This is a list of ways I’ve found to learn new words. Each is different in its own way, but all of them help to increase your vocabulary.
STEP 1: Read News (and Other Articles) That Have High Value Words
A lot of people get stuck when learning new words because they think they need to look up every single word they don’t know. In reality, this can be a lot of work and is often impractical.
The key is to find news articles that have high value words. This can be done by searching for articles that are about topics you’re interested in, or by using a search engine with advanced features like “search for phrases” or “search for words”.
These types of articles are the ones that will help you to build your vocabulary.
STEP 2: Use a Thesaurus
Using a thesaurus is another great way to learn new words. There are plenty of online thesauri, but a great one is the Wordnik Thesaurus.
The idea is to go through and look at words that mean the same thing, and then you can decide which one is better. For example, you might look up the word “dentist”, and see that there are four different words that mean the same thing: dentist, dentists, and dentistry.
You can also look up the word “citizen” and see that there are eight different words that all mean the same thing.
It’s not necessary to understand every word on a list like this, so don’t get bogged down in trying to learn everything. Focus on using the thesaurus for high value words.
STEP 3: Learn Words by Writing Them Down
The best way to learn new words is to write them down. This is because writing down new words is one of the easiest ways to memorize them. You can also do this with pictures or images, but writing is far more effective.
There are a lot of great apps for learning English, but my favorite one is Memrise.
Memrise lets you take any word you want and learn it as an audio clip. Once you’ve learned a word, you can play it back and repeat it.
It’s a great way to quickly learn vocabulary that you’ll use regularly. You can also download the free version to try it out, and it works on desktop and mobile.
STEP 4: Use Vocabulary Lists
Vocabulary lists are another great way to learn new words.
There are a lot of different websites that will list different words for you, but the one I like best is WordReference.com.
They list words by category, so if you type in “business” or “employment”, they’ll list all the words that have to do with those subjects.
This is a great place to find words that you need to know when talking about your field of work or job. It’s also a good place to get a better understanding of how words are used in different contexts.
STEP 5: Read Books That Have High Value Words
Reading books that have high value words is another great way to learn new vocabulary. You can do this by simply reading them, but you can also look up certain words and see what their definitions are.
The best book for this is the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
You can read the dictionary for free online, but I recommend buying the hard copy if you can. It’s a great resource to learn new words from, and it’s the perfect size to put in your bag or backpack for when you’re traveling.