Vocabulary skills do not improve through an effortless process; one has to study actively and work hard to learn new words. Academic vocabulary is considered to be more abstract, which is why it is less memorable.
Many people believe that by reading books they can extend their vocabulary considerably.In my opinion, this approach is not effective unless you take a closer look at the new words. Instead of ignoring the unknown words every time they appear,I find it more userful to create my own vocabulary list. It´s essential to look for all possible definitions.The goal I set myself when I started to learn English was to learn 10 words from the dictionary every day. Even though I won´t learn an entire dictionary, most of the words will become more familiar.
Having some basic knowledge of Latin and Greek definitely helps to determine the meanings of academic words.Frequently, prefixes showing time, direction or negation proceed from Latin ( antecedent, postwar, invalid...etc) are the ley to figure out the meaning. Phrasal verbs can always be replaced by Latin-based words and it definitely will be more suitable for academic language,
I never learn a single word ny itself , but groups that " travel together", i.e. collocates. To remember the words better I often make sentences using facts from my life, involving real people.To make sure I know the meaning, I attempt to explai it using my own words.A good way to memorise new vocabulary faster is to put the words on a wall, computer desk or any other place,where I can see them as often as possible.
At this stage I would like to comment on how useful I find methods of acquiring new vocabulary by using vocabulary.com, corpora and David Porter´s book.As vocabulary.com excludes easy and known terms, we save time learning only new and necessary ones.A useful point about exaple sentences is that they are shown in different contexts.This semester I have discovered another powerful tool for learnig English called corpora. With corpora, the process os searching for word examples can be more speedy and efficient than with dictionary.While dictionaries sometimes provide limited and artificial examples, corpora´s ones are based on authentic phrases. Corpora is more active way of studying new vocabulary.For students it can be more entertaining than studying with dictionary, since they will be involved in exploring the language by themselves, Despite all these advantages ,I find vocabulary.com more helpful. For beginners and those who are not experts in computers, like me, searching through corpora is often complicated and stressful. David Porter´s book provides not only gap filling exercises that allos the learner to encounter vocabulary in different contexts, but also more challenging exercises, giving us a possibility to use imagination.
To sum up,I would say that corpus is rather a useful tool for linguistic research than for daily use.Its is always positive when we are taught different methods of learning English, better yet. when it provides faster searching and better quality meaning.But everyone is entitled to choose an appropiate approach for studiyng. I hope to get better at getting the most out of corpora, but meanwhile I will opt for traditional learning.
Yep, I remember the good old days when I was studying Latin. I wrote words everywhere: in my bedroom, on the walls... I would scatter them in the most unexpected places, so that I always felt I was being ambushed by Iulius Caesar.
AntwortenLöschen