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Acquiring vocabulary is an essential part of learning English. Just imagine: you could be a master of grammar and sentence structure rules, but without knowing the vocabulary, you wouldn’t understand a single word.

The list of vocabulary words to learn might seem overwhelming, and some of them even have several meanings depending on the context.

Many learning tips exist, but here we will focus on methods that are backed by language learning research conducted by respected academics. The science shows that these methods will make your vocabulary learning more efficient.

1. Exposure is Important

What is exposure in the context of language learning? It’s the amount of contact you have with the language you’re learning.

Naturally, you need to see and hear words to learn them, but how many times do you need to be exposed to a word to learn it?

The number of exposures needed depends on the learner and ranges from 5 to 20. Generally, 8 to 10 exposures are necessary for you to have a good chance of recognizing and understanding a new word later on. In order to both understand and be able to use those new words, more exposure is needed.

To get more exposure, reading is a great activity because you are likely to see the same words appear multiple times in the text you are reading.

2. Context Matters

One universally known (and annoying) fact about vocabulary words is that they often have many meanings.

According to a study conducted by Professor Schmitt, you have to see and use words in different contexts to have a well-rounded knowledge of those words.

For example, the verb “to hold” could mean “taking something in your hands,” but it could also mean “keeping someone so that they can’t leave.” If you only know one of the meanings, you won’t be able to understand the word when it shows up in other contexts.

To see and hear words in different contexts, it is good to read and listen to many different sources. That means instead of always reading your favorite genre of novels (be it sci-fi or romance), you could also read news and blog articles that you find interesting. This way, you will be exposed to a wider range of vocabulary and see those words in different contexts.

3. Review Soon, Review Often

There’s this thing called memory decay, which is a fancy term for “forgetting”. The saying “out of sight, out of mind” applies to vocabulary learning.

According to many studies, memory decay usually happens soon after a word is introduced, which means it might be forgotten right after class or shortly after you looked it up in the dictionary.

To prevent this from happening, make it a point to review new words shortly after you encounter them. Also, reviewing them once is not enough. It is best to review new words several times because as we have said, several exposures are needed for new words to be remembered.

If this new word is in a textbook, then review it after class several times, and try to write sentences with it. This way, you have a better chance of remembering it, and you get to practice using that word.

4. Pay Attention to Word Form

Many people believe that understanding word meanings is the only important thing in vocabulary learning, but learners often have problems with the form (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and so on).

Word form could be a challenge because not only do you have to learn the meanings of words, but you also have to develop a new way to process forms in a foreign language. Since words might look similar in different forms (some even look the same, like the word “gift”), it is easy to get confused.

Word form charts, especially ones with example sentences, can help with clearing up which is which. If there are no example sentences, then make them yourselves! This way, you get to practice how to use words in different forms, and it will help you with identifying and remembering them.

5. You Cannot Only Rely on Passively Picking Up Words

It is true that you will learn new words by reading, but a lot of reading is needed to learn this way. It was estimated by researcher Hill and Professor Laufer that you need to read over 8 million words, which is about 420 novels, to add 2,000 words into your vocabulary this way.

According to Professor Schmitt, learning actively almost always helps you learn more words than learning passively, and you learn faster this way. You also have a better chance of remembering the words and making them part of your active vocabulary (words that you both understand and use).

One thing you can do to learn actively would be to make a vocabulary list and dedicate time to look them up and write some example sentences. You can also look up unknown words while reading (instead of guessing their meaning) and use flashcards.

Final Thoughts

Vocabulary learning takes time and lots of effort, but if you follow these research-based tips and try some recommended vocabulary learning methods, you can learn more efficiently, and soon, you will see your hard work paying off.

Learn with others

Learning becomes so much easier and fun when done in a group. An excellent group to be a part of is Toastmasters International. You’ll be exposed to the art of public speaking which will go a long way in helping you become more comfortable with the English language.

Find a group of friends who want to learn English. Talk to native English speakers. There are also many Facebook pages for English learners.

Find one and your studying will get much easier.

Use vocab-building apps

There are many good websites and free vocab apps that allow you to learn new words and provide you with detailed explanations for these words. Take timely quizzes to make sure you remember the words that you struggled with. Write them down or bookmark them for future reference.

Play games

Make learning words fun by turning it into a game. Whenever you open a newspaper, you’ll find games like crossword puzzles. Try solving them daily. I know this won’t take a long time. Sometimes having a real-life memory attached to that word makes it much more memorable.

Use words in conversation

Try using the new words you learned during the week as often as you can. Don’t be afraid of whether you pronounced it wrong. This is the true way of learning even if it’s hard. Start now and start growing.

Flashcards

Flashcards are great to remember words you already learned. But to actually learn a new word, you have to see it in a sentence, use it in your daily speech, or in any other way that will give it some context.

Read.Read.Read.

Reading is a good way to learn new words, but what you read can also make a huge difference in how much you learn. Choose books that are a bit challenging and start reading them. You can also try special vocabulary books. If you read a book at your level, you may already know all the words. If you read a challenging book, you will need to learn many new words.

What does that mean?

If someone uses a word that you don’t understand, ask them: “What does that word mean?” Many people are very patient and understanding if you tell them that you’re learning English. In fact, many will actually enjoy helping you!

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This way you can try everything and learn vocabulary. Enjoy learning. :-D

Our Vocabulary Reference sections features many different types of vocabulary lists. We have a NEW section on Eponyms.

An eponym is a word that comes from a person’s name, such as boycott (from a selfish land agent) or petri dish (named after a German bacteriologist). Here are a few more eponyms that you will find in this section:  Read the rest of this entry »

Things you need to teach about clothes vocabulary, in approximate order of when I would introduce that point, include:

• Names of basic clothes that students often wear
• Identifying the written forms of those words
• Verbs associated with clothes (“try on”, “put on”, “wear”, “take off”, etc)
• Phrases to talk about clothes in whole sentences (“I’m wearing…”, “I like…”, “I have…”, “I’d like…”)
• Clothes that are always plural (“glasses”, “jeans”, etc)
• Words to describe clothes (colours, fabrics, thickness, warmth, etc)
• Shopping language
• Parts of clothes (“sleeve”, “collar”, etc)
• Clothes for particular purposes (“apron”, “goggles”, etc)
• Common problems with clothes vocabulary (e.g. Jangliish/Konglish/ Franglais clothes expressions)
• Different words for the same clothes (e.g. British and American English like “trousers”/“pants”)
• Other more unusual clothes (“dungarees”, “waistcoat”, etc)
• Clothes from the past and/ or future (e.g. as a CLIL topic)

You may also want to introduce accessories and jewellery like “handbag” and “necklace” at the same time, or the topic of clothes could be combined with describing people (“blue eyes”, “elegant”, etc). This is also a good topic just after body parts, because you can get students brainstorming or talking about clothes which cover particular parts of the body.

The great thing about this topic is that there are already loads of great things designed for outside the classroom that can usefully be brought into the lesson, for example:

• Picture books, catalogues and magazines
• Real clothes
• Toys (e.g. dolls) and their clothes
• 2D figures with 2D clothes (e.g. cut-out figures or stickers)
• Computer games/Online games which involve dressing people up
• Puzzles, e.g. Spot the Difference

Clothes are also fairly easy for students to make their own versions of, e.g. drawing, colouring and cutting out T-shirts and jeans. Most clothes are also possible to mime (e.g. acting out putting them on and/or taking them off). The other good thing about this topic is that students all have clothes and opinions on them, so it is easy to personalise this topic.

There can be a problem with most of the things for use outside the class being designed mainly for girls (and with boys who do dress up their sister’s Barbie doll not wanting to do so in public), but it should be possible to get around that by also using male figures, using storybooks that (also) have male characters, etc.

Presenting clothes vocabulary

There are many sets of clothes flashcards available online, or you can easily make your own from ClipArt –although some care is needed to make sure that it is clear what they represent, including distinguishing between similar things (“jeans” and “trousers”, “coat” and “jacket”, etc). Pictures representing clothes are particularly good for the game of slowly revealing the card bit by bit for students to guess. For at least the first half of that game, I tend to get them to mime putting on and taking off all the clothes presented so far between presenting new words, but obviously you need to think carefully about what mimes you will use (e.g. not presenting the second one of “glasses” and “sunglasses” until the miming stage is finished).

The same thing can be done with real clothes (for people or dolls), including the slow reveal bit by pulling each thing slowly from a bag, or taking it out screwed into a ball or folded up and then rolling it out.

With higher-level classes, I tend to do basically the same thing but describing the card I am holding rather than showing it to them. This is especially useful if you want to later move on to words to describe clothes like “long” and “You wear it on your legs”.

Practising clothes vocabulary

Miming, identifying pictures and describing clothes can also obviously be used in the practice stage. If you want students to describe the clothes to each other, you might need to give them suitable language to do so, e.g. “I think most people here have one at home”. Other activities are dealt with below by category.

Picture books, magazines and catalogues for the topic of clothes

There are very many books where clothes are a major factor, including:

• The Story of Little Babaji
• The Smartest Giant in Town
• Blue Hat, Green Hat
• Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing

The main thing when choosing which book to use is to decide where you want to be on the list of things to introduce given at the beginning of this article, e.g. not including (many) historical clothes unless students are quite advanced. You don’t have to worry so much about the other language in the text, as the pictures of clothes means it is usually quite easy to describe the story in easier language than what is actually written there.

With magazines and catalogues, students can flick through to find the thing that the teacher described as quickly as possible (also possible with books like Where’s Wally), or cut out things to stick on some A3 paper with written descriptions to make up an outfit, wardrobe or shop.

Realia for the topic of clothes

It is possible to get students dressing in real clothes, although nowadays even very young learners tend to be a bit too fussy to get into this. If you have a suitable selection of clothes (including amusingly oversized ones), students can race to dress one member of their team in the clothes that you shout out or just find and hold them up. They can also choose clothes for an outfit, wardrobe or shop as suggested with magazines and catalogues above, but this time describing the clothes and their merits orally to other groups. They could then vote on each other teams’ choices.

All these activities can also be done with toys, cut out figures or computer figures.

Craft activities for clothes

Students can also rush to make clothes or make and then describe clothes in similar ways to the activities described above. For example, students could race to cut out shapes of shorts, caps and boots from scrap paper, with one point for the quickest that really looks like that thing and one point for the best one within the time limit. To practise word recognition, they could also take written cards from the board, table or floor and add those clothes to their figure, maybe with students voting on how cool the final results are. This can also be done with descriptions of clothes, e.g. taking one card that says “black” and another that says “socks”, then adding that colour clothes to their character.

Personalised games for clothes vocabulary

Students can be tested on what their classmates are wearing now, or guess what clothes their classmates like or have at home. Higher-level classes could also find things in common, e.g. things that they were both wearing at exactly the same past time.