We’re well into 2013 now, and January is already over! How are you doing with your New Year’s resolution to learn more English vocabulary? If you’re struggling with finding time to learn new words, here’s a tip you’ll appreciate: you can learn twice as many words in the same amount of time if you pretend it’s January for the rest of the year. Or rather, keep in mind the ancient Roman god Janus, for whom the month of January was named.

Janus was the god of new beginnings, and the statues of this god show him with two faces, one looking backward to the past and one forward to the future. For your vocabulary practice, think about the two faces of Janus as being the two aspects of a word, the positive and the negative. In other words, when you’re learning a word, look up and learn its antonym (the word that is opposite in meaning) at the same time. It only takes a minute, but you’ll find that it saves you hours in the future. When you learn two words that are linked like this, they’ll both be easier to remember. Here’s a list of useful and powerful English vocabulary words for this week’s study:

absence / presence
approached / receded
attractive / repulsive
bend / straighten
bravery / cowardice
captivity / liberty
combine / separate
dismal / cheerful
economize / waste
frequent / seldom
gloomy / cheerful
imitation / genuine
intentional /accidental
miser / spendthrift
permanent / temporary
rigid / pliable
serious / trivial
transparent / opaque
voluntary / compulsory

Make a new beginning with this new study method, and you’ll go from failure to vocabulary success in no time at all!