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.
