7 Fantastic Ways to Increase Your Vocabulary ...

One of the best ways to increase your vocabulary is to read. It really is true that the more you read, the more you’ll know and one of the things you’ll know are new words. You’ll come by many new words when you read. A lot of times you’ll be able to learn the meaning of the word from the context of the reading material. If you read regularly, you’ll soon see your vocabulary growing.

If you don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up. It does take a minute out of your day to do this but then you’ll know the meaning of the word forever. It’s worth the small sacrifice of time. You can look up a word in an old fashioned dictionary or do what most people do and google it. Google can lead you to some great online dictionaries.

There are many different email programs that you can sign up for to deliver a new word to you each day. It’s generally a short little email that tells you the word and the meaning of it. It’s a small and manageable way to increase your vocabulary. Two good email programs are by Merriam-Webster Online and The Free Dictionary. Of course there are many others you can choose from, too.

One easy way to increase your vocabulary is to simply talk to others. Talking to others provides you with many words to ponder through. You’ll have a lot of conversations where there won’t be any new vocabulary words to gain but you’ll also have some that will. Just like with reading, many times you’ll be able to define the word by the context of the conversation. If you can’t, you can always look it up later.

A thesaurus is a wonderful tool to help you increase your vocabulary. This may be my favorite way to do this. When you’re writing, you can click on a word and allow your thesaurus to give you some other choices that can be used in place of the one you wrote. It’s a list of words with very similar meanings. If you don’t do a lot of writing, you can look up words in a thesaurus to expand on them a bit.

Word games can do more than provide you with entertainment. They can also help you increase your vocabulary. You can play word games such as Scrabble or do crossword puzzles on your own. There are also tons of word games that you can play online. You can even play them with a friend.

If you learn one new word a day, challenge yourself to use one new word a day. Why not? It’s a great way to put what you’re learning into practice. It’ll be more likely to stay in your memory if you use it. You may feel a little silly at first but after a while, you and everyone else will adjust to your growing vocabulary. You may even inspire others to do the same.

These are 7 different ways you can increase your vocabulary. What methods work best for you? I’d love to read your comments.