If you don’t want to end up writing children’s stories (or may be you do? Either way,) you’re most likely interested in increasing your vocabulary.
I find the English language fairly strange. It’s not like my mother language at all (Hebrew). There’s a billion words for one idea and they have nothing to do with each other in form or composition. This makes vocabulary really hard to learn.
I don’t think that the usual advice (1 word a day) is quite as helpful. You’ll probably never use the words, or even retain them for future knowledge.
I also don’t believe that just “reading the dictionary” will help you. If you go through massive amounts of words a day, it’ll be even harder to retain the language.
So here’s some tips:
- Read. Go. Right now. Take out a really hard book and read for 20 minutes, writing down every single word you don’t know or could understand better.
- Look up. Look up the first few words in the dictionary. Every day, look up a few more words and store them, their entire definition (including pronunciation and example sentences). You may use a pocket dictionary or dictionary.com. I prefer the latter, because then you can easily copy and paste definitions into Word.
- Assign. Start with one word a day. Add up to your vocabulary every day. Print out/make flashcards and go over them for 10 minutes on a scheduled time. I use MemoryLifter, an amazing and free program that should rocket your vocabulary to success.
- Add. Keep adding words every day until you’ve reached a certain amount.
- Review. Practice ten minutes every day until you’ve memorized your words.
- Use. For the next 3 days, carry around a list of your words. Try to use every single word by the end of the day.
- Write. Include your vocabulary in your writing. You don’t have to actually apply them to your novel, but choose a period of time to write 5 short stories, each using all of your words.
- Start over. Keep pulling out cool-looking and cool-sounding words. Eventually you’ll be able to cram more words into your brain. You’ll start doing more and more words within smaller portions of time.
Any success stories? Please comment!
External Links:
Cool Words ~ List of cool, intelligent-sounding and looking words. Saves you the trouble of browsing through novels.
CleanSoft ~ List of computer softwares designed to increase your vocabulary.
Google Book Search ~ All the books you’ll ever care to read about vocabulary.
