Ultimate Vocabulary – Vocabulary Building Software

How to Turn Baby Talk Into a Good Vocabulary

July 20, 2012

One of the most important things a parent does is to teach their child about how the world works. Communication is a large part of each person’s involvement in the world, and the earlier a child learns to communicate easily and effectively, the better able they’ll be to integrate themselves into their play groups, do well in school, and set the stage for a successful adult life and career. Many parents wonder what they can do to encourage children to get a better vocabulary, or whether their toddler is learning new words quickly enough. There’s also an ongoing discussion about whether “baby talk” is something that is helpful because small children are attracted to it, or whether the simple sounds and words actually prevent children from learning real words. There are many aspects to helping a child develop good language skills, and vocabulary is at the center of it all.

First of all, it’s important to remember that children mimic what they hear. The very youngest children don’t have the vocal coordination or mental connections to accurately repeat the word apple, but if a parent always refers to an “apple” as a “paw-paw” (for example), then the child will believe that’s the correct word. This will be confusing later, when they need to learn the real vocabulary word and associate it with the actual fruit. It’s never too early to start talking to your children with real vocabulary, and speaking grammatically. They’ll pick up your words and your good habits at the same time, even if they can’t reproduce them at the beginning.

Most children begin to verbalize by age one, and that’s when you can start to encourage conversations. When you’re reading a bedtime story, ask questions about what you’re reading – even if you have to eventually answer them yourself. Be sure to give children enough time to answer or to ask questions themselves, or to request something like their ball or doll or another glass of juice. It might take them a little longer, but the more they speak, the easier it will be. They’ll gain confidence in their power of communication when it gets results.

As a child starts participating in conversations, help them use good grammar and learn new vocabulary. For example, if your child says, “kitty on table” you can expand that to a full sentence, by responding with “Yes, the kitty is on the table.” When they don’t know the word for something, children often simply say, “want that!” You can reply, “Do you want this (apricot, jump rope, shoelace, etc.)?” This will teach them the word and how to use it.

Some children use fewer words than others in early years, but by the time a child is three years old they should be speaking well. If you notice that your child is still not able to form simple phrases – that is, if they only use single words – or if they seem frustrated when trying to communicate, there might be a problem that your help and support can’t fix. Your child’s pediatrician should be able to refer you to a speech therapist, if necessary.

In general, however, with your encouragement and involvement, your child will learn to use and enjoy an excellent vocabulary, and you’ll enjoy reading and talking with them for years to come.

How Big Is Your Vocabulary?

July 16, 2012

A child starting school probably knows and uses an average of 1,500 words. Day-to-day English conversation generally requires knowing 3,000 words, more or less, and a common modern translation of the Bible uses a vocabulary of around 8,000 words. The works of Shakespeare can be written out using a vocabulary of about 35,000 words. So how do you know when your vocabulary is big enough?

The answer to that question might first require another question. How big do you need your vocabulary to be? If your active vocabulary (the words you both know and use) includes all the terms you need to do your job, interact with friends and family, read the books that interest you, and understand the news you hear on the television or read on the internet or in the newspaper, then you might be satisfied that you’ve got the vocabulary you need. But are you really taking full advantage of the richness of the English language? An educated adult who is a native English speaker should generally know around 20,000 word families to consider their vocabulary “big enough.”

A “word family” is a group of words formed by adding on to (also called “deriving” or “inflecting”) a base word form. For example, the words read, reads, reading, reader, and readable are all part of the same word family. Once you know the affixes (the additions to the base word), you can easily learn groups of words in the same family. According to many linguists, if a person knows approximately 1,500 word families, they will be able to read and understand around three-quarters of standard English texts; with 15,000 word families memorized, they’ll have a nearly 98% fluency. You can research word families by using this tool developed by an educational organization in the UK, the British Council.

Paul Nation, of the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, has made a study of English vocabulary and how many words a person really needs to know in order to be able to speak English with a degree of fluency. His research has involved studying how people acquire vocabulary through reading, listening, and writing, and he has written several books on methodologies for teaching English as a second language. He has developed an initial vocabulary size test designed for non-native speakers, but it’s interesting to use as a benchmark for native speakers as well. You can download the test (a PDF file) and check to see where you are in your English vocabulary study by clicking here.

Why You Should Look For Word Associations

July 14, 2012

Often one of the first things you’ll be told by English teachers is to look for the connections between words in order to make learning new vocabulary easier. When you tie words together, you’re reinforcing the mental bonds that link the words, their meanings, and your memory of both. It’s also an efficient way to quickly add words in groups, rather than one at a time.

However, you should be careful to not make assumptions about a word’s meaning just because it looks like another word you already know. English words come from many languages and word roots, and have evolved over the centuries to sometimes quite different ends. Individual words themselves might have started out with one definition and ended up with another. For example, today you might hear someone remark, “You’ve got a lot of nerve, saying that!” when they want to point out an instance of audacity or strength of will. The original meaning of the word nerve came from the Latin word for “sinew” – the cords that tie muscles together. In fact, nervous used to mean “full of strength” and not “jittery and weak” as in the definition we use today.

Reaching back into the etymology of a word will help you understand how it’s used today, and what meanings it had in the past. Tracing the strands of language development will help you build a mental web of words that strengthens your ability to remember and recall the words you learn. Looking for associations between words – even if you don’t find any – is an easy way to add vocabulary. It’s a simple process, too. Open a print dictionary, or look up any word in an on-line dictionary, and you’ll see related words as well as words that are close simply by reason of their spelling. For example, if you look up the word string, you’ll quickly find the word stringent nearby. Given what we’ve talked about so far, do you think these words are related in meaning, or not?

The answer to that depends on whether you’re looking at the modern definition of the words, or their etymological roots. Stringent means “severe, restrictive.” It’s often used to describe rules that must be exactly followed, or requirements that must be met. A string is a cord or line; another definition is “sequence” (as in “things in a line,” like a string of beads). When you look up the origin of these words, you can see that they both come from the Latin root stringere, which means “to bind.” We can string things together, but that doesn’t necessarily imply restriction. However, you can tie these two words together in your mind by imagining a string or cord winding around a person, tying them to the stringent rules and regulations they need to follow.

By staying curious, you’ll find that making these connections opens up your vocabulary to a wide range of associated words and meanings.

How to Get a Good – a Better – THE BEST Vocabulary!

July 11, 2012

Vocabulary improvement is more than learning new words. You won’t be able to get the most out of the words you learn unless you know how to use them correctly. Part of this knowledge is being able to identify what part of speech a word is. The main parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adverbs, articles, prepositions, and adjectives. We recently talked about how to use adverbs correctly, and today we’ll look at adjectives.

As we noted in the earlier post, adverbs tell you how something happens, by “modifying” a verb. Adjectives modify nouns, not verbs. Rather than describing how something is acting, an adjective describes how many, or what kind, or which particular somethings you’re referring to. Here are some examples:

Please bring me the yellow bucket.
There are fifty-two weeks in a calendar year.
That was the shortest lecture that professor has ever given.

In the first example, there might be several buckets, but only the yellow one is needed. The adjective yellow makes it clear which bucket is being requested. Numbers are also adjectives, because they describe the quantity of something. This description doesn’t need to be exact; we could insert the adjective many in the second sentence instead of “fifty-two” and still be understood. The adjective in the third sentence describes what kind of lecture the professor gave.

You can have more than one adjective modifying a noun. For example, you might talk about the ten large old red trucks in the garage. Notice the order of those four adjectives – in English, there’s a specific sequence of adjective types. Saying “the red old large ten trucks” is not grammatically correct (although in languages other than English, it may be). If you’re using more than one adjective in your description, follow this sequence:

first, any numbers (four, a dozen, many)
second, descriptions of size (large, smallest)
third, descriptions of age (older, teen-aged)
fourth, descriptions of shape (round, arrow-like)
fifth, descriptions of color (blue, grayish)

When you’re learning a new adjective, a good way to make sure you know how to use it is to think of some nouns that it might modify. If you’re learning the adjective cerulean (a poetic way to say “blue”) you might come up with this phrase: the cerulean petals of the wild chicory plants. Add another adjective, and then one more – use your creativity! – and soon you’ll be writing something like this: A thousand gossamer-thin cerulean petals from the wild chicory plants in the meadow looked like pieces of the sky that had shattered and fallen to earth.

Well, maybe not. That poetic, flowery (two more adjectives!) language isn’t for everyone. On the other hand, if you have a strong mental image, you’re more likely to remember the word. In this case, you might even try your hand at drawing and create a quick visual image in your vocabulary journal, coloring the flowers a bright sky-blue shade.

Adjectives will enrich your vocabulary, so make sure you know how to use them correctly.

Get (Your Vocabulary) In Shape This Summer

July 7, 2012

In the northern hemisphere, temperatures are climbing and the sun is shining. Everyone wants to be outside and enjoying the good weather, and more people willingly exercise during this season than in the cold days of winter. We all have habits like these, and adjust our schedules and activities depending on the forecast. However, it’s important to remember that just as it’s a very good idea to get exercise all year long to keep your body in top shape, it’s equally important to practice your vocabulary skills throughout the year.

You can combine vocabulary building and body building fairly easily, in fact. If you have an iPod or MP3 player, you can download books, podcasts, or even vocabulary lessons and listen to them while you walk, jog, or work out. If you’d prefer to spend your time at the beach, try to pick books that challenge your reading skills and vocabulary, so that your mind is active and stimulated. Naturally, you’ll want to catch up on magazines and “just for fun” books that you didn’t have time for earlier, but don’t let your studies lapse entirely.

Make study time more productive and interesting by exploring all of the uses of the words you learn. Many words have uses in a variety of fields, and you can expand your vocabulary quickly by taking a minute to see how vocabulary connects different topics. Take the word morphology, for example. A quick look at this word’s etymology shows us that it’s based on the Greek word morphe (“appearance, shape”), and uses the common suffix -logy (“study”). This definition of “the study of shape” is used in several sciences:

In linguistics, morphology refers to the way words are constructed (suffixes, roots, prefixes, etc.) and also to the way words are combined in units of meaning.

Geology includes the study of geomorphology (adding the prefix geo-, or “earth”), which looks at the form of the landscape and identifies the processes involved in creating the earth’s physical features.

For someone studying biology, the gross morphology of an organism describes what it looks like and how it’s structured, including things like the skeletal system, whether or not there are wings or a tail, and what color it is.

A little effort put into looking at words more closely will show you the way words can lead you to new and interesting information, and that will make you more likely to keep studying. Making sure your summer reading includes vocabulary-rich material will get you in shape for the work or study you go back to when the vacation’s over.

Four Ways to Improve Your Memory for New Vocabulary

July 5, 2012

Sometimes how you approach a problem is as important as the work you do to solve it. A good example of this is vocabulary improvement – you might be making the task much harder than it needs to be only because you aren’t organizing your study program in the best way. Because a very large part of vocabulary development involves memory, you need to know two things: first, how your memory works; and second, how you can optimize your memory skills to support your vocabulary improvement. Here’s what you need to know in order to make your study sessions as effective as possible:

1. Learn how short-term and long-term memory work. Many people make the mistake of trying to memorize long lists of words all at once – they’re often students who left study to the last minute, frantically trying to cram in as much information as they can in the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, your short-term memory can only hold a certain amount of information at once. You need to give your brain time to process the information in your short-term working memory and move it to long-term memory before adding something new. Of course, if you train your memory, you’ll be able to both increase the amount you’re able to process at once, and require less time for that processing. On average, though, most people can only take in between six and eight pieces of information at one time.

2. Help your brain form the vital connections you need to create long-term memories. Memories are formed primarily of connections; the brain automatically tries to create those connections when storing information in the form of memory. You can speed up this process by actively creating connections yourself as you study. For example, don’t just learn one word, learn one or two of its synonyms at the same time. This grouping of information forms a larger unit that makes a more concrete memory. You can also incorporate visual elements into your vocabulary study, associating a word with an image. This activates several parts of your brain simultaneously, which makes a stronger connection.

3. Use all your senses to create the strongest possible web of information and memory. We all learn things by many means: through our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, and our sense of touch. No matter which method you usually use, if you deliberately use more than one you’ll be stimulating your brain to take in the information in several ways at once, which will create strong memories. Write out words and say them out loud. Use the words in a quick “one-act play” to practice them in context. If you can demonstrate a word with physical movement, as in the game of Charades, it’s a great way to have fun while learning as well.

4. Emphasize the information by repetition. It’s important to review the information you learn shortly after you first learn it. Think of a hammer hitting a nail into a board: usually, it takes several strikes before the nail is all the way in the wood. In the same way, repetition of the half-dozen words you’ve just learned will hammer the information into your long-term memory, and you’ll find it much easier to recall later.

Cross-posted at the Ultimate Memory blog.

Reflections on Vocabulary Study

July 3, 2012

There are many ways you can approach vocabulary study. Are you looking for a quick review of unfamiliar words you need to learn for a new job? Perhaps you’re going back to school and want to bring your overall vocabulary skills to a higher level in order to be able to get the best grades on your essays and papers. Or maybe you just like the way words look and sound, and hope to bring new life to your correspondence and conversations. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having fun while studying vocabulary, no matter what your goals are, and the English language is full of interesting words and ways to use them.

We’ve talked before about palindromes, words that reads the same both forwards and backwards. Examples of palindromes in English include civic, tenet, solos, kayak, and redder. Some palindromes are entire phrases that can be reversed in letter order and remain identical (“do geese see god” is one example). In addition, there are sentence palindromes where the words are mirrored, rather than the letters (“Fall leaves as soon as leaves fall”), and even entire poems where the palindrome is created by reversing the order of the lines (though the words in each line remain in the same order).

A recent children’s book titled “Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse” uses this last technique to present different takes on common fairy tales. Author Marilyn Singer presents both sides of the story by reversing each poem depending on who’s speaking. For example, Little Red Riding Hood’s comment about how sweet and juicy the berries she’s picking are becomes the wolf’s greedy comment on how the berry-picking girl looks so juicy and sweet! It’s a great book to teach children about the fun they can have with language, and the clever wordplay will keep parents entertained as well.

Adults might want to read one of the very few complete novels that form palindromes, Lawrence Levine’s “Dr. Awkward & Olson in Oslo” (a self-published work that didn’t get very far, given the difficulty of making sensible sentences using palindromes). There’s also an inspirational poem by Jonathan Reed titled “Lost Generation” that when read forwards is a bleak commentary on modern life. Reversed, however, it’s a statement of hope and commitment to a better future. You can watch a recording of the poem being recited by teenagers in this YouTube video.

Spend some time studying palindromes, and you’ll be able to state proudly, “Sé verlas al revés!” (a Spanish palindrome that translates as “I know how to see them backwards”)

Is Your Child’s Vocabulary Development Lagging Behind?

June 29, 2012

As parents, we’re always concerned that our children get the support and education they need to develop to their fullest extent. One of the ways to judge whether or not a child has difficulty learning is by tracking their vocabulary development. According to Leslie Rescorla of the of the Child Study Institute at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, parents can refer to a list of common words to see whether or not those words are in their child’s active vocabulary.*

Dr. Rescorla has developed a list of over 300 words that she believes should be in an average two-year-old’s active vocabulary. When she works with parents who are concerned that their child might have a speech delay or difficulty learning, she asks them to use the list to check off the words their child uses, whether alone or in combination. Because difficulty or delay in vocabulary and speech development in young children often indicates a problem that can cause issues for the child even into adulthood, it’s important that parents identify any problem as early as possible.

Here are some of the common words that Dr. Rescorla lists as those which every two-year-old should know and be able to use:

mommy, daddy, baby
thank you, yes, no
bye bye, hello, hi
cat, dog, car, book, shoe
juice, milk, banana, cookie

The study by Dr. Rescorla was done using data from all over the world, and she concluded that these basic 300 words are common to all children, no matter their native language (of course, in countries where bananas are not readily available, there would likely be an equivalent common fruit name).

Dr. Rescorla notes that even if parents detect a possible problem, it may not mean that there is another developmental disability, such as autism, that could significantly impact the child’s vocabulary and education. In fact, with parents’ help and encouragement, most “late bloomers” catch up with their peers by age five.

If you’re concerned that your child’s vocabulary development may be slower than in should be, it’s important that you take an active role in helping them overcome obstacles to learning vocabulary. You can read to your child, and point to the words as you read. Talk to them frequently, and show them common objects while saying the names out loud. Ask questions so that they have to use those vocabulary words in order to respond. Most importantly, stay involved with your child’s education, and you’ll provide the support they need to do their best in school, and in the years to come.

* “Active vocabulary” refers to words a person knows and is able to use. “Passive vocabulary” (or “receptive vocabulary”) means the words someone might have heard or known at one time, but that they don’t know how to use correctly now.

Ways to Predict Success in Vocabulary Improvement

June 27, 2012

While no one knows exactly what the future holds, things you do today will determine the outcomes of tomorrow. That’s true for vocabulary study in particular. By developing good habits, you’ll increase your chances for rapid and long-lasting vocabulary improvement, and get the results you need and the success you deserve at work and in your social life. In fact, if you follow the easy but effective techniques we discuss every week on The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog, our prognosis is that you’ll soon have a vocabulary that’s the envy of everyone around.

If you study the origins of a word you’ll get the most out of each vocabulary word you learn. A word’s origins (its etymology) give you clues to a word’s meaning, its use, and related words that you can also add to your mental list. For example, the word prognosis comes from the Greek root words meaning “before, in front of” (pro) and “to know” (gignoskein). A prognosis is a knowledge of the course of future events before they happen. It’s often used in the medical field to predict the outcome of a disease.

When you look up synonyms and antonyms to a word, you’ll double, triple, even quadruple the number of words you learn at one time. Learning associated words not only gives you a larger vocabulary, it helps you remember the words by remembering their associations, or links. Those links between words translate to links in your memory, making each and every word easier to recall and use. Synonyms for prognosis include prediction, prophecy, and forecast.

Get the most out of every word when you learn related parts of speech. Once you know a base word, you can easily learn its other uses. When you’ve learned that the definition of the noun prognosis is “knowledge of future events” then it’s obvious that a prognosticator is someone who has that knowledge and makes predictions, that they’re prognosticating when they do so, and that those predictions can be referred to as prognostications. One word magically turns into four, and rather than a single noun, you’ve now added three to your vocabulary, as well as a verb.

Increase your chances for success by studying all aspects of a word when you learn it!

The Easy Trick to Using Adverbs Easily

June 26, 2012

The adverb is a useful part of speech, and one that you’ve probably encountered if you have been following our suggestion to look at related words when you’re learning a new one. For example, if you recently added the word success to your vocabulary, you’ll be able to quickly add two more words at the same time, by including the adjectival form successful and the adverbial form successfully. In the last post, we talked about the adjective and adverb you can derive from the word “hope” – hopeful and hopefully – and we hope you won’t mind if we continue the lesson about correct and incorrect ways to use these word forms.

As we mentioned last time, the word hopeful literally means “full of hope.” It’s an adjective, and therefore describes something. When you add -ly to the word and make it an adverb, it changes the meaning of the word to “in a hopeful manner,” and you’ll use it to describe how that something happens.

The committee met in a hopeful mood, glad to have the support of the council and the mayor.
“Can we get through all our agenda items today?” the chairman asked hopefully.

Here’s the easy trick to using adverbs easily: remember that they tell you how.

With that in mind, take a look at two more confusing word pairs, where people frequently mix up the adverbial and adjectival forms of the word:

regretful and regretfully
You may regret the fact that you have to go to the office on Friday, and regretfully reply to your friend who’s asked you to join her at the beach that you just can’t take the day off. On the other hand, you might decide to “call in sick” and jump in her car, only to be regretful the next day that you left all that work on your desk.

awful and awfully
The original meaning of this word was “awe-full” – that is, “full of awe” or “inspiring feelings of awe.” However, these days it means “terrible” or “inspiring feelings of horror” – just another example of how English words change over the centuries! What doesn’t change, though is the addition of -ly to create an adverb, and different ways you use the two forms of the word.

The construction site creates an awful racket.
The choir sang awfully because they couldn’t hear each other over the noise.

Learn the correct way of using adverbs, and you’ll be speaking correctly in no time at all!