5 Tips to Increase Your Vocabulary [Advanced-Level English]

Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English.

This is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence you want

for your life and work in English. About four weeks ago,

I started an advanced vocabulary challenge with students in my Speak Confident

English community.

I started this challenge because two of the most common questions I get are how

can I increase my English vocabulary with advanced level words and number two,

how can I remember those new words?

One of the biggest challenges is learning a new word and then remembering how to

use it and being able to use it in the moment when you're having a conversation

in English, I know you've been learning English for years,

so you're already familiar with strategies like using flashcards,

vocabulary apps, plus,

you know the importance of reading and listening in English to learn new words.

All of those are effective methods for learning new vocabulary,

especially when you're just beginning to learn a new language,

but as you grow, as you advance in your level,

your strategies need to change.

What worked for you in the past,

what worked as a beginner might not work for you now. When

it comes to learning a new language and increasing your vocabulary,

there are two things that are true. Number one,

there is no one size fits all strategy.

Have you heard that before? A one size fits all strategy.

What that means is what works for one person might not work for you.

You have a unique learning style and it's important to find the strategies that

are effective for you.

The second truth is that what helped you as a beginner language learner in

English, again, might not be helping you now. As you grow,

you need to challenge yourself and use new, more effective strategies.

With my advanced vocabulary challenge,

that is exactly what I wanted to help my students do.

I wanted to teach them how to develop effective strategies to increase their

vocabulary with advanced level English,

and I want to share the same strategies with you in this Confident English

lesson. Today, you're going to learn two things. Number one,

what is the right process for learning new vocabulary?

And number two,

what strategies are effective in that process?

With those strategies,

you're going to know exactly what words you should prioritize or focus on where

you can find those words. And finally,

how can you learn them effectively so that you can remember and use them in your

English conversations.

All right,

so let's start with the overall process of how to effectively increase your

English vocabulary with advanced level words.

There are four things you need to think about to help you identify the

strategies that are going to work for you. Number one,

you need to know how you learn. For example,

some learners are visual learners.

What that means is they need to see an image, a picture,

or the word in order to remember it. Other learners are physical.

They need to be able to move and use their body in order to learn effectively.

And some are audio learners when they hear something, they remember it.

So it's important for you to know how you learn best in order to choose the most

effective strategy.

The second thing you need to think about to help you choose the right strategy

is to make sure it is something that you enjoy or something you have fun with.

For example,

if you decide to download a vocabulary app on your phone but you hate technology

and you don't like memorizing,

you're probably not going to use that app very often or effectively so it's not

the right strategy for you.

Just because it helped someone else doesn't mean it's right for you.

You have to find the things that you enjoy,

the things that give you energy and help you stay focused.

The third part of the process is making sure that you don't limit yourself to

just one strategy.

When you do the same thing over and over and over,

it becomes automatic, which is great,

but then you stop challenging yourself and when you stop challenging yourself,

you stop your growth. So it's important to always evolve,

change and incorporate different strategies to help you continue in the learning

process. And finally,

the last part of the process to effectively increase your vocabulary is

consistent, repetitive practice.

This is something I've been working on with my students.

Repetitive practice is absolutely necessary for developing muscle memory.

Have you heard of muscle memory before? When you develop muscle memory,

you develop the ability to do things automatically without thinking.

For example, if you're a musician, when you begin to learn a new song,

you might need to read the notes very carefully. You might play a little bit,

make a mistake, stop, start over, play again and continue.

It's a repetitive process of learning the music and learning to avoid the

mistakes. As you do that,

you begin to learn the music by heart.

You develop that muscle memory,

the ability to do it automatically without thinking about it.

The same thing is true with learning vocabulary.

When you learn a new expression, a new collocation or idiom,

it's essential to repeat the learning process.

What that means is you read it, hear it,

say it and write it. If you don't do something consistently,

if you don't develop that repetitive practice,

you'll have a much more difficult time remembering and using the new vocabulary

that you're learning when you're speaking.

Now that you have that process in place of identifying your learning style and

figuring out what strategies would be fun or interesting to you.

Let's talk about specific vocabulary developing strategies.

With these five strategies,

you're going to learn which words you should focus on, how to find them,

and how to learn them.

Strategy number one is to prioritize advanced level vocabulary.

So what does that really mean? What is advanced level vocabulary?

How can you find it? As you develop your English level,

it's important to incorporate or include collocations that native speakers use

synonyms that allow you to be more flexible with the language and use a variety

of words to say the same thing. And of course, phrasal verbs.

Native speakers use phrasal verbs all the time,

and some phrasal verbs have multiple meanings.

So it's important to know what those are and know how to use them correctly.

So how can you find collocations synonyms and phrasal verbs?

Well, I've got several things for you.

Number one here on the Speak Confident English channel.

I have several lessons on collocations.

If you've been following me for awhile,

you know that collocations are groups of words that native speakers naturally

use together.

The lessons that I have here are definitely a great place to start,

so I will include a link to all of those just below this video.

In addition to my lessons on collocations,

I also have a lesson on how to learn synonyms in English so that when you

communicate you have more powerful vocabulary to use and you can be more

flexible.

You can use a variety of words to say the same thing with this lesson.

I also have a free guide that you can download,

In this guide you'll find 75 common words in English and I give you more

powerful synonyms to use. Again,

this is a fantastic place to get started and finally I've also got you covered

when it comes to phrasal verbs,

not only do I have several lessons on phrasal verbs,

but also just last week I did a lesson on the multiple meanings of the phrasal

verb to go out. So if you're interested in learning collocations,

advanced level synonyms and phrasal verbs,

I definitely have lessons available to you on all of those topics,

but I want to share one more tip with you about where you can find advanced

level collocations synonyms and so on. Again,

you already know that reading in English and listening in English are effective

ways to learn or be introduced to new vocabulary,

but if you don't have a clear strategy to learn that new vocabulary and to

remember it, then it won't really help you.

One of my favorite tips and one of the strategies I use with my students is to

identify a theme for a week. For example,

let's say that you're really into yoga and developing a practice of mindfulness.

That might be your theme for one week or even one month,

and with that theme,

you would spend a little bit of time every day reading articles,

listening to podcasts or finding news stories about yoga and developing a

practice of mindfulness.

You would stay focused on the same topic for several days.

This is part of that repetitive practice. As you do that,

you will begin to see the same collocations or this same vocabulary used again

and again and again, and those are the keywords you would want to focus on.

It's a fantastic way to identify the collocations or vocabulary native speakers

use on specific topics.

And what I also love about this strategy of choosing a theme and focusing on it

every day for a week, two weeks or a month,

is that you can focus on the things that you enjoy, the areas that interest you,

and that is part of the process of developing an effective strategy.

Now that you know what you should prioritize and how to find those important

words,

let's talk about how you can practice and I have three strategies for you to do

that. Number one,

it's important for you to personalize the language that you're learning.

What do you think I mean by that? Personalize the language.

Let's go back to that idea of identifying a specific theme like mindfulness.

As you read articles, blog posts and listened to podcasts on mindfulness,

you would probably hear the collocation to develop a practice of mindfulness

again and again and again,

so now you have this new collocation that you've heard and read.

After you learn that collocation,

I want you to create your own example sentence. Using those words,

create a sentence that you might use in a real conversation with a friend or a

coworker.

The second strategy that's important is creating opportunities to use that new

vocabulary.

After you create that sentence to personalize the language,

you want to use it again and again and again.

That process of repetition, so how can you do that?

Definitely having conversations in English is a fantastic way to do that.

If you have friends, coworkers,

neighbors that you can talk to or if you're in an English class or a club,

those are all opportunities to have conversations and find ways to use that new

vocabulary.

If you're not comfortable with that or if you don't have anyone to practice

with, I have some other strategies you can use as well.

Two other effective ways to use that language is to have a daily journal.

You could start a journal in English and use that journal as an opportunity to

talk about what you're learning. For example,

if you read an article on mindfulness,

you could summarize or talk about what you remember in your journal entry and

for speaking practice. You could follow that same method.

You could read an article or listen to a podcast,

write down the new collocations or vocabulary you want to remember and then

practice summarizing what you read or heard.

Be sure to do that out loud and even better.

You could record it, listen to it, and if there's something you don't like,

you can do it again and change what you don't like.

This is an extremely effective strategy for not only learning that new

vocabulary, but also developing confidence and fluency when you communicate.

If you want to know more about that strategy of recording yourself to

effectively develop your confidence and fluency,

I have a complete training on that topic and it's available for free on my

website. I'll leave a link to it just below this video.

That training is called how to say what you want in English and finally the last

way that you can practice the new vocabulary that you're learning is to create

mind maps.

This is something I love to do when I have just a few minutes to practice.

Creating a mind map is an effective way to activate the words that you've

learned before.

Let me share a specific example of how you could use mind mapping to develop

that vocabulary. Again,

let's focus on this idea of developing a practice of mindfulness.

In the middle of a piece of paper,

you could put the word mindful or mindfulness and then you could think about the

different question words we have like what, where,

why, how,

and each of those becomes its own sub topic.

If you think about mindfulness and where you practice or where you feel mindful,

what words come to your mind?

All of those are words that you can write down if you have the question,

how do you feel when you're practicing mindfulness? Again,

you can write down all the words that you think about to answer that question

about what you feel. Again,

this is a strategy you can use even if you have just two or three or five

minutes,

but it's an effective way to get that repetitive practice and activate those

words that you've learned. And with that,

you have five tips to increase your English vocabulary with advanced level

words. Now, before you go,

I'd love to hear from you if you have an effective strategy or you've learned a

method that has been useful to you, I would love to have you share it here.

Again, not everyone learns in the same way.

You might have a strategy that is perfect for someone else in the Speak

Confident English community. So again,

if you have something that has helped you learn new vocabulary,

please share that in the comments below.

And if you found this lesson useful to you, I would love to know.

You can tell me in three simple ways. Number one,

you can give this video a thumbs up on YouTube and subscribe to this channel so

you never miss. One of my Confident English lessons. Number two,

you can share it with friends and coworkers on Facebook. And number three,

if you know someone who's really struggling with developing their English

vocabulary, you can email them this lesson directly.

Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you next time for

your Confident English lesson.