A super-easy way to Expand Vocabulary
How to maximize the words you remember
As a writing enthusiast, I like learning new words and using them in my articles and stories to make them sound better, non-repetitive and professional.
When I was in 4th standard my teacher used to ask the class to memorize 1 new word every day. I used to open the gigantic Oxford dictionary my dad had bought for me and tried to cram a random word from it.
The problem is, I don’t have a sharp memory and used to forget the word I crammed within an hour.
In 5th standard, I started to read books and they have been the biggest contributor to my lexicon. If you want to learn new words read books. The problem which is faced by many even after reading books is that they can’t retain the new word-set they learnt from the book.
This is the way I used to read a book-
Whenever I encountered a word I did not know the meaning of, I opened the dictionary, read the meaning, tried to remember it and then continued reading. This is also what most people do to learn new words.
Most people read a book in a similar fashion. The trick I have for you is an extension and improvement to this pedagogy.
Many types of research have shown that writing helps in remembering things better than simply trying to remember it by reading.(read more about it here).
So here’s the tip I learned from a friend-
Write the word and its meaning down. Make a sentence out of the word and write that down too. And after finishing every chapter of a book or once a week read the word again and try to make another sentence.
I know this sounds elementary. But it’s very hard to be persistent in continuing this exercise every time you read. That’s why I feel this technique is under-used by people.
Now of course I don’t guarantee that this will make you a master of words overnight. Patience is the key. This is something that has worked wonders for me. This simple trick has helped me retain more words from a single book.
I hope this works out for you as well. Tell me what you think about it by commenting on the post. Thanks!
In case you want your kids to start reading books, here’s a blog in which I’ve mentioned some great books for kids.
