How to enrich your vocabulary & Tips to Increase TOEFL Scores
A.How to enrich your vocabulary
What is meant by ‘our vocabulary’?
Our own individual vocabulary refers to all the words we know. It includes both our:
1.active vocabulary – the words we understand and use regularly when speaking or writing, and our 2.passive vocabulary – the words we understand when we hear them, but do not or cannot use them.
Why is it important to improve our vocabulary?
A wide vocabulary helps you to understand what you read or listen, and to write and speak well. It is far more difficult to communicate with no vocabulary than with no grammar.
It takes a lot of practice before you really acquire / learn / know a new word. You should be systematic about studying and review new words at least once every couple of weeks.
1. Record your vocabulary systematically
As far as vocabulary learning is concerned, one of the main problems is recording your vocabulary in a way that will help you remember it. It is a very good idea to have a vocabulary notebook and to organize it into themes or topics (e.g. appearance, food, clothes, health, holidays, relationships, travel, traffic, etc.). Have one theme per piece of paper and create headings to sort out your words and phrases into really useful ‘word maps’. Try not to note down single words. Try and find out what other verbs, adjectives, prepositions etc. go together with each word.
2. Learn vocabulary in chunks
The best way of learning new words is to gather together words and phrases in clusters that make sense, that connect with each other – because, simply, it helps the brain remember them. The term collocation means a natural combination of words; it refers to the way in which English words are closely associated with each other. For example, we talk about: heavy rain and heavy traffic but not about: heavy sun or heavy roads; or we say that we make a mistake, but we don’t do a mistake. If we say: My father is a very high man, our language will sound very unnatural, because high goes with mountains and tall goes with men/women. So, heavy rain and make a mistake, as well as high mountain and tall man are often referred to as collocations, and we say that heavy collocates with rain, or that heavy and rain are collocates of each other.
Let’s look at the next example: If you say: “I forgot my passport and lost the plane”, this will sound very unnatural, because a native speaker of English would say: “I forgot my passport and missed the plane”.
Apart from helping you to expand your English vocabulary, you need to learn collocations because they will help you to speak and write English in a more natural and accurate way.
3. Use a dictionary
You need to have access to a couple of good dictionaries. If you read or hear a word you don’t understand, look up the meaning of the word and write it down in your ‘vocabulary notebook’. Good learner dictionaries give students so much help with getting a grasp on vocabulary. Most dictionaries have a key at the beginning to explain the codes. Example sentences are useful for showing you how a word is used in practice. Phrases and collocations show you the different uses of a word and help to further increase your vocabulary. If students are taught how to use them properly they will increase their depth of understanding. With correct usage of a good dictionary, such as the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary or the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary students will know how vocabulary is pronounced. They’ll also be able to identify which words are from the academic word list, learn synonyms and antonyms etc.
Remember that English is changing every day. The more recently a dictionary was published, the more up-to-date the language will be.
4.Range of contexts
Students need to use new vocabulary in various contexts outside the classroom. They can listen to the news, read books or listen to their favourite music in English. The more that language is seen in different contexts, the more students will be intrinsically motivated as they will want to know more. This is much more interesting for students (and teachers) if the focus is on the topic, not the language. Read something you enjoy and choose a variety of topics; include texts that are a bit challenging and which include words that are unfamiliar. If you come across new words while you are reading: Try to work out the meaning of the word from the context.
Don’t keep stopping to look up words you don’t know as this breaks the flow and makes it more difficult to concentrate on, and understand, what you’re reading.
If you’re really struggling to understand what you’re reading, look up one or two words that you don’t understand, then reread the passage and keep going.
5. Make the vocabulary personal, and emotional
You’ve probably heard stories of car crash survivors who can remember every little detail before the accident. We’ve also all experienced how difficult it can be to forget something we’ve been told that touched us to the heart. Neuroscientists have flashed different words and sentences in front of subjects, scanning their brain activity. Unsurprisingly, the heatmaps lit up like a christmas tree whenever the subjects were exposed to personally relevant and emotionally notable information. This effect can be put to great effect in vocabulary learning when combined with the previous tip. Rather than settling for a boring sentence like “The photo is on the table,” try something like “The photo of my wife fell of the desk just when I got the call.” The benefit is three-fold. There’s now a very visual story forming around the vocab, it is emotionally impactful, and assuming you keep a photo of your significant other on your desk, also immediately relatable! Throw that sentence into your SRS, and I can guarantee that you’ll never forget the words photo, desk, or wife ever again! Try to think of new vocabulary in context of the people you know, places you’re familiar with or important events in your life. Just make sure not to go overboard with the imagery, lest you get traumatized every time you need to use one of the words…
6. Pool new vocabulary from a frequency list
Before you can use any of the above learning hacks, you’ll need a list of vocabulary to start learning. Ideally, much of that vocabulary should come from encounters in daily life, whether through reading, listening to songs, watching movies, or paying attention to conversations in the elevator. In reality, you’ll likely need to supplement these with more abstract words to target. A common theme across my suggestions, and earlier blog posts, is that language should be learned in a way that allows you to use it at the earlier opportunity. That is a key value of learning in context, of learning vocabulary that is personally relevant, and generally engaging with words as blocks you can use to construct something bigger, rather than individual pieces of information. It should then come as no surprise that my preferred source of abstract vocabulary are lists ordered by the frequency at which they are used in day-to-day language. I’ve rarely seen this approach in classroom setting, but found it extremely effective and popular among many successful language self-learners. In many languages, learning just 1000 basic words will make you understand 90% of the spoken language, and even the first 250 most common words will give you a good sense of the conversation. If you acquire just 10 new words a day, getting up to speed in a conversation will take less than a month of casual learning. Learning a language is a huge undertaking, and it’s misleading at best when edutech companies promise fluency in a matter of months or even weeks, but mastering a core vocabulary list will make you very comfortable in all day-to-day situations. And from there, it’s just a matter of faking it, till you make it!
7. Have some fun with the words you learn
Word games may not be enough in and of themselves, but they’re a fun and effortless way to increase the recall speed of the vocabulary you know already, as well as to pick up an occasional new word from your peers. Crosswords and Scrabble are a good place to start if you’re learning Arabic or Indo-European languages. Boggle is also great fun and localized for several language using the Latin alphabet. Quiddler is a good way to improve your vocabulary, but unfortunately only exist in English. Languages like Japanese or Chinese are unfortunately not well suited for this type of board games, but looking through the app store on your mobile device should lead you to at least a few options adapted for phonetics and writing systems. If you don’t want to spend money on board games, or prefer meeting with friends over coffee or hiking, you can try playing a spoken word game instead. Some old time favourites include Word-chain or Shiritori (reply with a word starting with the last letter of the one that preceded), Associations (quickly say the first word that comes to your mind after hearing the preceding word), and Metaphors (think of metaphors for things you see around you).
B. Tips to Increase TOEFL Scores
1. Take the TOEFL Preparation Class If your English skills are quite alarming, my first tip is to take the TOEFL preparation class. In this class, you will most likely be taught grammar and practice questions that are essential to taking the TOEFL test. Follow diligently and don't skip class one even though.
2. Join English Language Courses that are General English If you have taken the TOEFL preparation class and it turns out that your grades are still far from what you expected, then taking the General English class can be a solution. It is nothing. Often, science requires time to be digested by our brains. Repeated TOEFL preparation classes from various vendors can not only bore you, but also reduce your confidence in your own abilities. You can feel that you are not good enough to learn English, despite the fact that a 5-year-old child in English is fluent in English. Join a General English class where completion of all levels of the course can take 3-4 years and be patient. As children in the UK need a few years to be fluent in English, cooking capital only 3 months course you want to be an expert?
3. Make English a Part of Your Life The last tip, and this is the most important, make English a part of your life. Language is not an exact science like mathematics or physics but is a culture. And to master it, you must make the language part of yourself. I am reminded of my early days studying Diploma III at STAN. Many of my friends raise their hands with English accounting books and look for translated books. While I, who was determined to study abroad from the beginning, kept moving forward because for me, if I don't start now, I want when I will be ready to study abroad. Initially it was hard, because reading just one page took a long time. But now I am fluent and regularly read The Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek magazines every week. Watching BBC News and Channel News Asia, which were initially heavy, is now also a light thing.
So when working on the TOEFL problem I was relaxed. Sometimes I don't need to really use the grammar formula to find out which part of the sentence is wrong. I just felt that I had met a strange and unnatural part. Reading is also easy because I feel like I'm reading a newspaper. Similarly, listening . I think of it as stealing the conversation of people in cafes. As simple as that. So, I highly recommend those of you who want to increase your TOEFL score to use English in your daily life. Maybe there's no need to talk in English (unless you have a partner who also has the same interests). You can start by regularly reading articles or watching news in English without subtitles .
What is meant by ‘our vocabulary’?
Our own individual vocabulary refers to all the words we know. It includes both our:
1.active vocabulary – the words we understand and use regularly when speaking or writing, and our 2.passive vocabulary – the words we understand when we hear them, but do not or cannot use them.
Why is it important to improve our vocabulary?
A wide vocabulary helps you to understand what you read or listen, and to write and speak well. It is far more difficult to communicate with no vocabulary than with no grammar.
It takes a lot of practice before you really acquire / learn / know a new word. You should be systematic about studying and review new words at least once every couple of weeks.
1. Record your vocabulary systematically
As far as vocabulary learning is concerned, one of the main problems is recording your vocabulary in a way that will help you remember it. It is a very good idea to have a vocabulary notebook and to organize it into themes or topics (e.g. appearance, food, clothes, health, holidays, relationships, travel, traffic, etc.). Have one theme per piece of paper and create headings to sort out your words and phrases into really useful ‘word maps’. Try not to note down single words. Try and find out what other verbs, adjectives, prepositions etc. go together with each word.
2. Learn vocabulary in chunks
The best way of learning new words is to gather together words and phrases in clusters that make sense, that connect with each other – because, simply, it helps the brain remember them. The term collocation means a natural combination of words; it refers to the way in which English words are closely associated with each other. For example, we talk about: heavy rain and heavy traffic but not about: heavy sun or heavy roads; or we say that we make a mistake, but we don’t do a mistake. If we say: My father is a very high man, our language will sound very unnatural, because high goes with mountains and tall goes with men/women. So, heavy rain and make a mistake, as well as high mountain and tall man are often referred to as collocations, and we say that heavy collocates with rain, or that heavy and rain are collocates of each other.
Let’s look at the next example: If you say: “I forgot my passport and lost the plane”, this will sound very unnatural, because a native speaker of English would say: “I forgot my passport and missed the plane”.
Apart from helping you to expand your English vocabulary, you need to learn collocations because they will help you to speak and write English in a more natural and accurate way.
3. Use a dictionary
You need to have access to a couple of good dictionaries. If you read or hear a word you don’t understand, look up the meaning of the word and write it down in your ‘vocabulary notebook’. Good learner dictionaries give students so much help with getting a grasp on vocabulary. Most dictionaries have a key at the beginning to explain the codes. Example sentences are useful for showing you how a word is used in practice. Phrases and collocations show you the different uses of a word and help to further increase your vocabulary. If students are taught how to use them properly they will increase their depth of understanding. With correct usage of a good dictionary, such as the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary or the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary students will know how vocabulary is pronounced. They’ll also be able to identify which words are from the academic word list, learn synonyms and antonyms etc.
Remember that English is changing every day. The more recently a dictionary was published, the more up-to-date the language will be.
4.Range of contexts
Students need to use new vocabulary in various contexts outside the classroom. They can listen to the news, read books or listen to their favourite music in English. The more that language is seen in different contexts, the more students will be intrinsically motivated as they will want to know more. This is much more interesting for students (and teachers) if the focus is on the topic, not the language. Read something you enjoy and choose a variety of topics; include texts that are a bit challenging and which include words that are unfamiliar. If you come across new words while you are reading: Try to work out the meaning of the word from the context.
Don’t keep stopping to look up words you don’t know as this breaks the flow and makes it more difficult to concentrate on, and understand, what you’re reading.
If you’re really struggling to understand what you’re reading, look up one or two words that you don’t understand, then reread the passage and keep going.
5. Make the vocabulary personal, and emotional
You’ve probably heard stories of car crash survivors who can remember every little detail before the accident. We’ve also all experienced how difficult it can be to forget something we’ve been told that touched us to the heart. Neuroscientists have flashed different words and sentences in front of subjects, scanning their brain activity. Unsurprisingly, the heatmaps lit up like a christmas tree whenever the subjects were exposed to personally relevant and emotionally notable information. This effect can be put to great effect in vocabulary learning when combined with the previous tip. Rather than settling for a boring sentence like “The photo is on the table,” try something like “The photo of my wife fell of the desk just when I got the call.” The benefit is three-fold. There’s now a very visual story forming around the vocab, it is emotionally impactful, and assuming you keep a photo of your significant other on your desk, also immediately relatable! Throw that sentence into your SRS, and I can guarantee that you’ll never forget the words photo, desk, or wife ever again! Try to think of new vocabulary in context of the people you know, places you’re familiar with or important events in your life. Just make sure not to go overboard with the imagery, lest you get traumatized every time you need to use one of the words…
6. Pool new vocabulary from a frequency list
Before you can use any of the above learning hacks, you’ll need a list of vocabulary to start learning. Ideally, much of that vocabulary should come from encounters in daily life, whether through reading, listening to songs, watching movies, or paying attention to conversations in the elevator. In reality, you’ll likely need to supplement these with more abstract words to target. A common theme across my suggestions, and earlier blog posts, is that language should be learned in a way that allows you to use it at the earlier opportunity. That is a key value of learning in context, of learning vocabulary that is personally relevant, and generally engaging with words as blocks you can use to construct something bigger, rather than individual pieces of information. It should then come as no surprise that my preferred source of abstract vocabulary are lists ordered by the frequency at which they are used in day-to-day language. I’ve rarely seen this approach in classroom setting, but found it extremely effective and popular among many successful language self-learners. In many languages, learning just 1000 basic words will make you understand 90% of the spoken language, and even the first 250 most common words will give you a good sense of the conversation. If you acquire just 10 new words a day, getting up to speed in a conversation will take less than a month of casual learning. Learning a language is a huge undertaking, and it’s misleading at best when edutech companies promise fluency in a matter of months or even weeks, but mastering a core vocabulary list will make you very comfortable in all day-to-day situations. And from there, it’s just a matter of faking it, till you make it!
7. Have some fun with the words you learn
Word games may not be enough in and of themselves, but they’re a fun and effortless way to increase the recall speed of the vocabulary you know already, as well as to pick up an occasional new word from your peers. Crosswords and Scrabble are a good place to start if you’re learning Arabic or Indo-European languages. Boggle is also great fun and localized for several language using the Latin alphabet. Quiddler is a good way to improve your vocabulary, but unfortunately only exist in English. Languages like Japanese or Chinese are unfortunately not well suited for this type of board games, but looking through the app store on your mobile device should lead you to at least a few options adapted for phonetics and writing systems. If you don’t want to spend money on board games, or prefer meeting with friends over coffee or hiking, you can try playing a spoken word game instead. Some old time favourites include Word-chain or Shiritori (reply with a word starting with the last letter of the one that preceded), Associations (quickly say the first word that comes to your mind after hearing the preceding word), and Metaphors (think of metaphors for things you see around you).
B. Tips to Increase TOEFL Scores
1. Take the TOEFL Preparation Class If your English skills are quite alarming, my first tip is to take the TOEFL preparation class. In this class, you will most likely be taught grammar and practice questions that are essential to taking the TOEFL test. Follow diligently and don't skip class one even though.
2. Join English Language Courses that are General English If you have taken the TOEFL preparation class and it turns out that your grades are still far from what you expected, then taking the General English class can be a solution. It is nothing. Often, science requires time to be digested by our brains. Repeated TOEFL preparation classes from various vendors can not only bore you, but also reduce your confidence in your own abilities. You can feel that you are not good enough to learn English, despite the fact that a 5-year-old child in English is fluent in English. Join a General English class where completion of all levels of the course can take 3-4 years and be patient. As children in the UK need a few years to be fluent in English, cooking capital only 3 months course you want to be an expert?
3. Make English a Part of Your Life The last tip, and this is the most important, make English a part of your life. Language is not an exact science like mathematics or physics but is a culture. And to master it, you must make the language part of yourself. I am reminded of my early days studying Diploma III at STAN. Many of my friends raise their hands with English accounting books and look for translated books. While I, who was determined to study abroad from the beginning, kept moving forward because for me, if I don't start now, I want when I will be ready to study abroad. Initially it was hard, because reading just one page took a long time. But now I am fluent and regularly read The Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek magazines every week. Watching BBC News and Channel News Asia, which were initially heavy, is now also a light thing.
So when working on the TOEFL problem I was relaxed. Sometimes I don't need to really use the grammar formula to find out which part of the sentence is wrong. I just felt that I had met a strange and unnatural part. Reading is also easy because I feel like I'm reading a newspaper. Similarly, listening . I think of it as stealing the conversation of people in cafes. As simple as that. So, I highly recommend those of you who want to increase your TOEFL score to use English in your daily life. Maybe there's no need to talk in English (unless you have a partner who also has the same interests). You can start by regularly reading articles or watching news in English without subtitles .
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