How to Learn 30➕ New Words a Day
When you are learning a foreign language, you see and hear hundreds and even thousands of new words a day. You check them once to understand a particular phrase or sentence. Then, they slip your memory and you need to look them up in a dictionary again. I know how desperate you may feel. That’s why I share with you these tricks to learn hundreds of new words easily. Tested by me and thousands of students of LinguaTrip.com’s language courses.
🤔 Learn all forms of the word
Many words in English can be used as a noun, an adjective and a verb. For example, take the word “milk”. “Milk” is a drink, but it is also an action, defined as “to draw milk from the breasts or udder” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The words “love”, “work”, “drive”, “hope” can also be used as verbs and nouns. And there are hundreds of similar cases. If you check it straightaway when learning new words, you widen your vocabulary easily.
Pay special attention to words with the same stem. If you’ve already learned the verb “to speak”, it will be easier for you to remember the noun “speech” and the adjective “speechless”. Suffixes and prefixes also may boost your vocabulary. Just look how easy it is to remember these pairs of antonyms when you’ve already learned one of them before: successful–unsuccessful, lucky–unlucky, relevant–irrelevant, hopeful–hopeless, etc. Knowing the rules of building new words, you actually learn more words at once.
😜 Check words with -tion ending in other languages
The words with a -tion ending are often shared by many languages across Europe and Latin America. They are written and sound exactly the same or very close to each other. So, if you know the meaning of these words in one language, you can easily use them in the other language.
For instance, the English word “ambition” is written exactly the same way in German, “ambición” in Spanish, and “ambitzione” in Italian. Other examples are “motivation”, “dissertation”, “profession”, “sanction”, “portion”, etc. These words are very easy to recognize and do not require any effort on your side to memorize them.
😮 Check other meanings of a new word
Often, words have more than one meaning. And learning them both will save you time. For instance, the word “to fire” may mean “to put on a flame” or “to let an employee go”. The same is true for the word “date”. The noun “date” means a day in the calendar, and the verb “to date” means to go out with someone you love. Two very different meanings can be covered in one go if you take the time to check each new word properly.
To check these meanings, you can go to an old-school dictionary. Or, you can try to use the Google search in images. If there is more than one commonly used meaning of the word, you will see pictures illustrating them both. And if you hit the rarer meaning of the word first, you will be surprised with image search results.
🙄 Use associations to remember words
Quite often, new words may remind you of some other terms, names, or words you’ve already learned. Use these associations to memorize new words quicker.
Google search can help you to find good associations. For instance, if you are trying to learn the word “spear” and google it, you will see also the results for a popular pop-singer Britney Spears. Now, you will easily remember the new word. Ryan Gosling’s surname is actually the word “gosling”. This is how you call a baby goose. Or let’s look at the word “beetle”. Its main meaning is a little bug. However, when you search for a beetle online, you will find also the car by Volkswagen. This small car looks a bit like a bug, so you can associate a new word with the popular car model.
🧐 Learn the expressions and idioms
Sometimes the words we already know and that sound pretty easy may get a completely different meaning when they become a part of an idiom or an expression. For instance, the word “nut” in the phrase “to be nuts” means that a person is acting crazy. Or the phrase “I feel blue”. It does not refer to the colour blue, as you may think, but rather, it describes a sad emotional state of the person. Always check the use of the new words in phrases and idioms to avoid stupid mistakes and use them like a native speaker.
To discover more idioms, phrases and expressions, check our YouTube channel English with LinguaTrip. There, we regularly post videos for English students.
🤫 Use new words straight away
The best way to remember new words is to put them into practice straightaway. Try to compose a sentence with the new word or phrase or use it in your next conversation later the same day. This way, it will move into your active vocabulary and you will feel more confident using it in your speaking or writing.
📝 Group Words By Topic
Learning a bunch of new words from completely different subject areas can be challenging. However, if you arrange them into groups, your life will be much easier. Try to arrange them by topic. Beginners can learn words related to food, transport, travel, entertainment, clothes, feelings, weather, etc. Students with advanced levels can focus on more specific topics, such as words from fantasy books, vocabulary of the future, political terms, teenagers’ slang, etc.
Another great idea is to group words by their grammatical function. For instance, you can pick a popular phrasal verb and learn all words and phrases that can be used with it. This way, you not only widen your vocabulary, but also start speaking more fluently and sound like a native speaker.
📱 Use mobile apps to help you memorize words
There are hundreds of apps that help you learn new foreign words, such as popular Memrise and Busuu. Try to install them all and test their free versions to see which one works best for you. Most of the apps have great sets of words arranged by topics and suitable for beginners. Advanced users will enjoy more of creating their own words of lists and using the app to memorize them. Let technology enhance your learning experience.
Summary
When you learn a new word, ensure that you check everything about it. Whether it has other forms and other meanings, whether it can be used in expressions and if you can build associations with it. It will help you to boost your vocabulary quickly and make learning the language easier.
