How to increase your English vocabulary?
The beauty of the English language is that it is quite simple. It doesn’t have a huge number of declensions like in German or Russian, which you have to memorize. A benefit of English is that you can describe almost everything with simple words. That's why this language has taken a leading position in the world today. All scientific and technical innovations appear precisely in the English-speaking environment. Therefore, virtually all parents worldwide since a very young age strive to invest in their children by investing in English knowledge.
Why can anyone learn the language?
Looking at the abundance of advertising for courses, schools, and tutors, one can intuitively understand that the educational industry has long become a commodity. And it’s important to understand that where something has become a commodity, interests of business are put at the forefront, and if you fall behind somewhere, it doesn’t concern many people. Such factors demotivate, and at some point a student loses heart, and it may seem that learning languages is not given to them.
This is, of course, not true. You can learn absolutely anything. It just takes some people more time, and others less. This happens because everyone has a different base of knowledge, but the current is pushing everyone towards an average. Here it is understood that if you are told that you are falling behind, it is not at all the case. The truth is that you will need more time to form the necessary foundation.
And I once again want to remind you that, when learning languages, you are not competing with anyone. Ratings should not interest you. Miracles don't happen, and learning a language will take as much time as it needs for you personally. We will discuss below how much time you will need. You should understand that you are competing only with yourself and your task is to improve only relative to your yesterday self.
You must learn not by topics, but by the most used words. Knowing a language is knowing and understanding words. Period. If you have ever studied any language, you probably know that in a classical education system, everything is divided by topics: family, food, travel, body parts. This approach is very outdated, because you will waste a lot of effort learning words that you will use very rarely. Let’s take a couple of examples: the word “vinegar” or “ladle.” You probably won’t need these words often, if your professional activity isn’t related to them.
It turns out that when you go through each topic, you have to spend a lot of effort memorizing words that you will use very rarely. It’s much more effective to learn words that are used in living language most frequently. Let me run ahead and tell you that such a method does, exist. But we’ll discuss it a little lower down. And if you find yourself needing to learn words from a specific topic, you can easily write down 50-100 words and learn them in a week or two.
There aren’t that many of them.
Should you worry about the accent?
Spoiler: no, it's not worth it. A major misconception is that stress over accents in English is important. The author experienced this himself on his own experience, but after working in the capital of Great Britain, he realized it was not worth any worry. There are many English accents in the world: American, British, Australian, Scottish, Indian African, and eventually Russian. And since London is a multicultural city, the author enconutered many of them while working and it's important to understand that your task will not be to demonstrate your skills in accents, but to understand the speaker and experss your thoughts and solve the problem.
After experience working in London, the author advises you not to focus on your accent. You will still reveal it if you start studying the language after the age of 12 so relax and focus your efforts on something else. You will always understand more words than you use. Our brains are wired in such a way that we can long remember a word and "freeze up". You probably know the expression "say and I will say”.
The same principle works in foreign languages. Unused words gradually fade from memory, but if you hear a familiar word, you will easily recall its meaning. That is in any language, you will always perceive more words than you pronounce or type. And your primary task is to learn words so that you understand them by ear or immediately understand their meaning when seeing them in print. Therefore, do not worry about forgetting a word; you will inevitably remember it, especially in the context of the sentence you heard.
This is normal. The main secret to language learning, which they didn’t tell you in school or university. A very pompous title, I agree. But this isn't for hype. We will not understand the truth without simple mathematical operations. An adult native speaker of English knows approximately 20,000 words. But there’s one but. Statistics show that he uses it only up to 5 thousand words in everyday life.
How is that possible? It’s all because absolutely all languages are subject to Zipf’s law.
How does this law work?
For example, we will take all the words from the English language,, build a list from them. The list will be sorted by the frequency of use of the word in the language. The first word will be the most frequently used and the last correspondingly the rarest. So, if we take the first 5000 words from the list, we will notice a rather interesting fact: all English texts consist of 90% of these 5 thousand words!
This is Zipf's Law. It is worth noting that this rule applies to all languages without exception. This means that if we learn 5 thousand of the most popular words, we will be able to understand 90% of the language. Isn't that wonderful? How to assess your language proficiency? We have come to the conclusion that language is primarily words. Another difficulty is to determine what level you are at.
Perhaps you studied the language in school or university but think that you have forgotten everything and that you have to start all over again. This is another major misconception. Your humble servant once studied German in school and also thought that everything had been forgotten and that it all had to start again. And this means that you shouldn’t write off those knowledge, that base, which you already have.
I want to tell you good news – an exact way to assess your personal level can and will be discussed below. In the typical education system, levels of knowledge are mainly divided into 4 types: basic, basic extended, advanced, and superficial. These divisions have long become outdated and are drifting further and further away from actual language proficiency in favor of commercial profit and tailoring you to a specific profile.
I mean that the purpose of courses and schools is to roughly determine your level and push you into one of the four streams. I’ve described the disadvantages of this approach above. In reality, your level of knowledge is the number of words you can understand when listening or reading.
How do we determine which words I know and which I don’t?
As I’ve said, even basic knowledge doesn’t pass by. It’s very simple. This can be done manually, but you can also use ready-made applications for your phone. There are many such applications, but for example, let's take the owort application. It is available for iOS and Android. This application contains just those 5 thouasnd most popular English words. They are presented in the form of cards that need to be scrolled through almost like in Tinder.
If you know the word, you swipe left. If the word is new, you swipe right, and the app will show you the word's translation, as well as an example sentence. All unfamiliar words are automatically added to your personal dictionary. Another cool feature is the pronunciation of the word, which will allow you to learn how to pronounce it. The most cool feature of this app is the quick assessment of your knowledge level.
How does it work? You need to scroll through the first 100 words, which will take no more than 5 minutes, and the program will show an approximate level of knowledge. What's next? Continue scrolling and searching for new words. You can break this process down into several days of 500-1000 words per day. But you can do it immediately. It will take no more than two hours. But it’s worth it. As a result, you will receive a personalized list, of words that you need to learn.
After completing all 5000 words, the application will switch to your personal dictionary mode, and you will be able to browse only those words that are unfamiliar to you. In this way, you can sort only what is personally needed for you.
Owort App: iOS Version: https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/owort/id1521727551 Android Version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.owort.ru How long does it take to learn 5 thousand words?
As I've said, everyone needs an individual approach to learning. For example, older people may memorize 10 new words a day, while students or schoolchildren can manage 20-30. It’s all individual, and you need to understand that you can’t force something that can’t be forced and learn many words in one go. You need to determine your comfortable word count per day. However, let's assume you’ve already determined that 20 words a day is the amount that “suits you”.
Let's now calculate as an example taken out of thin air. For example, you've already determined using the owort app that out of the most popular 5000 words, you’ve learned 800 in school or university. There remain 4200 words to learn. Knowing that you master 20 words in a day, we get 210 days. In 7 months, you will be able to achieve 90% understanding of the English language. Isn't that great? To wake up in the morning and instead of scrolling through social media, you can review 20 words.
What could be simpler? And if you don't spend your mornings in social networks, think about how much time you spend sitting on the toilet every day. So why not spend that time productively? Life hack: regularity is the key to success. Let's assume you've already created your list of words, prepared for learning, and understood your daily word limit. Now all that's left is to make yourself memorize words regularly.
In our hectic daily world, everyone has so many worries, troubles, and obligations that it's very easy to miss a day, forget about it, and then just give up. Our brain is structured in such a way that simply piling a lot of tasks into it is impossible, and in order for your mission to study not to fail, you need to remind yourself of it. It is easiest to do this, by adding a recurring event to your phone in the calendar.
On an iPhone, you can do this simply using the voice assistant Siri: "Hey Siri remind me every day at nine in the morning to learn words." Siri will create a daily reminder for you that will not let you lose long-term focus. Also in both versions of the owort application for Android and iOS, there is a menu item called “remind me to study.” In this section, you can specify a convenient time for you, and the application will add an event to your calendar that will remind you daily to study.
And what if I need to learn words from a specific business sector?
Let's say you have already reached the level you want and now you want to delve deeper into a specific area. For example, you are moving to another country and want to get a job. Let’s take a specific example. A person moves to the UK to work in a medical institution. Obviously, for this position he will need to know and understand the medical lexicon, which is not included in the top 5000 words. For these purposes, the owort application has an extended dictionary option by topics: medicine, IT, construction, architecture, engineering, mechanics, mathematics and physics, law, horeca, transport, sports, tourism, street slang. Didn’t find what you need? Write to help@owort.com and the developers will add a dictionary.