hi everybody and welcome back to love English with Leila and Sabrah
I'm Sabrah, today we're looking at a very useful lesson all about how to improve
your English vocabulary so as an English teacher over the years I've seen that
one of the things that students have a problem with the most is learning
vocabulary and of course once you know more vocabulary it's much easier to
speak the language you can understand more when you read more there's not so
many words you don't know it's also much easier but the problem is what happens
if you don't have a good memory what happens if your memory is well like Dory
from Finding dory I suffer from short-term memory loss
what's this lesson about again what could the word be I need more words! are
you one of these learners so this lesson is for you so tip number one now this is
the most important thing that you need to do to improve your vocabulary it
is to keep a vocabulary book or a vocabulary diary or even notes on your
phone so taking photos and things like that but personally I think that writing
down is better I think that the memory is helped by writing things down so
keeping some kind of record of your vocabulary is essential to learn it. You
cannot learn vocabulary just like that it's very unusual for people to be able
to remember words without having some kind of record of them so you need to
keep a vocabulary book now you need to also organize your vocabulary book so
that it's understandable and so that you can review it easily because reviewing
it will be key to helping you remember today I'm giving you my top tips on how
to organize this vocabulary diary or vocabulary book
so we're going to look at an example of how we would organize a vocabulary book
with a particular word so first of all you of course need to write the word
then write what part of speech is the word is it a verb is it a noun is it an
adjective write down the part of speech that the word is this will help you
remember how to use it for example you know if it's a verb that it's an action
word that you can use it in the middle of sentences to give the sentence an
action secondly you can also translate into your own language this is quite
useful when I learnt Spanish I did find it useful to have a translation into my
language although of course you want to also have a translation into English so
you want to have an explanation of the English meaning, let's look at how we
would organize this let's take the example of the verb to leap so to leap
means to take a high jump - jump highly or to take a big jump so we would put in
our books to leap verb then we would put for example the translation in our
language so in Spanish to leap is Salto, so you could put Salto- I hope I'm
pronouncing that correctly if I'm not please tell me in the comments how to
pronounce that! Then you would put the written meaning so for example you would
put to take a big jump then you could put an example sentence for example you
could put she leapt up when she found out that she'd got the job the last thing
that it might be useful for you to do is to put a note about the pronunciation so
if you like the phonemic chart you could put in about the phonemic
pronunciation or if you don't know this very well you could simply put some kind
of note that helps you about how to pronounce the word for example leap is
said with long e to leap so you could put that in as well. So tip number two
now sometimes it isn't enough to just have a vocabulary book sometimes you
need to see these words more frequently they need to be in your face all the
time now when I was learning Spanish I found it
really useful to put up lists of vocabulary around the house or around my
office or my place of work, this way I saw them all the time so it was much
easier for me to learn vocabulary without making too much effort for
example when I was learning Spanish I put up all the lists about things for
the Spanish kitchen so translations of knife fork spoon I put these lists up in
my kitchen and this way I saw them all the time and so I started to remember
them I started to familiarize myself with them it doesn't have to just be
easy vocabulary it could be more difficult vocabulary for example words
for IELTS or characteristics for people or any words that you're finding
difficult to learn put them up around where you see them frequently and they
will start to go in naturally without making too much effort which is always a
good thing tip number three use the words you learn
use the words you learn if you don't use the words that you learn you're never
going to remember them using the word our brain starts to remember our brain
the links in our brain start to connect together and we start to remember that
vocabulary more so for example imagine you look through your vocabulary book
and you see some some words that you're starting to try to learn think this week
I'm going to try and use this word, I'm going to try and use this word in my
class or I'm going to speak with my friend in English for half an hour and
try and use these five new words. This way you'll really start to build your
vocabulary. Using them in a sentence you learn where they sound right what verbs
they go with what adjectives they often connect to and you'll start to build
your sentences and of course ultimately you'll build your fluency which is very
important. Tip number four personalize the language you learn a very good way
to encourage your memory to remember things is to make it personal about you
things that are about us we remember much more easily so let's look at an
example of this let's look at the word curious I love this word it's a
fantastic word to be curious and it means to be very
interested in something sometimes it could also be that you're so interested
that you would even take a risk perhaps to find out what the thing is about we
have an expression curiosity killed the cat and this means that the cat was so
curious about something that it ended up being in a very dangerous situation so
to be curious now if you're trying to learn this word you could think am i a
curious person? maybe I'm not well maybe I am have I ever been very curious about
something? Do I know somebody who is very curious? What animals are curious have I
ever had a curious pet? And making this about you will really help you to
remember it and of course you could even put these sentences in your vocabulary
book . Number five use practice exercises which you can find in books that
actually help you put the vocabulary into a sentence this is also going to
help you make sure that you understand the vocabulary because sometimes a word
in your language might not be the direct translation we might use a slightly
different word so you need to test yourself with vocabulary exercises which
again will also help you you learn and remember so buying a good vocabulary
book is a great idea I can recommend vocabulary in use I
think it's really useful and it groups the vocabulary into different families
so for example vocabulary for disasters vocabulary for changes vocabulary for
the home things like that so this is a really good thing to do
spending perhaps half an hour or if you even don't have that just ten minutes a
day doing some vocabulary exercises and making sure that you understand the
vocabulary correctly, so buy a good vocabulary book or use vocabulary
exercises online there are plenty of free English websites where you can
download materials to help you practice your vocabulary and I'll put some links
in the description of some good websites that Leila and I recommend where
you can practice your vocabulary. Thank you very much for watching everybody
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