No one can exceed their vocabulary and you'll look quite the buffoon in your attempts.
Words are the basic blocks of the language, and one of the key predictors of someone’s education level, profession and social status. Yet most students struggle to increase their vocabulary effectively, as new words go one into one ear and out the other.
It’s not that we have difficulties grasping the vocabulary when we see it. Rather, we struggle to recall when we get the opportunity to use it, or worse yet, forget to use frequently enough only to end up back where we begun.
Below I describe ten proven tactics to overcome this struggle and learn new words faster, recall them more effectively, and remember them forever.
How to improve your vocabulary
1. Make use of spaced repetition algorithms (SRSs)
Although the scientific community is still debating some aspects of learning, there is consensus on how memories form, and solidify in our brains.
You can read more about spaced repetition in my earlier blog post, but the basic concept is that memories begin to fade shortly after they’re formed, and disappear into oblivion lest we are exposed to the information again.
With each exposure, the ‘forgetting curve’ of the memory becomes longer, and longer until it eventually outlasts your lifetime. This is why reviewing what you’ve learned regularly is so important to effective learning.
The biggest benefit of using a spaced repetition approach to learning, whether you follow the Leitner system with your old paper flashcards, or go for spaced repetition software on your phone or computer (have you tried LinguaLift yet?), is that it prevents you from wasting time on vocabulary that is still fresh in your memory.
The way most students use flashcards is by adding more and more cards to the deck, and then reviewing them all together every day, or every week, or eventually never at all. No surprise, given how unmanageable the pile becomes after a few learning sessions.
SRS goes beyond regular flashcards by predicting the point when the memory is about to fade based on your past performance, and then reminding you at this optimal moment. In theory, if you review regularly every day, you shouldn’t see the word more than 4-5 times before it enters your long term memory!
2. Study vocabulary in context
Research shows that the vast majority of words are learned from context. I can’t emphasize this enough, as learning in context of situations and sentences has huge benefits for all three aspects of vocabulary acquisition: learning, recall and retention.
This means that you should never learn vocabulary from isolated lists of unrelated vocabulary, without seeing them as part of a wider picture.
Think of words as puzzle pieces--when they’re scattered around the table, it’s almost impossible to remember or use them for anything useful. But once you combine even just a couple of the pieces together, a more meaningful context begins to appear, and the end result no longer appears unattainable.
There are many ways of introducing context into your vocabulary learning, the simplest being to learn vocabulary in sentences. This has additional benefits of introducing you to several words at a time, and clarifying their meaning, which may not always be obvious from a simple dictionary translation.
Beyond sentences, you can experiment with learning words with stories, songs or just everyday situations. For example, rather than learning weather related words on their own, look up a weather forecast online, and try to imagine a conversation about weather next week, and how it’ll affect the fishing trip you’ve been looking forward to so much.
Finally, you can also embed the vocabulary right into your surroundings with post-it notes. You’ve probably tried this method with nouns, but there’s no reason to stop there! Simply prepend the label on the fridge with ‘white,’ the clock with ‘wall,’ and the notebook with ‘my.’
3. 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...
4. Read regularly, and from a variety of sources
Reading exposes you to the same vocabulary at regular intervals, integrated it into the context of a longer story, personally relatable once you identify with the main protagonist... all central characteristics of effective vocabulary learning.
This makes reading one of the most effective ways to increase your vocabulary. The stereotype might portray bookworms as boring and asocial, but studies have in fact confirmed repeatedly that regular readers are much more expressive if you give them a chance to speak.
While you read, pay close attention to words you don't know, but don’t try to look up everything right away or you’ll fail to appreciate the narrative and eventually burn out. Instead, highlight words that appear to be particularly useful or central to the story, then try to figure out their meanings from context before checking the official definition.
Make sure to engage with material on many different subjects, and in different formats. The language will be very different depending on whether you’re reading pulp fiction, a glamour magazine, or daily newspaper.
If you the book you’re reading is also available in audio form, you should also consider listening to each chapter before or after you read it. If the text and the audio match accurately, also make sure to try shadowing, an extremely effective learning method I’ve covered before.
