12 What are Some Ways to Increase Your Vocabulary?

Why should you increase your vocabulary?

Well, there’s the science:

Learning new words activates many different areas of your brain. And, exercising your brain improves your cognitive function: you get smarter, and live longer.

And there are the experts:

There is one common trait that is consistent with successful people: they have all acquired a large vocabulary. According to the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation, more than 88% of Fortune 1000 executives scored well above average on vocabulary tests, with 71% of managers scoring above average.

Ed Hirsch, an American educator and education theorist, says that there is a positive correlation between a student’s vocabulary size and the likelihood that she will graduate from college and her future level of income. “The reason is clear: vocabulary size is a convenient proxy for a whole range of educational attainments and abilities—not just skill in reading, writing, listening, and speaking but also general knowledge of science, history, and the arts.” Learning new words allows you to communicate your thoughts and ideas to others with more accuracy.

And there are the writers:

“Few activities are as delightful as learning new vocabulary.”

― Tim Gunn

“The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.”

― Goethe

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.”

— J.K. Rowling’s character Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

So, what are some ways to learn new words and increase our vocabulary?

Context clues

This is the number-one method for learning new words, and it’s painless. When you run across an unfamiliar word, take a second to peruse the surrounding words in nearby sentences. Can you guess at the unfamiliar word, or substitute another word, to make the sentence make sense? Looking around at the surrounding context often is enough to figure out the new word’s meaning.

Old school vs the 21st century

Some people think learning new words means reading a dictionary. But today, most online texts have definitions or hyperlinks to help define a word. Reading something online? Highlight a word and right click to see options for searching for that word out in the internet. Writing an assignment in MSWord? Right-click to get an option for definitions, synonyms, or even translations.

Move

Children often are taught new words by associating pictures with the new terms. But research shows that adults learn new words more easily if they incorporate gestures or other movement while studying. Gesturing while saying the words aloud, walking while practicing the new words, or even partially acting out the word all help adults to acquire new vocabulary. This technique is being used in second and third language acquisition, as many people attempt to learn additional languages after reaching adulthood.   

Create your own word list

Use dictionary.com to create your own word list.

When you look up words in dictionary.com, you have an option to click on the star symbol and add the word to your own personal word list. It’s free to sign up, using your email address, and you can keep adding to the list. The app also creates quizzes for you, which can be very useful if you are learning terminology for a specific field, like business or health sciences.