LEARNING VOCABUALRY - TIPS AND QUESTIONS

[ngoc anh nguyen]

Dear All,
Please take a look at this posting, in which you can find some useful
tips for learning English vocabulary. There are also two questions for
you all to discuss. Students from IELTS class are highly recommended
sharing ideas as you are in one of the highest level of our school and
your advice will benefit others.
Here we go
It is not enough to know the meaning (or meanings) of a word. You
also need to know:
 Which words it is usually associated with.
 Its grammatical characteristics.
 How it is pronounced.
 Whether it is formal, informal, or neutral.
Here are some tips:
 Try to learn new words in phrases not in isolation.
 Write down words that commonly go together. These are called
COLLATIONS:
ADJ + N: rich vocabulary, classical music, a heavy smoker.
V + N: to give advice, to take photos, to deliver a speech.
Nouns in phrases: in touch with, a train set, a sense of humor.
 Note special grammatical characteristics of new words. For example,
irregular verbs, e.g. take – took – taken
non-count nouns, e.g. luggage, furniture, advice.
 Note any special pronunciation problems with the words.
 Make a note if the word is particularly formal or informal in
character, in other words if it has a particular register.

Questions for discussion:
 Can you learn vocabulary just by reading or listening to English?
 How are you going to plan your vocabulary learning?

[kim tuyen]

Dear Ms Ngoc Anh,

Thank you very much for sharing experience in learning vocabulary with
us. I feel, it is certainly a nice day today because I have a chance
to get more useful knowledge from early morning. I think I need some
modifications to my studying from now on.
All my vocabulary has come up due to my real job and pratical damand
for job. Actually, I do a lot of reading English documents and
translating them into Vietnamese everyday. I also have to prepare
English merchandising/purchasing contracts. Sometimes I give
presentation in English to customers/suppliers of my company. Due to
those tasks, I have a regular practice of English and it helps me
improve my vocabulary as well as pronunciation. However, something
goes wrong with me when I find a phrase including of many familiar
words but I cannot understand the meanings they create. At that time,
I often guess the meanings based on the context. It is very difficult
for me to get the exact meanings of the phrases in these cases and
sometimes it can lead to misunderstanding the whole content.
From your experience shared, I have found some tips useful in learning
vocabulary. It is not only learning by heart, reading alot, or
listening more but also taking notice to new words' collations because
they may have a far different meaning when they come with another
word/ preposition.

May you be lucky and smoothy today.
Kind Regards,

[Cuong Phu DANG]

Dear Anh,

Thanks for your tips and being a very active member on this group.

To gain vocabulary of a foreign language, there are many ways that you guy can find them more on the Internet.  

I also have read a lot of tips similar to Ms Anh on the Internet. My problem is not the method, but my laziness. And certainly, due to such kind of that laziness, I don't have much active vocabularies on my mind, but for the "method", I think I can write some lines here. Do not laugh too much when you read these lines ^-^

Ok for me, to remember a new word more quickly and effectively I often:

For meanings: visual and funny!

- Transfer its main meaning into a visual image or something funny that you like, for example you are about to learn a word (remember that learning phrase is much more effective than a single word) STORM:

STORM: when you try to learn and remember its meaning, you may image that there is a strong storm strikes a town, after that the streets are full of TO^M (shrimp) because they have followed the wind, rain... some think like that which makes a strong impression and funny to you, no need to be logical here event it does not make sense to others, but it is enough if you do feel funny and accept it . ^^

For spelling: your rules and tips!

I do not like much learning vocabulary due to this matter: spelling! Sometimes I get used to the word's pronunciation and understand it main meaning but forget its spelling >"<.

It will be very good if we can write a word's spelling just simply based on it's pronunciation and with some other official spelling rules. 

But for me, sometimes I can not, for the word that I like or need to remember exactly, I often create wild rule fpr myself to remember it. 

For example: disease,

To remember it's spelling, firstly think about the word easy: (<--- this word is so easy to remember, meaning comfortable...) then just destroy this comfortable feeling by adding the DIS - (negative meaning, prefix-) and change y to e. Because it is difficult to feel comfortable when someone get a disEASE.

Hope it help!

PS: I also would like to share with you guys a cool website which can be used for learning vocabulary. This tool lists all words related to each other into a mind map (search "mind map" if you haven't heard it before ). Or we may call it "a graphical dictionary".

http://www.visuwords.com/

For use, just simply enter the word you want, it shall list others related words there for you. Then just point your computer mouse /touch-pad cursor to the word, its meaning shall be showed for you.

Enjoy!

With Mettā,
 Cuong DANG

http://www.cuongdang.info