Learning vocabulary while reading
What's the best way to improve your vocabulary while reading a novel in English? How can you enjoy reading in English while also trying to improve your knowledge of vocabulary, idioms and useful phrases? What skills do you need to develop to enjoy reading and to improve your knowledge of vocabulary and ability to use it? This article explores how to help you to learn vocabulary while reading in English.
1. Find something that you are interested in - a novel, a non-fiction book, a magazine article - it doesn't matter what it is but you should be interested in it, so that learning English isn't your only motivation to read it. The methodology behind Book Club School is to use English, and for my participants to be users of English, not just learners of English. At lower levels use a "graded reader" book. From B2 and above have a look at my courses for suggestions of books that you might like.
2. As you read, you will find words you don't know. However, not all unknown words are useful to you. Some are useful to know, and some are mainly unnecessary to know. So, when you meet an unknown word or phrase, in the first instance, try to guess it, and keep reading. If you look up lots of words as you read, you will probably destroy your joy of reading, and lose your flow. As you read the meaning of important or repeated unknown words often becomes clearer.
3. If you think a word or phrase might be useful to you, then highlight, annotate or mark the text. On an e-reader you can do this digitally.
4. Later - for example at the end of a chapter, look again at the highlighted words and choose a limited number, maybe 5-10, to look up in a dictionary. Be selective - which words do you think will be useful to you? Is the word a word that is used in speech? If so it is more likely to become active vocabulary - vocabulary that you will be able to use in your speech or writing. Other vocabulary remains passive - a word you understand but won't ever say yourself. So, prioritise pieces of vocabulary that are more commonly used, and are typically active, rather than passive. Perhaps phrases in books from conversation rather than description, for instance.
5. When you look up the word, you want to know the meaning. However, you also really want to know how common the word or phrase is. For this use an online concordancer. You can sign up for free here: https://www.english-corpora.org/register.asp and then choose a corpus (a huge word database) such as the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/. Then enter the word you are interested in - e.g. "striking"
Above, we see that the word "striking" as an adjective has a rank of 5578. The lower the rank, the more common, and so more useful. The noun "striking" is only ranked 26463 in this list of words - it is uncommon.
If we click on the word "striking" then we can see how it is commonly used - in "clusters" - see below:
6. To "know" a word involves understanding not only the meaning, but also the grammar of the word (how to use it in a sentence). So, write the word in a notebook or document, and write it in a sentence so that you have the grammatical context. e.g. "What is striking about the man is..." "There was a striking resemblance to her mother"
Create your own word list, but be selective - less is more! Only choose words you think will be useful.
7. You then need to revise the words and ideally use them. So looking through your list at spaced intervals is essential. Maybe one week later, one month later, one year later. That way you help to move the word from your short term to your long term memory. On a Book Club School course you read the book, write a summary, and then speak about the book. So these activities can help you to use your new words - include some of these words in your written summary to me. Use them in the conversation about that section of the book if you can. Then review your word list regularly.
But the key thing here is to be selective with what you add to your word list. Fewer, but more useful words, written in context, that you try to use, will really help your English become more native-like. Good luck with your vocabulary learning!