Since university started a few weeks ago and our English classes are already in full swing, I’m back writing my blog posts. Speaking of English classes, I want to talk a little bit about how to improve your vocabulary since it is always good to have a broad range of words at hand.
One of my favorite "tools of the vocabulary learning trade" is a website called vocabulary.com. I really like to use it because it's an easy and fun way to practice "aquaintances", words you aren’t that familiar with yet but want to become comfortable using in more than one context. If you have a lot of words that you want to practice or need to learn for a test, you can create your very own vocabulary list.
Another one of my favorite websites is called thesaurus.com. I’ve come to the point where I nearly use it on a daily basis. I like it because it helps me spice up my writing with more sophisticated words or at least synonyms to keep my language varied. However, the most important thing to bear in mind is to check the synonym in a learners dictionary. In this way you can make sure that you understand its meaning correctly and find out how to use it appropriately.
When it comes to studying new vocabulary one of the most important steps is knowing how to use it appropriately, in which contexts. In order to find out how a word functions in a sentence, corpora can be of great help. Now you might think, what are these corpora and how can something with such a strange name be of any use. Well, basically a corpus is an electronic collection of texts used to show certain patterns in a language such as collocations. Two good examples of corpora that I am looking into are the Corpus of Contemporary American English - http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ - and Sketch Engine for Language Learning - http://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/run.cgi/skell. From what I've seen so far, both seem very useful but I have to admit that I prefer Sketch Engine because I think that it is easier to use and navigate through. Also there is no need to sign up for it unlike for the Contemporary American English corpus where you have to register after 10-15 querries.
In order to advance my range of vocabulary I read as much English literature as possible. I am lucky in this respect because I really love reading. To be honest, books have become one of my main hobbies. However, I tend to read lighter literature rather than more demanding articles and texts so I will need to change my habits to balance out the lack of formal language and the vocabulary that goes with it.
My favorite but probably least effective attempt to broaden my vocab is to watch the original versions of TV shows I like a lot. This is really helping to build up a base of good expressions and words and to develop a feel for how English works, but if you really want to learn more complicated words there are certainly better ways to do so such as reading articles found in respected newspapers.
Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. I hope I could help one or two of you guys out by sharing my approach to boosting my vocabulary and taking it to the next level.
Hy Samara! :) I really like your post! I definitely agree with you that vocabulary.com and SkELL are two of the best online sources for learning new vocab. They're structured, easy and fast. I also found the lists on vocabulary.com particularly helpful, when learning for PC1. What I could use more often is thesaurus.com. It seems like a really good website. Thank you! :)
ReplyDeleteHey!
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote in my post vocabulary.com is one of my favourites as well. The one thing I need to do is to use the spelling bee more often because even though I might know the meaning of a word I have a really hard time spelling it correctly.
Thesaurus is also a very useful site and I love using it, sometimes even just for fun.