3504. On How to Learn a Lot of Vocabulary In and Out of the Classroom

Learning and acquiring a foreign language, like English in my case and my students’, demands learning and acquiring a vast vocabulary. This is clear enough, right? 

Something I implement when daily learning and acquiring English is reading books in that language. I consciously try and learn new words from those readings. Every single day. 

And when writing for example these blog posts some words come up to mind and then I use them, while writing. For example ways of saying things in English, or single words, or phrases. Or whatever. 

I am sure also I gain and acquire words I’m not aware I’m acquiring. Also those words may come up when writing. More often when I read more. 

Currently I’m reading a book about teaching English by great Jeremy Harmer plus a book on Apollo missions to the moon in the sixties and early seventies, when I was born and a young infant. Great. 

Sometimes I read as if I were writing those texts, word by word, and in that way it’s like I were using those new words – whose meaning I try and guess from the context. 

Also I can say I think in English while reading those texts: in no way do I translate anything. 

Alike at the end of last school year I set some readings to my adult students for the summer, and now at the beginning of the new school year I will collect those books I lent to them. Sorry for my errors and mistakes anyway. 

By the way, I also use the dictionary sometimes. As well whilst reading I am glad when I read a word I’d previously looked up in the dictionary. This one is by Oxford University Press and as well I use wordreference.com, which obviously is an online dictionary. Have a nice week. --- Something I do sometimes is going back to some text already read and then revise some words, some line of the text, some phrase. That helps me keep some words in mind.