Expand Your Vocabulary

A few mistakes students make:

Learning words from lists 

The mistake: Students will go online and download lists with titles such as "10 high-level words that are guaranteed to get you a high score". Then they will memorize and force those words into their spoken or written answers. What happens is they make huge errors since they don't know how to use the words properly. 

What to do instead: We never want to learn lists of words. Instead, you should learn vocabulary in context. This is usually done easiest through reading, but you can also note new words you hear while listening to English as well. 

Learning ALL the words

The mistake: When reading in particular, it's common to encounter a lot of new words. Some students will use a dictionary and look up every single thing they don't know. Then, they will add these to their vocabulary lists and try to remember them all, but they waste time trying to learn vocabulary that's not actually practical or useful to them.

What to do instead: While it is important to be aware of vocabulary, you're passive vocabulary (=the words you understand while reading and listening) will always be larger than your active vocabulary (=the words you can use accurately while speaking and writing). So, I recommend dividing your vocabulary lists into two sections instead: 

• words you'd like to be aware of in case you encounter them on an exam and 

• words you'd actually use in your answers. 

The best way to discover which words you'll need when speaking or writing is by speaking and writing. When speaking and writing about different topics, you'll quickly realize where the gaps in your knowledge are and which words you need, as an individual, to express your ideas. I suggest doing the Daily Speaking Prompt activity precisely for this reason so you can put in the work before your exam, discover the gaps in your knowledge, and learn the vocabulary you need. 

Also, focus on learning words that you see most often. If you come across a word but you've only seen once in your studies, you probably don't need to know it. 

To help students build their vocabulary, I look at a new topic each month. You can find these materials archived on Instagram and Telegram. 

In February of 2023, I also started doing Facebook Live Streams where we can learn vocabulary and useful phrases for your exams together.

Learn on Social Media with me here.