3316. How to Learn New Vocabulary


 
Not all the words I look up in the big dictionaries I have – mainly and namely Oxford and online Wordreference.com – are learned by me. When I read the novel I have in charge now I learn a nice number of words.
The words that are learned by me are ones I come across once and for all or those which I’ve got some context from. Not every word I come across when reading is learned by me but many of them get stuck in mind and are mysteriously retrieved when writing a post for example… or when teaching in the classrooms. Others are retained in mind because they’ve been used for a while or for an exercise I carry out with my students.
Anyway what I mainly mean here is that reading fiction is quite nice for learning vocab. Why fiction? Well, you know, it’s the one that more commonly matches everyday native-speakers’ speaking – for instance it brings out a lot of phrasal verbs. / Photo from: adare-cottages My Ireland Tour

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