Good morning, good evening, or good night wherever you are in
the world. I'm Oliver and welcome back to
the Understandable English Podcast.
Today we are going to be talking about vocabulary.
Vocabulary. What is it?
So vocabulary is the words that we know, so all of the English
words that we know and use. And today we are going to be
looking at how to build. So to grow your vocabulary and
to practice, what are the best techniques that you can use.
I will be showing you the techniques that I use with
language learning and that lots of students use too.
Building or growing a strong vocabulary is essential for
mastering or improving your English.
And today I am going to share some very effective techniques
which should make it easier for you.
But first we need to understand with vocabulary what is the
difference between active vocabulary and passive
vocabulary. Earlier I said that vocabulary
is all of the words that we know, and although we know lots
of words, we don't always use them.
We can understand often more words than we use.
So for example, when you're reading or listening to this
podcast, you will understand a lot of words that I say, even
words that you don't use in your own speech.
This is called passive vocabulary.
So these are all the words that you understand and know in your
brain. Now, the words that you actually
use. So when you're writing or
speaking, having conversations, this is your active vocabulary.
Not only do you understand these words, but you also actively use
them. So you use them each and every
day. Maybe not every day, but at
least you use them. When we are learning a language,
usually when we learn words, they first become part of our
passive vocabulary. We understand them to read or to
hear, but not yet to use. So we understand them, but we
don't use them. And the more we hear these words
or come across them, the more likely they are to move into our
active vocabulary to start using them, you know, each and every
day as part of our regular speech.
And that is our goal, to both grow our passive vocabulary and
eventually to continue growing our active vocabulary.
That is all of the technical things out of the way.
For this podcast, for example, if I look at myself, I study
Russian language. To be honest, I've been pretty
bad at studying recently and learning, but in the past I had
a really big passive vocabulary and I still do.
So I understand a lot more words than I actually speak or use,
and this is not a bad thing. When we speak, it's OK to use
simple sentences and phrases. And ultimately, at the end of
the day, it is more important to understand than to create or to
speak. Because we can't control how
complicated people speak, so how complicated their sentences are
or their vocabulary. And if we can understand more
than we can create or speak, we can reply with the words or
phrases that we know and there's no stress or pressure.
But if our passive vocabulary so the words that we understand
isn't big enough, we might not understand certain words or
phrases and this makes conversation quite difficult.
So let's look at some options to help and grow your passive and
active vocabulary. The first is one that I talk
about a lot on this podcast, and I'm not going to talk about it
today apart from just mentioning it.
So saying it, and that is reading for vocabulary growth.
It's one of the most effective ways to expand your vocabulary.
It's the way that children learn new words in school and they
read books. Books that are suitable or
correct for their level. And as you read, you come across
new words. You can look them up online and
you see them in context, which is so important to understand
how and when a word is used. But I'm not going to talk any
more about reading today, as I have a separate podcast episode
about reading. So if you haven't listened to
that, Scroll down to look down my podcast and find that episode
and watch it. It wasn't too long ago, so the
second method is flash cards and word association.
So association is when you associate a word with something,
so you connect a word with something.
Flash cards are a handy tool for vocabulary practice if you're
doing them physically, so not on a digital device.
You can write down new words on one side of the card and the
meanings or definitions on the other side.
Review your flash cards regularly.
I say that that word is difficult even for me to say
regularly, regularly means like every day or with a routine and
test yourselves on the words and their meanings.
So when I use flash cards or when I recommend students to use
flash cards, I think digital flash cards are the best and you
want to use flash cards that use spaced repetition.
What this is, is it is an app which will calculate when to
show you a flash card. So it will show you it and if
you know it very well it won't show it for a while.
So for maybe a week. If you don't know it, it will
show it to you again more quickly so maybe tomorrow.
And doing this helps to put the words into your long term
memory. Some apps that I recommend are
Anki, Droid, so ANKIDROID. If you use an Android phone or
on iPhone you can also get Anki Anki.
But this costs money. But for a free option you can
use tiny cards. So that's tiny cards.
Or just simply find a flash card app that you like.
But I recommend that any time you see a word or a phrase that
you don't understand, look up the meaning and put it into your
flash card app and continue to learn these words and phrases,
which really, really helps. And you can do this through kind
of what my Third Point or method is, and that is learning through
content consumption. So that means consuming or
listening or reading or watching English content.
So that can be this podcast. It can be videos, TV shows,
books, anything you want to consume or to watch.
Listen, read as much English as possible and when you don't
understand a word, look up the meaning online and add it to
your flip cards. Add it to your list of words
that you want to test yourself on and learn.
It will really help, really, really help.
Another great way to expand your vocabulary, especially if you're
a very busy person and you don't have a lot of time, is to do the
word of the Day challenge. Challenge yourself to learn at
least one new word every day, so that is only 365 words per year.
I think it's very doable and often you will learn much more
than one word per day. But this gives you a focus and
an easy goal. Just one word per day to build a
healthy vocabulary routine. There are many apps which do
word a day, or you can simply make it a goal for yourself to
pick and learn one word per day. Over time you will continue to
grow your vocabulary. So by using these techniques, so
flip cards and word association and learning words from context
and consuming as much English as possible, your vocabulary will
naturally grow. And the secret is there is no
special secret to learn lots of words.
The real secret is to consume, so to use as much English
content as possible. So watching TV, reading books,
listening to podcasts, and I know that is boring advice, but
it is the truth and it's the best thing for expanding your
vocabulary. So keep on learning and write in
the comments below. If you're on YouTube, one new
word that you have maybe heard from this podcast or a new word
that you have learnt recently in English and tell me what word
that is, I would love to hear. Thank you for listening and I
will see you in the next episode.
Goodbye.