Build Your Vocabulary FASTER!

Video Overview & Insights

Increasing your English vocabulary base is hard, but I’m going to give you six ways to make this process easier and faster by collecting vocabulary into categories, or chunks. I will give you these vocabulary categories: context, precision words, idiomatic uses, and more, and show you how to use them to expand your vocabulary rapidly. https://www.engvid.com/build-your-vocabulary-faster/

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Try out this technique with more of my vocabulary videos:

Supermarket vocabulary https://youtu.be/UK3jgQ0gQcM

Real estate vocabulary https://youtu.be/cTbsowLVXT4

In this lesson:

0:00 How to build your vocabulary FASTER

0:31 Don't memorize lists!

1:29 Give yourself time.

2:49 Don't try to impress.

3:22 Work smarter, not harder.

3:45 Group 1: Context

6:55 Group 2: Secondary Uses

9:22 Group 3: Precision Vocabulary

11:23 Group 4: Confused Words

13:10 Group 5: Roots, Prefixes, Suffixes, Parts of Speech

15:19 Group 6: Idiomatic Vocabulary

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to www.engvid.com.

I'm Adam.

In today's video, I want to show you how to build your vocabulary base faster.

Okay?

Now, I've made other videos about building vocabulary, and I know other teachers have

done this as well.

But today, I want to give you a bit more focused attention on how to do this in terms of the

work that you're going to have to put into it.

But before we get into that, I want to give you a few tips to get us started, okay?

First thing I want you to keep in mind, and this is especially for those of you who are

taking a test, like IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge, whatever.

I know that a lot of people do this, but don't do this.

Don't memorize word lists.

It is very, very ineffective.

Why?

Because you're memorizing words in a bit of a random list.

There's no associations, there's no relations between the words.

You're just trying to memorize them and then spit them out again onto the paper or in the

interview or whatever.

And even if you're not taking a test, this is not a good way to build vocabulary.

If the words don't connect to ideas and to situations, you're going to forget them very

quickly.

So, instead of creating - instead of memorizing lists, I want you to start creating, start

building your own lists.

And I'm going to show you how to do that in a moment.

Also, when it comes to building vocabulary, don't think that you're going to do it in

a week or a month or even two months.

It's going to take time.

Give yourself that time.

Be patient, keep working, you will see results.

Now, if any of you have ever gone to the gym and you're working out and trying to build

muscle, you'll understand that after a week, you won't see any changes in your body.

After a month, you probably still won't see any changes in your body.

And this is when most people just quit and stop going to the gym.

But, I'm speaking from my own experience, once you pass that second month, you will

definitely start seeing results.

You will see your body starting to change, you will lose weight, you will gain muscle.

Same with vocabulary.

After you're doing this consistently and for a while, you're going to start realizing that

you're using the new words, you're writing with them, you're speaking with them, you're

doing all kinds of interesting things with them.

So, don't stop until you're fluent.

Now, fluency is obviously a very big goal.

It might take you a year, two years, three years.

Keep going, keep going.

English has a lot of words.

The more you know, the better you'll communicate.

And don't try to impress with your words.

You'll be much more - you'll make a much better impression if you're using words correctly

with variety and very useful for the purpose that you're using them for, right?

If you're just throwing out random big words trying to impress a reader or a listener,

they will not be impressed.

It's quite the opposite.

They might, you know, they might think you're a little bit off or they might look down on

you because you're not using the language correctly.

So, the whole point is, the general idea is work smarter, not harder.

Don't sit there memorizing, don't write random things.

Have a very focused approach to building vocabulary.

And now, I'm going to show you the types of lists that you can start building that should

be much more effectual in building your vocabulary base, okay?

So, let's get started with that.

Okay, so now, how are you going to build your lists?

How are you going to make new lists that are more effective? […]