1 Simple Method to Increase Your Vocabulary | The 3R Technique | How to Improve Your Vocabulary

Video Description

Learn 1 simple method to increase your vocabulary. This is the 3R technique. Also see - MOST COMMON MISTAKES IN ENGLISH & HOW TO AVOID THEM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dax90QyXgI&list=PLmwr9polMHwsR35rD9spEhjFUFa7QblF9 For more FREE English lessons, SUBSCRIBE to this channel. Transcript: Hello and welcome. In this lesson, I’m going to teach you 1 simple method that you can use to increase your vocabulary. This is the technique that I teach my students, and this is also what I use personally to learn new words – so I know that this works. So what is this technique? Well, it’s the 3R method. It’s called 3R because there are three steps: Read, Record and Review. I will show you how to do all three of these correctly to get the best results. So let’s talk about the first step: Read. If there’s one secret to building your vocabulary, it’s reading. There is simply no better way. You should aim to read for an hour per day. If that’s difficult, do at least half an hour, i.e. 30 minutes but one hour per day will give you the most benefit. Now I’m not talking about reading the newspaper or studying textbooks. That kind of reading is good but it’s not the best way to learn new words. For that, you need to read what is interesting. So here’s an idea: pick something that you’re really interested in. Like sports, movies, music, cars, fitness, fashion, electronics etc. - whatever you feel passionate about. Then find material that you will enjoy reading. Some great examples are magazines, novels, short stories or biographies related to your topic. And don’t forget the internet – one of my favorite places for reading online is Wikipedia. There are millions of articles on this site and whatever your topic of interest is, you can go on Wikipedia and find articles to read. Now, there’s something really important. When you read (whether it’s books or online material), there will be many words that are difficult – that you don’t understand. But don’t look up every single one of these in a dictionary. Because that will distract you and make you bored. Instead, your focus should be to just understand the overall idea of what you are reading. For any difficult words, try to guess the meaning from the surrounding information. If you cannot, mark them with a pencil, or write them down and you can come back to them after you finish reading. After you have finished reading, you move on to step 2 – record. This is where you collect new words. So now, you go back to the text you read and find words to learn – there are two types of words that you can learn – unknown words (words that you don’t know), and inactive words (these are words that you have seen before but you’re not sure how to use). Aim to collect about 5-10 new words every day. Once you have the words, you’re going to note them down in a notebook, on your computer (in a Microsoft Word or Excel file) or even your smartphone (there are many apps that will let you save and learn vocabulary). Start by taking your first word and look it up in a dictionary. I personally prefer to use online dictionaries like Cambridge, Oxford or Merriam-Webster. And now, you can start to record the word. Let’s look at the best way to do that. In your notebook or file, first write the word - let’s say ‘creative’ is the word you’re learning. From your dictionary, you should then write what part of speech it is (that is, whether it’s a noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc.). This word is an adjective. Then you write its definition – ‘creative’ means ‘having the ability to produce original ideas’ - it can describe people or activities. Then you note any example sentences that you can find or you can make sentences of your own. Here are a couple of examples: “Frank Zappa was a highly creative musician.” “Children enjoy doing creative activities.” Along with this, you should also note down the correct pronunciation of the word in phonetic symbols. This word is pronounced /kri ˈeɪ.tɪv/. There are three syllables – /kri/, /eɪ/, and /tɪv/ with the stress on /eɪ/ – /kriˈeɪ.tɪv/. You might not know these symbols very well, that’s OK. With the dictionary, practice the correct pronunciation a few times, then copy the symbols. Over time, you will become comfortable with them. It’s also a good idea to make a note of the reference – that is, where you learned the word: which book, website etc. Because, later, when you are reviewing the word, you can more easily recall where you saw it, and you can also go to the same website or book if you want to check how it’s used. You should also try to find and note down the different forms of the word. For example, we said that the word ‘creative’ is an adjective. But it has other forms too.