7 ways to improve your vocabulory

Tips, Vocabulary August 1st, 2009

The 7 best ways of learning vocabulary are:

1. Read a lot:
Improve your reading skills. The more words you encounter while reading, the better vocabulary you will have. While reading, try to figure out the difficult words/whose meanings you don’t know and then look them up .In this way you’ll be exposed to many new words.

2. Practice is essential:
Just reading many new words won’t help you getting success in MBA. You have to use all those words in your daily life. Hence you should practice a lot and use those words both with definition and sentence.

3. Try to connect the word with other simpler words:
Say the word aloud to activate your auditory memory. Relate the word to words you already know. For example, the word GARGANTUAN (very large) has a similar meaning to the words gigantic, huge, large, etc. You could make a sequence: small, medium, large, very large, GARGANTUAN. List as many things as you can that could be considered GARGANTUAN: Godzilla, the circus fat lady, the zit on your nose, etc. Create pictures of the word’s meaning that involve strong emotions. Think “the GARGANTUAN creature was going to rip me apart and then eat me!”

4. Always get into the habit of looking up words you don’t know:
Have a personal dicionary running with you or have it installed in you computer so that you can search them as soon as possible.

5. Don’t be shy:
There are many people in this world who don’t know the meanings of some simpler words, and they hesitate to ask infront of their friends. Rather they feel scared that they’ll become a character to laugh at. This should be taken into consideration. You should not hesitate in asking even the simplest of the word’s meaning . Afterall it’s beniffiting you.

6. Play with words.
Play Scrabble, Boggle, and do crossword puzzles. These and other word games are available for the computer, so you are not dependent on a partner to play. Also, try out the Franklin Electronic Dictionary that features built-in word games.

7. Regularly take vocabulary tests:
There are many games on the sites that test your knowledge and at the same time are a source of entertainment.This will help you learn new words and also let you know how much progress you’re making. Offline sources for vocabulary tests include SAT prep books (we recommend “10 Real SAT’s” by ETS), and the Reader’s Digest Wordpower section. For more, check out Amazon.com or your local bookseller