When it comes to vocabulary improvement, one size definitely does not fit all. It’s important that you match your learning style, your vocabulary goals, the time you have available, and the reason you want to improve your vocabulary to the resources and tools you chose to use. To put it simply, you need to find a method of vocabulary study that’s flexible enough to give you the results you need in the shortest possible time. Whether that’s a tool like Ultimate Vocabulary (which was designed to meet the needs of people at all grade levels) that you can adapt to your purposes as your targets change, or whether that means you move from one method to another to accommodate your changing vocabulary goals, remember that most vocabulary study guides are fairly restricted and specific to one age, one grade level, or one set of words. That being said, even these more limited applications are very useful if they match what you want to learn at the time.

For example, if you’re interested in learning vocabulary as part of an overall language development program, or if you have the goal of being an English teacher, then you’ll get a lot of material from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. Editor Michael Byram is a Professor of Education, and he has come up with a reference guide that provides information on all aspects of language instruction. This is a particularly useful resource for someone who wants to make a career of teaching English as a second language.

Another book that’s useful for current or future English teachers is Penny Ur and Andrew Wright’s Five-Minute Activities: A Resource Book of Short Activities. The nice thing about this book is that it will help you improve your own vocabulary study program even if you’re not focused on becoming a teacher. If you’re a parent, you can also use this resource to help your child improve vocabulary and supplement the instruction they get at school.

Specifically for students in middle grades, or for adults learning English as a second language, there’s the book Painless Vocabulary (part of Barron’s “Painless” series – there are other books that help improve writing skills, grammar, math, spelling, and more). ESL teachers can get some good ideas for lessons from this book, too, but it’s a particularly useful gift to help a student improve vocabulary skills to ensure they’re ready for college and the job market.

In short, before buying something to help you learn vocabulary, make sure it’s the right choice for your vocabulary improvement goals.

If you’re looking for the best vocabulary books for children or hoping to improve business communication, we can help! Keep reading The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog for the links to the resources you need to improve your vocabulary.