10 easy ways to improve your vocabulary

Sumit Singh Gandhi

Learning English doesn’t always have to mean sitting in the classroom and studying tricky grammar. English language teachers encourage you to do plenty of extra learning outside of school. There are several ways to improve your understanding of the language, many of which can be a lot of fun. When you are trying to improve your vocabulary, luckily, you don’t have to sit and memorise a dictionary. There are so many fun and creative ways to do that.

 Building your vocabulary is one of the simplest methods to boost the impact of your writing and make any writing work easier since you’ll always have a variety of synonyms to choose from. It doesn’t have to be tough or painful to expand your vocabulary.

 Here are 10 ways to improve your vocabulary

 1.      Reading: Reading books is the ultimate word frequency list. Reading is great because it allows you to learn and to reinforce vocabulary. You learn the vocabulary in its context, together with another relevant vocabulary, and you also get the most frequently used and useful words. 

 2.    Lookup for new words: You should look for the new words daily and try to grasp them. 

 3.    Make a journal: Whatever new words you learned today try to jot them down. You keep revising them so that you don’t forget.

 4.    Speak up: Use good vocabulary in your conversation. This will help you to look different from the mass. Gradually, when you will sit for the interview you are going to notice that you are speaking so fluently and even using good words. This quite attracts the panellist often.

 5.     Get a good bilingual dictionary: It’s a great idea to look up obscure words you don’t quite grasp that come to you on the fly as you go about your day. You can also use the dictionary or thesaurus to look up unfamiliar words you come across in your daily life.

 6.    Play games: It’s not necessary to learn with books only. You can also learn while playing games. There are plenty of board games designed to increase your word power like unscramble, solve different kinds of puzzles.

 7.     Reading Idioms and Phrases: Idioms are particularly important since they allow you to express yourself in unique and unique ways. You may say “You hit the nail on the head” instead of “You’re correct,” which is a more complicated and fascinating statement. Idioms may also be rather amusing to employ, allowing you to express yourself more authentically while also showcasing your personality and sense of humour.

 8.    Surround yourself with English speakers: You should try to converse in English as much as possible. You can watch some YouTube videos of CATKing and learn from them.

 9.    Learn synonyms as well as antonyms: Synonyms and antonyms might help you expand your vocabulary. Finding words with similar meanings that you can substitute for a commonly used word might provide you more options for expressing yourself. Understanding the antonym of a word – or precisely what the phrase does not represent – might help you grasp the meaning of the word more clearly.

 10.  Read from different sources:

• Read Norman Lewis- Reading Norman Lewis word power makes your vocabs quite strong. You can get access to CATKing dashboards where you get videos of vocabulary.
• Watch English Movies-When you are watching English movies read the subtitles. This makes you read faster and fluently. As you see a new word jot it down in your diary.
• Aeon Essay- Read different articles from aeon essays like philosophy, sociology, technology, etc.
• News Reading- Make a habit of reading newspapers daily. There are various sources like The Financial Times, Economic Times, and Business World, etc. Build a habit to read and understand and form a storyline as you keep reading further to have an overall idea towards the end.

The writer is CEO, CATKing Educare