Improving vocabulary is on my schedule of learning English. Have you ever done the things below to improve your vocabulary comprehension?
1. using flash cards and go over again and again for those cards;
2. create a new word list and add every single word that is new for you;
3. making sentences with new words.
Now I find that vocabulary ability is the key to achieve a higher level in English learning. Yesterday when I make my apartment, I found out several notebooks that I had used them to jot down new words. Actually my vocabulary ability is still not good even I have done so much for it.
If you are an advance English learner, you must have a good vocabulary comprehension ability. Would you like to share your experiences?
If you are native speaker, then how did you do for improving your vocabulary in your school? Especially in your college or university?
Key to memorizing all sorts of things is to use your imagination. I promise you the weirder your imagination is the harder it is to be forgotten.
I agree the best way is just to use the language a lot. If you're exposed to the language day after day, you're bound to build a sizable vocabulary just by repeatedly encountering new words. Of course, this is if you don't have a deadline. When I was studying for the GRE, I just studied the vocabulary list a lot and tried to commit it to memory. There's no short cut; it just takes a lot of time and effort.
I was watching "Paw Patrol" with my nephew yesterday and I was surprised to hear the characters use the words "trestle" and "winch," which I consider pretty advanced vocabularies. This is a show about puppies who save the day and is aimed at toddlers. So an American kid watching this show would already have a pretty good concept of the words "trestle" and "winch" from context and will probably have them committed to memory for life the next time they encounter the words again and reinforce their memory.
I second the recommendation for Anki; it's great for learning vocabularies and phrases through systemic repetition.
