A wide vocabulary is important and beneficial. It helps communicate ideas better and increases comprehension, which is vital in communication. It also opens countless opportunities. It increases a person’s chances for a better job, which helps him secure his future. But how can one have an extensive vocabulary?
These days, there are many ways you can improve your vocabulary. You can even have fun while learning. If you’re looking for fun ways to expand your vocabulary, try these tips.
Read More
If you ask people how they improved their vocabulary, one of the common answers you’ll get is to read more. Reading has so many benefits, and one of which is having an increased vocabulary, as per a study.
You’ll get more exposure to many words through reading, including those that you aren’t familiar with. This helps you understand how unfamiliar words were used. Thus, when you encounter them in other situations, you can easily identify them and understand the context.
But you don’t have to read novels alone. If you’re not into narrative fiction, you can try reading newspapers more or magazines. You can also go for reference books, such as Ripley’s Believe It or Not, James May’s Toy Stories, and the likes.
Use Tools
As you encounter unfamiliar words, whether as you read books or listen to podcasts, it would also be helpful if you use tools.
If you’re reading or listening to podcasts or audiobooks, learning new words would be easier if you have a dictionary by your side. It could either be a traditional dictionary or an audio dictionary. This way, you’ll understand what you’re reading right away. On top of that, you’ll know how to read the words correctly.
If you’re playing word puzzle games, you can also use an anagram solver tool. This might feel as if you’re cheating on the game, but this tool will actually help you learn faster. Using it could help you spell and familiarize yourself with words faster, helping you expand your vocabulary.
Listen to Podcasts and Audiobooks
If you’re not much of a reader, you can also try listening to podcasts or audiobooks. Through listening to podcasts or audiobooks, you don’t just get to improve your listening skills, but you can also get to widen your vocabulary.
Podcasts let you listen to how native speakers converse. With this, you’ll learn more about how they use certain words and how they construct their sentences.
Audiobooks, on the other hand, exposes you to unfamiliar words, just like in reading. But the difference is that it lets you know how words can be used with various tones to express different words and different meanings. Regardless of which one you choose to listen to, you’ll always learn something new.
Play Games
Reading is fun as it can take you to a different world as you learn new words. Listening helps you expand your vocabulary too. Both can be fun, especially if the topic interests you. But there’s nothing more fun than playing games. And yes, you can also get to expand your vocabulary with this too.
Playing games isn’t just entertaining. These days, you can even use it to learn new things, depending on the games you play. If you’re looking to expand your vocabulary, you can invest your time playing crossword puzzles, quizzes, and the likes. These games will let you familiarize yourself with spellings, meanings, and synonyms, which help better your vocabulary.
Practice Makes Perfect
It’s not always enough to read and keep the information you learned to yourself. It is important that you practice what you learned too. One of the ways you can practice the words you learned is by communicating with other people. You can use the words you just learned by using them when you talk to your friends or family. This will help the information stick to your memory more. Of course, you can get to share your knowledge by doing this too.
You can also join online communities, especially if you’re trying to learn a new language. With this, you can learn more words from native speakers, and you have more freedom to ask more about the language you’re learning. The best part of it is that you can practice more as you converse with other users.
Having an extensive vocabulary helps you understand messages better and faster. This will not only make learning other things easier, but also opens more opportunities for a better future. The process isn’t always easy, though, as it requires persistence. But these tips will make it more fun and smoother.
