How To Build Your Vocabulary

1. Read widely to develop your feeling for words

All teachers agree. There is only one effective long-range strategy for vocabulary building: READ.

Read - widely and well. Sample different fields - news, physics, art history, political science, geology - and different styles. Extensive reading is the one sure way to make your vocabulary grow and to develop your feeling for words.
 
Try to develop an interest in as many fields as you can. Read top magazines / news websites and blogs in these fields. Sample some of the quality magazines:
 
2. Use memory tricks to keep new words in your active vocabulary

Reading takes work. Reading widely does not always help you remember the words you read. You may have the words in your passive vocabulary and be able to recognize them when you see them in a particular context and yet be unable to define them clearly or think of additional contexts for them.

Building vocabulary also needs your wit, where you try to place the meaning of words around your experience.

Try capitalizing on your native intelligence by thinking up mnemonic devices - memory tricks - to help you remember new words.

For example, use rhyming:  The word 'hovel'. A hovel is a dirty, mean house. How can you remember that? Hovel rhymes with shovel. You need to shovel out the hovel to live in it. Rhymes can help you remember what words mean.

For example, find the hidden little words: The word 'hover'. To hover is to hang fluttering in the air or to wait around. Can rhyme help you here? Hover rhymes with cover. But it doesn't work. Take another look at hover. Cut off the letter h and you’re left with the word over. If a helicopter hovers over an accident, it hangs in the air; if a mother hovers over a sick child, she waits around to care for it. Hidden little words can help you remember bigger words.

3.  Master the basic word parts

Most modern English words are derived from Latin, Greek, and Anglo-Saxon (Old English). You will vastly increase your vocabulary if you know the word parts - prefixes, suffixes, roots. 

Experts say learning 30 key word parts can help you determine the meanings of over 10,000 words, and learning 50 key word parts gives you access to the meanings of over 100,000!

When you know the word parts, you can tear apart words, and find out the meanings of unfamiliar words.