What I am doing to improve my vocabulary
Words are the basic components of every language.
Therefore if you want to improve your language skills it is very important to
constantly learn new vocabulary. I read a lot of English books in my free time
because in my opinion this is the best way to get a feel for the language and
to learn how to use certain words and phrases correctly. If I come across a
word that I don’t know, I add it to my vocabulary list and figure out its
meaning and use. Whenever I am not busy I read through my list and try to remember
as much new vocabulary as possible. The most efficient time to do this, for me personally,
is before I go to sleep because by then I am relaxed and can focus solely on
the words. My goal is to learn around five new words a day. This might not
sound like much but if I do this day in and day out, it really adds up in the
long run and the progress is noticeable. Another thing that helps me a lot to
build my vocabulary is watching English movies or TV series. If I need a break
from university, this is relaxing on the one hand and passive language learning
on the other hand. Of course everyone has their own approach to vocabulary
learning but for me the most fun and successful way is to combine it with what
I like to do in my free time.
Vocabulary.com is also very helpful when it comes to
learning vocabulary. I had never used this website until Frank showed us in
class how useful it can be. The website is very well structured and easy to
use. In my opinion, the best thing about Vocabulary.com is that you can create
your own personal vocabulary lists. This can be done very easily and quickly
and there is no limit to how many lists you can create. Especially when I am
studying for our upcoming progress check I find that feature of Vocabulary.com
very helpful, because I can simply remove all the words that I know already and
create a list with just the words that I still need to study for the exam.
Another positive thing about Vocabulary.com is that it is also available as a
cell phone app, which is free. If you are waiting for the bus and you have a
few minutes to kill, you won’t get bored and you are doing something useful at
the same time. If you are doing your homework and you are not sure about the
exact meaning of a certain word, the Vocabulary.com app will get the answer in
a jiffy and you don’t even need to switch on a laptop or computer. I find this
app really useful and convenient, so I would recommend that everyone download
it onto their phone as soon as possible.
Being a book lover, I find the Porter book and the
English Vocabulary in Use book that we used last year very helpful. I like to
be able to fill out vocabulary exercises because that way you learn the meaning
of the word as well as how it is used within a sentence. These language
learning books usually provide an answer key which allows you to check your
answers right after you filled out the exercises. This is extremely important to
me because that way you know right away if your answers are correct and the
chance of learning a wrong meaning of a word is minimized. Since the Porter
book focuses on Academic English, it will be very helpful to me this semester
when it comes to writing the academic paper because with the help of that book
I should be learning mainly words and phrases that are commonly used in formal,
academic writing.
