How to expand your active vocabulary

© Dan Saelinger

How to increase your vocabulary written many articles. However, most of them have a significant drawback: they teach about the enrichment of the lexicon as a whole, without division into active and passive vocabulary. Meanwhile, if we want to make your speech expressive and convincing, should focus on expanding only the active vocabulary and on translation of a specific layer of vocabulary from passive standby to active use. How to cope with the task quickly, efficiently, with the help of available modern methods. A sign of education the Problem of expanding the active vocabulary often arises in the study of a foreign language than in the process of using native. During a conversation in English, Italian or Chinese, we periodically find ourselves in a situation where we do not know a specific word, I can't find a synonym to it and even by a circuitous route, through descriptions, comparisons and associations, unable to Express the idea — and that means we need to grab a dictionary. With the native language easier: if you need a lexical unit comes to mind, we will always find a way to get out, tucking her more or less exact equivalent.

About the increase of vocabulary within the native language, we think, if you need to impress your audience or want to hit the eloquence of the interlocutor — that is, when you are involved in emotions. An extensive vocabulary is one indicator of education and contributes to raising self-esteem, and for journalists, copywriters and translators is also a tool of earnings. In the strategic plan, masterly possession of the word helps us to accurately Express our thoughts, emotions, and relations to life situations and build effective communication.

The traditional list of recommendations for expanding vocabulary is from us at a distance of two or three clicks and roams from blog to blog, from year to year with minimal changes. In this list there is a truth, but some councils already poorly correlate with the realities of today's life and modern way of thinking, communicating and learning. And the other from the beginning seemed suspicious, but nevertheless continue to be touted as effective recipes. The typical advice we will ctirisize a bit later, but for right now let's talk about something relevant.

Clear the area Before you start to enrich your everyday vocabulary, it is necessary to prepare in the mind and in the speech room for new words — that is to say, to clear the area. Up until now we've somehow expressed their thoughts with a limited vocabulary, aren't you? We with it communicated with people of different ages and professions, described the staff support the most unimaginable problems, passed the session, passed the interview, chatted for hours with friends... We did it with a simple trick: when the right words was not his place to offer took one of our favorite parasites. Parasites considered to be weeds of speech such as "well", "here" and "how to", but in our case, this class should also include hundreds of words-chameleons, which can change the meaning and connotation depending on the context. For example, the expression "I in shock" in a given situation can be deciphered as "I'm surprised / amazed / astonished / amazed / outraged / scared / overwhelmed / elated / angry / don't understand / don't accept / mad / hurt" and so on. Words like "thing", "fuck", "cool" is so broad and universal that we can replace them almost a third and more specialised vocabulary. The record for the ability to replace any lexical unit is, of course, the diversity (or is it the monotony?) Russian Mat.

To get a feel for how the active vocabulary is increasing every day, you have to force yourself to give up your favorite generic lovozerite and not be lazy every time to pick up the same noun or adjective which most accurately convey thoughts and feelings. To identify undesirable elements in speech is easier than it seems: it is enough to carefully read their correspondence over the last week in WhatsApp, Facebook or any other messenger and make a list of the most frequently used words that you used to plug a semantic hole. Hand the list to a friend or colleague and ask him to straighten you and to make a mark in the notebook every time in your spoken or written word will slip in the word parasite. For every 50 notes you can treat your friend to lunch or give him a bottle of champagne, or wash his car without a hard motivation, supported by economic or employment sanctions, it will be difficult to part with favourite hackneyed phrases. It is likely that when you learn to slow down every time you try to say "crap" or "cute", the memory itself will start throwing meaningful literary synonyms of the passive dictionary.

Remember synonyms make it a rule to write posts in the most comfortable for you, social media, spending 10 minutes three times a day. In the morning, afternoon and evening, throw on a miniature essay on any interesting subject, carefully thinking through every sentence and trying to get there as much as possible "delicious" words. The goal is to let people suspect that your account has been compromised and that you do not write, because the style and style completely unrecognizable. Regularly re-read your previous posts and try to avoid repetition as lexical units and grammatical constructions. If you enrage a moral exhibitionist, spread to the public their breakfasts and mood swings, change privacy settings and make these posts visible only to yourself. Alternatively, of course, possible to have a paper notebook or word document and to write essays in there — but in social networks, we'd sit, and the file still need to find the folder and open that will always miss time.

Keep a notebook of synonyms or write the words on the cards — one of the most popular classic tips for expanding vocabulary. A big disadvantage of this method lies in the fact that words are most effective to teach not individually but in the context of and in relation to a particular topic — not in vain in the textbooks of foreign languages each lesson is built around a specific topic. If you like to use notebooks and cards (whether paper or electronic), will be useful not just memorize words one by one and come up with them phrases and visualize different dialog situations.

A bit questionable seems to be common advice to always keep a dictionary on hand and often to look at him. By itself, this is a wonderful idea, except that it focuses on the expansion of the passive rather than active vocabulary. Opening a random page of a Glossary, we make sure that you know most of the words, and those whose values we know, we probably just don't need. So the dictionary next to the keep, but hopes it is not imposed.

How to read books, obviously, for the enrichment of lexicon useful to read a lot — just how it should be read? For our generation the reference is likely to be the speech of the mid-twentieth century, which, on the one hand, in many ways close to the modern, on the other hand, have not had time to absorb the moment and jargon came in the perestroika era. Picking up artwork, we usually quickly get addicted to the story, stop paying attention to the vocabulary and linguistic richness of the novel goes well we got past all the radar. To avoid this, it is possible to apply a psychological trick and read a memoir, autobiography or any other book written in the first person. If you read them slowly and thoughtfully, and ideally, also aloud, the memory will settle the ready-made phrases that we can use to talk about yourself. However, to extract these phrases from memory done as soon as possible, so they are not left in the mire of passive vocabulary.

To read and memorize the verses twice useful — to digest not only the vocabulary but also syntax. Despite the fact that in Russian the word order in the sentence is quite free to enjoy this freedom fully, we don't like (which is quite rational from the point of view of saving mental effort). Each of us has chosen syntactic constructs that limit our lexical range, respectively, if we dream of this range to expand, you have to be creative to build phrases. For example, if we tend to use impersonal sentences in the spirit of "I want" is synonymous with the number would be predictable and narrow: "I dream / I want / I need / I want." But it is necessary to Express the same idea with subject and predicate, "I want" as the space expands: "I want / I want / I insist / I need" and so on. When you write essays, feel free to juggle the order of the words, reshape syntax, insert frequently involved and adverbial-participial turnovers is a good incentive to activate passive vocabulary.

Finally, the most important thing. Do not take to treat vocabulary as a responsible multi-task for which you want to take the time to meet with the spirit. This is not gymnastics and not neurosurgery, where you have to spend a lot of years and effort to achieve results. The inclusion in it of new words — the process is very natural, starting at a very early age, continuing until the end of life and, frankly, quite simple.

 

Source: theoryandpractice.ru