I want to improve my English vocabulary. I want to know some of the best ways to improve my vocabulary. How many words should I learn daily? What resources should I use?
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Not "the best way", but a very useful resource I found some months ago: Vocabulary.com. In a few words: it is a system that allows you to exercise vocabulary. It tries to guess your level based in the answers you give, and so it shows you the words you should not know yet, and when you fail your answer, it remembers them in order to show later again. It has been very useful for me. I am learning vocabulary with a book, and for every word I need to exercise, I search for it in the dictionary available at that site, and click the option "learn", so when I take the test after that, the word will appear among the other words the site offers me. |
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Depending on your goal, there are a number techniques. And while they may not be easy/fast, you can enjoy the learning. In all cases, you want to mirror the way a native speaker would acquire the skill you're looking for so that the learning can be deep and your usage natural:
No matter how you acquire the skills, make sure you practice them aggressively. Writers don't become writers JUST by reading. Orators don't become speakers just by listening to speeches. Don't say "no" if someone invites you to a dinner party or picnic. Go and DO. Pretty much all English speaking cultures (heck, pretty much all cultures) are quite forgiving if you just make it clear that you're still learning and are putting effort into it. Nobody will think poorly of you. |
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A good resource is the English.Stackexchange.com website - a very useful resource for understanding particular nuances of the English language. |
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Reading a lot of text in English as well as listening to podcasts did the trick for me. If you are interested in the topic, you can do this in your free time and even have fun in the process. |
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I'm Dutch. I started blogging about things that interest me. A personal goal when I started the blog was to improve my English while writing. I try to be critical, and double-check before I actually publish the post. Sometimes I Google for other phases and words. If English isn't your foreign language, it is hard to measure if you are writing things right. For me, blogging and answering questions on English forums helps. |
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I think the best way to learn something is to enjoy learning it...As per my personal experience ,I think following are the best ways to improve english vocabulary...Best as in you dont have to put stress about learning but learning would be fun for you... (1) Reading Daily spend some time to Read english novels,newspapers,articles...Whatever you love to read..Note down the new words you find,check its meaning and start using those words in your conversations. (2) Listening Watch english movies,news...Hear their pronounciation and note it down..Also when you hear someone speaking a new word,store it in your mind memory and start using it. (3) Practicing Try to speak in english as much as you can..In your conversations,Start using all the new words you have learnt.. And remember "A single day of sub-zero temperature is not enough to create three feet of ice"..It simply means You cannot build good vocabulary by working hard for a single day/week..You need to practice it daily as "Practice makes a man perfect"... Best wishes :-) |
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In my opinion, to improve your English vocabulary, you need to immerse yourself as completely as you can in the language itself. You should do this by speaking English alone for extended periods of time regardless of the difficulty you'll occasionally face, watch the British news, shows, etc. You'll be surprised how much this would help and make some good English-speaking friends both locally and online and practice face to face or by participating in Skype calls, Google hangouts, etc. Finally, read. This is the biggest way to boost your vocabulary. Read serious books, novels, etc. not just junky magazines. I hope this helps. |
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Honestly the best way is to prepare for an exam, maybe taking lessons but there is also a lot of material on the Internet. I give a link for the exam I prepared for, I'm not saying it's better than anything else but I was very satisfied with it: CAE, you also can check your level on this site... |
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Just to complement other answers: the biggest bang for your buck lies in prefixes and suffixes. Learning common roots and endings will let you infer what words mean. Add some context and you will have a good clue. |
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Use Leithner box (for example ediscio.com) and put the word with several example sentences in the answer section and try to memorize them. Also you need to immerse yourself in English (or any other language that you want to learn). |
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Find an audiobook with text. A typical audiobook would last for about five hours. 1) Use the audio to set the pace, mark and look up all the unknown (or unfamiliar) words. 2) Read with the audio. 3) Go to step 2. Trick: find a book that really conveys useful information rather than just showing the basic language usage. |
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If you want to just know words and their meanings, then it is fine to read "word of the day" sites etc. But knowing what a word means and knowing how and when to use them is totally different. So i would suggest you read....and read some more. Not only do you read words with some context(which would help you in remembering the words) you would also learn what is in the book :) |
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