How I am trying to improve my vocabulary in English

There are several approaches that help students improve their vocabulary. What matters is that you figure out which of them works best for you. My own vocabulary learning system involves making as much use as possible of my online vocabulary notebook. I am working with an excel file that I’ve divided into various sections for each new word, phrase, collocation, example sentence, synonym, antonym, explanation and translation. For now I am focusing on words from the ‘Porter book’. As I come across other useful idioms and words every day, I am planning to add those expressions to the list as well. Hopefully, the vocabulary notebook will help me collect the vital information I need to really learn By learning new words in the context of memorable example sentences I should be able to improve my active usage of English.

Let’s now take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of textbooks like the ‘Porter book’. As far as the use of collocation goes, I definitely think I can benefit from this book’. I like the exercises where you need to find the strongest collocations, which you then have to write in the right gap. There are actually two demanding tasks in just one exercise, which not only makes you reflect on these words more intensively, but also helps you by giving them a context. What I consider a slight disadvantage of the textbook, however, is that words are only seen from one perspective as usually there is just one example for each word. This makes it impossible to illuminate all sides of a word. The ultimate responsibility for learning more aspects of a word in order to entirely ‘own’ it, eventually rests with each individual student. Additional information must be taken from elsewhere. I often help myself out by consulting other sources like corpora.

I like to look at several sample sentences in order to derive as many meanings of a word as possible. This helps me as I get a better appreciation of its various uses. I also consider corpora particularly helpful when I want to search for possible collocations of words. My favorite corpus is the Corpus of Contemporary American English. What I like most about it is that you can narrow down the search options in the interface until the results are as exact as possible. This feature is especially useful when it comes to searching vocabulary within an academic context as it allows you to ignore all other sources and focus solely on academic papers and journals. I am impressed by the possibilities of this corpus and I am sure the more I learn to do with it, the better.

Heaving computer-supported technology aside for a moment I want to discuss a more old-fashioned way to learn new words. I am talking about flash cards, which I can recommend to anyone who likes to learn words and phrases by writing them down themselves. I use them a lot, because I am convinced they help me prepare for exam, where you should be able to spell words correctly without having autocorrection at your disposal. Flash cards are also ideal for visual learners like me, who need picture in order to remember tricky words

Finally, want to emphasize is that for me it is almost impossible to rely on just one source or one way of learning vocabulary, as efficient it may be. I think that in the end it also comes down to being familiar with a variety of sources you can consult to gain as much information as possible about how the new words and phrases are used appropriately. I hope that following these strategies will significantly improve and boost my vocabulary in English throughout this year.