
each way, you could listen to almost 400 hours of English podcasts in a year.

I recommend CastBox for this. It’s free in the Google Play and Apple Store,
and has a great selection of podcasts.

Of course, you’ll want to follow tip #3 and listen to your podcasts multiple
times.

13) Stop wasting your time on social media—use your phone time to improve
your vocabulary:

The average internet user spends 135 minutes per day on social media. Over
a year, that’s about 821 hours, or over twenty 40-hour work weeks!

Imagine if you devoted your social media time (or at least a significant portion
of it) to improving your English. You’d make great strides over the course of
a year.

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 So get off social media and spend that time reading in English, listening to
podcasts in English, or studying your Anki flashcards.

14) Ask your conversation partners for feedback:

I’m sure you’ve had conversations in your native language with people who
are still learning your language. Do you normally correct these people when
they make grammar and vocabulary mistakes? Probably not, right? You might
ask them to repeat themselves or ask for clarification, but you probably won’t
correct them if they misuse a word.

The same things is happening to you when you speak English. People aren’t
going to correct you unless you ask. If you have friends who speak good
English, politely ask them to start correcting you when you use words
incorrectly.

15) Get free speaking practice:

Obviously, you have to practice using the vocabulary you’re learning. If you
don’t have a whole lot of speaking opportunities in English, you’ll have to get
creative. Fortunately, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can
get speaking practice.

16) Switch your inner monologue to English:

I’m sure that your inner voice is in your native language. (If you naturally
think in English more than in your mother tongue, your vocabulary and
comfort with the language are probably already pretty spectacular.)

One way to improve your vocabulary is to force yourself to think in English.

This will help strengthen your vocabulary by making you aware of your
vocabulary gaps. When you get stuck, look up the word or phrase you need.

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17) Switch everything you can to English:

You want to get as much exposure to English as possible. Are your phone’s
settings in English? How about your browser? Your television?

If you change the settings to English, you’ll learn more words. It might not
sound like much, but every little bit helps. Try to immerse yourself as much
as possible.

You may have noticed that a lot of these tips require hard work. It takes time
to create Anki cards with sentences you have a personal connection to, and
reading articles multiple times probably isn’t as much fun as killing some time
on social media.

But anything worth doing is going to involve at least a little suffering. It will
all be worth it when you realize your developed vocabulary allows you to
communicate better in English.

Prepared by: Ahmad Jahangardi (Supervisor at IELTS_Matters)

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