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When I attended my first Toastmasters session in May this year, I was introduced to a new word ‘Ambrosia’ (the food of the gods) and a new phrase ‘to be full of beans’ (in high spirits) by our grammarian. Now, these are words that I am never going to forget because they will always be associated with a special memory inside my head. But not every new word that you come across is easy to remember. Yes, learning new words is tough, but forming life long association with them is even tougher!
But why do we need to expand our vocabulary? I can give you a couple of reasons:
1. Native English speakers have a more extensive vocabulary than nonnative speakers like me. So what may seem like a novel word to me, might be a word used by native speakers more often. Pick up any edition of the New York Times and I bet we will come across a lot of new words. An expansive vocabulary helps us understand others better.
2. Many times, our vocabulary is not sufficient to express our feelings or what we actually want to convey. We end up using phrases instead of words and even then we find ourselves lacking.
Other than this, of course increasing your vocabulary has other advantages like cracking competitive exams & contributing in a better way to programs like Toastmasters.
When I was preparing for my Graduate Record Examination (GRE), I had to absorb a lot of new words to excel in the Verbal section. And after four months of laborious studies, I scored exceptionally good! Along this journey, I learned some ways to expand vocabulary. I will now share some of my learnings here.
Expanding vocab is a two-step process. The first involves learning new words. Many times we learn new words but after a few days, we forget what they mean. Step two involves making sure these words stay in memory for a long time.
There are many ways to learn new words. Reading newspapers & magazines like the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist introduces us to a plethora of new words. Whenever we write something in MS Word, we can check for synonyms in a thesaurus. There are many websites which send you emails with a ‘word of the day’. Preparation books for competitive exams like GRE, GMAT also have tons of new words.
Now let’s move on to step two, we have our words, but we need to make sure we don’t forget them. So here are a few tips for the same:
Tip 1: Divide & conquer
Divide your word into chunks such that you can relate this chunk with your original word. For example, I found it hard to remember what ‘factitious’ (bogus, fake) means. I remember using the beginning of the word as something that is not a ‘fact’ or not ‘real’. Or if I have to remember the word aggrandize (increase, to make appear great) I remember it using the word ‘grand’ in the middle of the word as in to make something grand or pretend that it is grand.
Tip 2: Association
Associating newly learned words with our memories or people around us helps. Remember how I mentioned in the beginning about not forgetting ‘Ambrosia’ and ‘full of beans’ with the virtue of them being associated with some special memory of mine. I also associate words with the people around me. For example, I have tagged some people as ‘Sycophant’ (flatterer) in my mind. Every time I see them, I am immediately reminded of the word.
Tip 3: Use flashcards or create your own
Using flashcards is an age-old method of remembering new words. If there are words that I seem to forget, again and again, I insert them in an app on my phone called ‘Quizlet’. Now when I have some free time, like when I travel, I go over them. Once I believe I have mastered that word, I remove it and move on to new words.
Tip 4: Using them in your daily conversation
This is the ultimate test of how well we have learned. Try to accommodate these newly learned words in your everyday conversations. Once these words become a part of our daily conversations, there’s no going back!
These are some of the techniques that I use to remember new words. Over time, I am sure, you will develop some of your own. I would love to hear from you if you got some tricks of your own.
Happy learning!
