Business English - How to expand your vocabulary

Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to talk about how you can expand

your vocabulary, whether it's your general vocabulary or your business vocabulary, using

a very easy technique whereby by learning one word you actually learn three words each

time, at least three words, ok?

So the strategy is this, the point is that the most difficult part of vocabulary building

is actually learning the word and attaching the meaning to the word.

So the hard part is when you're trying to understand and remember the meaning of the

word.

Once you understand that it becomes much easier for you to expand your vocabulary by learning

not only that word but a few other words that are in that family of words.

Now I put on the board just three that you could use as part of the family of words.

Let's look at what they are.

We have the verb, we have the person noun for a word and we have the activity noun.

So let's look at some specific examples.

Let's take the first word manage, ok?

Manage is the verb, the person noun for manage is manager and the activity of managing is

called management.

So you learn not only the word manage but the word manager and the word management.

Manage, manager, management.

You've now learned three words instead of just one.

Let's take the next example, sell, seller, sales, ok?

The next one, advertise, advertiser, advertisement or advertising if you're talking about the

field.

Let's take the next one, consume.

To consume something means to use it.

We are all consumers, right, people who use various items, consume, consumer, consumption.

Let's look at the next one, employ, employ, what's the person noun?

Employer or employee and the noun is employment.

Operate, person, operator, noun, activity noun, operation, operate, operator, operation.

Produce, producer, right, production, very good.

You can do these along with me, ok?

Develop, developer, development.

Pay particular attention to that word.

It's one of the words that's most mispronounced in many, many different parts of the world.

So again, I'll review it for you, develop, developer, development, ok?

Distribute, distributor, the noun, activity, distribution, that's right, good.

And the last one I put here just to trick you a little bit, make you think, decide is

the verb, what's the person, what's the name, what's the noun for the person who decides?

Do you know?

Think about it for a second, the person who decides is not called the decider, that person

is called the decision maker.

In English, that's all we have, we don't have any one word for the person who decides, we

just say decision maker, she's the decision maker, he's the decision maker, alright?

So decide, decision maker, and the activity noun, decision.

By using this simple strategy, instead of learning, for example, 10 words on the board

just now, you have learned 30 words.

So you can imagine, if you did this every time you learned a word, your vocabulary would

grow much faster than it would otherwise, okay?

If you'd like to practice a little bit of this, please go to our website, www.engvid.com,

we have a free quiz where you can see how well you've learned this, and some other wonderful

ideas for you, okay?

Thanks very much, bye for now.