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How can your vocabulary expand through Study Abroad?

How to improve my vocabulary?

  • I can't seem to remember things well. And I find it very complicated to remember words I would study in order to expand my vocabulary. For example: I know cultivate means improve. But I am having a hard time remembering that cultivate means improve. I don't know if what I am describing here makes any sense. Let's see if I can clarify a little: Let's say I want to use unique words to formulate a sentence, and I want to replace the word "destroy" with another word that means the same thing without using a Thesaurus, I would struggle a lot in remembering similar words. Please, any suggestions? Dad

  • Answer:

    First of all: cultivate |ˈkəltəˌvāt| verb [ trans. ] 1 prepare and use (land) for crops or gardening. • break up (soil) in preparation for sowing or planting. • raise or grow (plants), esp. on a large scale for commercial purposes. • Biology grow or maintain (living cells or tissue) in culture. 2 try to acquire or develop (a quality, sentiment, or skill) : he cultivated an air of indifference. • try to win the friendship or favor of (someone) : it helps if you go out of your way to cultivate the local people. • [usu. as adj. ] ( cultivated) apply oneself to improving or developing (one's mind or manners) : he was a remarkably cultivated and educated man. If you want to improve your vocabulary without carrying a thesaurus, the single best thing you can do is read. Any work of literature will help you. Obviously, the more advanced books will improve your vocabulary more than the other ones. If you find a word you don't know while reading, look it up in a dictionary and try to look at the context in the book to discern the definition. Congratulations on wanting to improve your vocabulary, and I wish you the best of luck!

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I have stumbled across an article that directly addresses your Question. It is titled "A Native-Like Ability to Circumlocute" (speak like a native) and is taken from "The Modern Language Journal" an online publication. It is written in pretty formal language though, which I feel is perhaps the biggest obstacle to "speaking like a native". BTW: I see nothing wrong with your use of "cultivate", in fact I find it preferable to "ameliorate". Edit: I left out that I think your usage of Y!A has got to be a good way to improve your linguistic skills. There is also an on-going discussion about correct grammar on the S.B. which you might find interesting. See link below.

Lone Wolf

Hmm... with the cultivate example I see what you mean. I'm an english major, here's what I did. I found a group of people to hang out with who I didn't really care about, then I just experimented with using big words around them, and if I said one wrong - they corrected me, and I didn't really care if they lost respect for me. Just make friends to use as "vocabulary practice"

Tim

Cultivate does NOT mean to improve, firstly. Try reading encyclopedias. I did that often as a child. It dramatically helped both my vocabulary AND understanding how things work, etc.

imooseknuckle

read newspapers more books, watch news a lot, reading improves your eloquence..well thats what my AP US HIstory teacher said...cant make it happen fast though its gonna take some time and consideration...hope this benefits your predicament (lol)

Aaliyah

My recommendation is to pick a genre you like - then READ as many books as possible - but aim for authors from the 1950's upto about 1980. That way you get more correct usage of words and a little less slang. For me I like Science Fiction so reading books by authors such as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke amongst others. Those authors use scientific terminology and rephrase much of it for everyday usage. If you aim at authors from the same era then the quality of writing, and vocabulary will help you. After all a Dictionary can only define a word in so many ways. It is better to see a word in use. To start you off - I'd recommend the Asimov books as he wrote almost every conceivable type of story with a futuristic twist.

Al Scusi

Yes, rush to a dictionary straight away because cultivate does not mean improve. But for the long term, I would choose a word out of a Thesaurus write it down on one side of a card and then chose alternatives that you would like to use and write them on the other side of the card. Memorise them and then write them down. Just keep adding to your list as your fancy takes you and you'll soon build up an impressive vocabulary.

Khushi

you should do brain exercises to strenghten you memory. and every day, or every week, pick out a fancy word in the dictionary, and try to use it at least once a day in a sentence.

tottal awesomeness♥

well the only thing i can suggest is reading more books --not just dictionaries---- that use more "advanced" words together in a sentence. but please try not to use "advanced" words when you aren't sure of their meaning it sounds so bad when people use big words just to try to sound smarter even when they don't know there meaning.

☼ⓩⓐⓘ☼ Retired

I suggest you read books like Eragon. The author has really great vocabularies.

Dedede

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