Techniques That Will Increase Your Vocabulary

While you cannot really control your brains ability to store words in your passive or active vocabulary, it doesn’t mean you cannot consciously try.

I will go through some techniques that you can use to help you remember words and initially get them into your passive vocabulary, before the moving them over to your active one.

How Do We Acquire More Vocabulary?

New vocabulary is basically acquired subconsciously. Once we have seen a word enough times our brain will decide that it’s important information and store it to our memory so that we can recognise it again in the future, which is our passive vocabulary.

As we get more exposure to the same words, and actually try to use them ourselves, our brain will move them over to our active vocabulary, which basically means that we should be able to recall the words without much effort.

(You can read more about how this whole process actually work in the following article – How Do We Acquire More Vocabulary?)

Techniques That Will Help Grow Your Vocabulary 

While acquiring vocabulary is a subconscious process, we know how it works and can therefore consciously give your brains everything it needs to help make it happen.

As I said before the repeated exposure of the same words tells our brain that the information must be important and worth remembering, so really all we need to do is consciously make sure we get that repeated exposure and then the rest will happen by its self.   

The following techniques are not difficult, but if you use them you will find your ability to acquire new words will increase.

Immersion

Immersion really is the key to just increasing your vocabulary and comprehension of the language. If you did nothing by immersion you could very easily grow your vocabulary. All you are doing is making sure you are exposing yourself to the language and allowing your brain to get more comfortable with all the words.

If you have seen the same word 100 times, you are much more likely to recognise it compared to if you have only seen it once and this much more likely to happen if you have spent 100s of hours with your language.

Immersion is going to of course going to initially increase your passive vocabulary, but as we already know, this is the first step in increasing your active vocabulary. If you immerse enough you will find that words do just automatically enter your active vocabulary and with a little bit of practice you will find speaking pretty easy, so long as you have a very strong comprehension of the language first

Reading and Listening

If you not aware already, immersion simply means doing a lot of reading or listening to your language.

You can just read books, listen to podcasts or even just watch TV and movies. Basically you just have to use the language for your enjoyment and your brain will subconsciously do all the hard work.     

The only real caveat is that you need to be able to comprehend what is going on. You can’t just blindly listen or read things that make zero sense. However, you also do not need to understand 100%. So long as you can get a general understanding your brain will be able to work out what is going on and work things out.

This may sound too good to be true, but it will work. You can of course speed up the process by helping increase your passive income by looking up unknown words and increasing your over all comprehension.

The next time you see the word, which will probably be pretty soon, you should now be able to recognise it.

Just keep doing this and you will see your vocabulary grow.

Repeat The Same Material To get Maximum Exposure

A good way to make sure you get multiple exposures of the same words is to re-watch or re-read the same material.

This can be a little boring, but it does work. You may actually find the second time you go through something you are able to understand more and more, especially if you look words up to find their meanings.

Seeing the words again and already understanding the context around them is just going to help your brain understand what is going on, but more importantly it will start to recognise the words and the more you do this, the stronger your recall ability will become.

If you find this too boring you can just continually use new material. If the words are truly common, they will show up again, no matter what you immerse in.   

Focus On Topics That Interest You

If you want to deepen you vocabulary quickly you should focus on immersion using material that actually interests you.

You are much more likely to pay attention and remember words around a topic that interests you. You are also more likely to want to talk about this topic, which is only going to strengthen your memory further.

Basically there is no point using material that will bore you. There may be some obscure words you want to acquire, but if they are not really that important to you, then it’s pointless.

Personally I have no interest in cars and watching these types of videos would bore me. I would probably acquire words like “spark plug” and “clutch”, which could be good to know, but the same time, I am probably never going to use in my own conversations.

I will probably find they quickly fade from my memory as I am not interested in this topic, then if I am not watching many car videos I probably will not come into contact with these words again, making it even more likely for me to not acquire them.

It would be far more sensible for me to just watch videos I am interested in and build a vocabulary around that first. Later on when I am very competent I can start trying to make the effort to learn these obscure words that I will not use a lot.   

Use Flash Cards

Flash cards are a great way to try and help increase your active vocabulary, but it will also help massively with your passive skills too.

If you use a flash card app like Anki, the words you learn will be repeated to you every few days. This makes sure that the words you being continually exposed to the new words over time. This is obviously great and is going to help your memory become stronger.

There is a risk that they will become very passive and you will only remember the words when you see them. However, this is fine though as you will eventually start to see them more often and make them more active.

You can also change how you use the flashcards and force yourself to recall the word, make it more active. You do this by simply having the system show you the English word, and then you must actively recall what the word would be in the language you are learning. If you can do this, then that word is in your active vocabulary.

(You can read more about – Using Anki To Learn French)

Actually Use The Words You Have Learned

The best way to consciously add any word to your active vocabulary is to simply keep trying to use it.

The more you speak or write a word, the more your brain will see it as important and move it to your active vocabulary.  

Maybe a word will be in your passive vocabulary for a long time, but that’s fine. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to remember it. Just keep trying to use it as often as possible and you will start to find you can remember it faster and better each time.

Learning a language is not a quick thing and if you keep pushing yourself and trying, the meaning of the words will start to come to you a lot faster and easier. It will seem like they are fuzzy at first, but with enough effort you will recall them in a snap, just like how you can with words in your own language.  

(You can read more about – Using Your Language Throughout Your Day)

Conclusion

As you can see the “technique” to consciously get words to be subconsciously acquires is to just force yourself to use the words as much as possible

The more you can hear them and read them, the quicker they will become comfortable and something you can recognise easily. Then the more you actually start trying to use the words, the more likely they are to become a part of your active vocabulary and with enough effort you will be recalling them like they are just words in your native language.

Just give your brain enough exposure to the language, it will do the rest for you.

(You can read more about – How To Stop Getting Confused Between Similar Words When Learning A Language)