How Can Someone Improve Their Vocabulary While Strengthening Their Reading Skills
A great vocabulary is just one essential tool in a writer'southward toolbox, along with punctuation, grammar, and many others. Vocabulary can make your writing more powerful and more effective and help you say exactly what you lot mean. This indispensable tool will help you choose the best word for every task and avert vague words that exercise not requite your readers a proficient sense of your significant.
Building your vocabulary is 1 of the easiest ways to better the power of your writing and make whatever writing task that much easier, as you will accept several synonyms in your repertoire to pull from every time. Developing your vocabulary demand non be difficult or painful. Here are 25 ways you can better your writing vocabulary every mean solar day.
Use New Words
Use a discussion immediately after yous larn information technology. Try to make a game out of using a new word as shortly every bit you acquire it. Every day, try to slip in a new word into the conversation, a journal entry, an assignment or an email to a friend. Do this as oft as possible, and repeat the word to yourself.
Read Every Twenty-four hours
Once you're out of schoolhouse, word drills and assigned reading become things of the past. While these were tools for edifice your vocabulary repertoire while you were young, it doesn't mean y'all should abandon reading. Attempt to read a well-written and edited essay, magazine article, book or news article every day. Nonfiction and technical books volition quickly teach you new means to recollect and speak with words you may be unfamiliar with, but any type of reading will aid you lot along.
Learn Roots
Learn the roots of words. Most words in the English language are built from a common root, prefix, and suffix, ordinarily with an origin in the Greek or Latin linguistic communication. Once yous acquire a root, yous'll begin to understand more than words that use the aforementioned root. For example, -duc- (Latin root word) means to lead or to brand, such equally in the words produce or deduce.
Use a Thesaurus
Continue a thesaurus handy. As you write, keep a thesaurus handy and apply it when y'all find yourself using a word too often, or using a word that yous know doesn't quite convey the right meaning. This will help y'all improve express yourself, and yous'll also learn a new word in the process.
Develop Practical Vocabulary
This means you should start by learning words that express what's of import to you lot for the task at hand. A good example of this is learning trade language or words you use often in a hobby or vocation. Rather than immediately turning to cliches or jargon that's tossed effectually, await for clearer words to express to peers what you're writing about.
Learn New Words Every 24-hour interval
To better your vocabulary quickly, make an effort to larn at least 1 new discussion every unmarried twenty-four hour period. There are plenty of ways to do this, such as a Word of the Day calendar or electronic mail listing, or simply picking a discussion from a thesaurus or dictionary.
Look up Words You lot Don't Know
How often do you run into words that are unfamiliar as you read? Don't only gloss over them; take the time to await them up, and if you don't have the time right then, write them down and look them up later.
Keep a Journal
Journaling won't merely aid y'all develop your writing style, it will also help you lot meliorate your vocabulary. Try to use new or interesting words you've learned recently into a journal entry for the day or the calendar week.
Identify Empty Words
You're probably familiar with empty words in your spoken communication (such as "uh" or "um"), but your writing probably has empty words besides. Expect for these empty words in your writing that practise not offer any substance to your reader and replace them with something more advisable. The same principle applies to phrases and sentences, then brand sure that you haven't used 6 or seven phrases to say something that could be better communicated in one judgement filled with carefully-chosen words.
Diversify Your Reading Listing
If you tend to read the same sort of things day in and day out, you lot may not be exposing yourself to a wide enough range of vocabulary. Diversify the topics y'all read to include natural scientific discipline, Shakespeare, contemporary literature, politics, history, philosophy or any other topics you recall y'all may enjoy.
Practice Discussion Puzzles
Word puzzles in the newspaper or a magazine aren't just a fun way to fill up time, they're too perfect for boosting your working vocabulary. Crossword puzzles are a challenge that get your brain working difficult to search your memory for words you lot do know but don't use, and this can aid you move words from your retention banks into your working set of vocabulary which will come up across in your writing.
Try Word Board Games
At that place are plenty of word games on the market place designed to ameliorate vocabulary and language skills without existence a diameter. Some of these games you may have played equally a child, so it'southward time to break them out again and get to "work." If you accept a friend who could also utilise some assistance — or someone with a not bad vocabulary you lot think will challenge you — invite them over for a game night.
Practice New Words in Divergent Ways
It takes between 10 and 20 repetitions to brand a new word a office of your vocabulary. To assistance the give-and-take settle into your listen and retentiveness, write it downwardly (both the definition and a sentence you make up using the give-and-take), use it in conversation, include it in an email or any other way you tin can think of.
Make upwardly Associations
Start by saying the new discussion aloud, then relate it to a word you already know. A good example of this is gargantuan, which means "very large" or "gigantic." Say a sequence aloud: small-scale, medium, large, very large, gargantuan. Then listing things you think are gargantuan.
Use Mnemonics
Mnemonic techniques are retention tricks you can use to remember new words. You lot may remember a word past sounding it out and thinking of a funny judgement that matches the meaning, such as turning egregious (extremely bad) into "Don't permit that smelly rotten egg achieve united states!"
Visualize New Words
Research shows that visualization is a smashing way to remember new words and their meanings. A proficient example of this is the word stratovolcano, which is a high, pointed mountain with a violent explosion. 1 way to recollect this meaning is the fact that the prefix "strato" sounds similar "directly-oh," which may make you lot call back of a straight ruler or a "straight-o-volcano," which describes the word'south definition.
Brand Your Own Vocabulary Tests
Go along a list of the new words you learn each week and contain into writing and conversation. At the end of each week, make yourself a quiz using the words to cement them in your memory.
Make Synonym Word Lists
Do you lot find yourself turning to the same word again and again in your writing? Grab a slice of paper and write information technology at the superlative. Next, begin or use a thesaurus to generate a listing of ten to twenty new words you can use instead. You can proceed these lists in a vocabulary notebook and add to them whenever you learn a new synonym.
Have a Writing Course
There are plenty of online courses besides every bit in-person classes yous can attend to boost your writing vocabulary and learn how to employ new words correctly. Endeavour to detect a self-paced course that uses assignments and quizzes to hep you lot increase fluency and castor upwardly on your writing skills. Some classes are aimed at essay writing or creative writing, so you lot can find a class that will assistance yous meliorate the manner yous need the virtually help with.
Edit Your Own Writing
After you end writing, exist your own editor and go though the piece with a fine-toothed comb to identify overused and nondescript words with something more than precise or colorful. Editing is an important process for spotting writing errors, only it'south also great for improving the tone, fashion, and clarity of your writing. Information technology might help to read the sentences aloud, and then note whatsoever lack of precision. Search through your memory for more descriptive words, or consult a thesaurus if you need to.
As you lot replace words, remember that using a large number of complex words won't necessarily clarify the meaning, and it may just make your writing more pompous. Inquire yourself, "Do I know a improve discussion to utilise instead?" You may replace "use" with "learn" or "obtain," or "do" with "perform."
Motion Words from Comprehensive to Expressive Vocabulary
You actually accept two types of vocabulary: 1 is a much larger set of words y'all understand, even if only vaguely, and the other is a smaller set of words you actually use to express yourself. Moving words from your comprehensive, only passive vocabulary, to your active, expressive vocabulary is easier than you think. To do this, yous'll need to know how to ascertain, pronounce and spell the words. Say them out loud and use them at every opportunity to motion them into your active gear up.
Ask for Feedback
Practise you think your writing could use some aid? If you're struggling with your written vocabulary, attempt asking someone else for help. A second set of eyes can offer a great deal of insight and spot problems yous may non discover yourself, including poor word selection. Don't be agape to inquire a friend, instructor, co-worker or someone online to review your writing for feedback on your vocabulary.
Deport a Dictionary and Thesaurus with You
How ofttimes do you discover yourself with costless time and nothing to do? Carry a pocket thesaurus or dictionary with yous and you'll discover fourth dimension to beef up your vocabulary while you're waiting for an appointment, commuting to work or waiting for a bus. Whenever y'all have a few minutes to spare, read a page or two and learn a new word to add to your writing. It'due south also a peachy idea to look upward obscure words you lot don't quite grasp that come to you on the fly as yous go about your day. You can also use the dictionary or thesaurus to expect up unfamiliar words you come across in your daily life.
Utilise College Preparation Tests
College prep tests that use Saturday and Act-type words are a groovy fashion to have your writing to the adjacent level. This class of avant-garde study will claiming your mind and requite you a new prepare of words to utilize that are practical and offer your writing the clarity it needs. You'll as well get the hazard to castor upward on the nigh important Latin and Greek roots and go a new set of words with activities to help move them into your active vocabulary set.
Play Games
There are tons of non-board games that will help you better your writing vocabulary while y'all have fun. Try downloading fun word games onto your phone or calculator so you tin can go some practice while you unwind afterwards a busy twenty-four hours. Some games are designed to build vocabulary skills, just there are plenty of others that will help you do spelling, phonics, and even typing skills. At that place are fifty-fifty some designed for higher students to prepare for testing and vocabulary-rich exams.
Hopefully, this list has given you an excellent place to start to build your vocabulary a chip at a time. If you lot think about information technology, there are opportunities all effectually you to develop this of import skill, then spend fourth dimension every twenty-four hours reading and listening to accept in new words and then develop a organization to incorporate these new words in your writing and speech. Before long, you lot'll find your vocabulary has grown to a new level and your writing has gained the clarity yous need with an ease you didn't think possible.
Author: Jovell Alingod
(Epitome courtesy of Michael Coghlan)
How Can Someone Improve Their Vocabulary While Strengthening Their Reading Skills
Source: https://wordcounter.net/blog/2014/01/22/1027_25-ways-to-improve-your-writing-vocabulary.html