| Picture learning a new language as building a house | | | | to listen to someone speaking that language, or if |
| from scratch. You can't wait to handle the design, | | | | you get your hands on some article written in it, |
| buy the furniture or decorate the rooms, but first | | | | make sure you do your best to understand it, |
| you need to go through the hard process of | | | | focusing on the words that you don't know. If |
| actually raising it from the ground. The vocabulary | | | | you can't "guess" them out of the context, have |
| of a language is both its foundation and it contains | | | | a dictionary near you to help you out with these |
| the words that you will have to use as "bricks" | | | | new words. Especially if you're reading instead of |
| when building it and although it's not crucial to | | | | listening, make sure you get the pronunciation |
| have a huge amount of bricks, the more you | | | | right for the new words (dictionaries usually offer |
| have the bigger the house, hence the higher the | | | | the pronunciation of the word besides its |
| comfort. Actually, taking the discussion back to | | | | translation). |
| the linguistic field, studies have shown that we | | | | Another good way to increase your vocabulary is |
| only need 100 or so "core words" from a | | | | to engage in interactive activities in that particular |
| language's vocabulary in order to be able to handle | | | | foreign language. Educational games can be a fun |
| basic communication. But that's comparable to | | | | way of expanding your word pool as well as |
| having a single room apartment, when you might | | | | playing a computer game in that language, trying |
| need a 2 story villa, so we need to see how we | | | | to relate what's happening on the screen with |
| can improve the number of bricks we can use :). | | | | what you're reading/hearing in case you stumble |
| I'm presuming you already have a relatively solid | | | | on some new words. |
| grasp of the basic vocabulary of the language | | | | Last but not least, you could practice what |
| you're trying to enhance, or we wouldn't be | | | | language courses call the "A new word each day" |
| talking about "improving" one's vocabulary but | | | | game. Make it a habit to look up a new word in |
| rather on how to learn it from scratch. If you've | | | | the dictionary each day and memorize it. Of |
| learnt the language from a course book or with | | | | course, you shouldn't stop at rare, practically |
| the help of some online lessons, you probably | | | | useless words; instead, focus on commonly used |
| have a limited amount of basic words, since these | | | | words that are new to you, words that you |
| courses focus on a little bit of everything, including | | | | actually have the chance of using in day-to-day |
| spelling, grammar, pronunciation and so forth, | | | | conversation. If you combine this method with |
| leaving little room to concentrate strictly on your | | | | other vocabulary improvement ones, the daily |
| vocabulary. | | | | amount of new words will probably be high |
| Reading and listening are two of the most | | | | enough to make it count, but small enough to not |
| important ways of increasing your vocabulary in a | | | | overload your memory with stuff that you are |
| specific language. Whenever you have the chance | | | | just going to forget the next day. |