19 Fastest Learning Strategies to Expand Your Vocabulary

The English language has over a hundred thousand words, but do you find yourself using the vast array of words in your vocabulary? 

Like most people, you’re more likely only to use a fraction of these words daily.  But, with the right learning strategies, you can make your learning process smoother. 

There are some techniques and strategies that can help you develop a better vocabulary. 

Let’s face it – building a strong vocabulary in a language is hard, especially in the English language. So many intricacies, like homophones and synonyms, make it even harder to expand your vocabulary. 

Expanding your vocabulary has many benefits – it helps you make precise and calculated conversations, improves your reading and writing skills significantly, helps you shape your thoughts better when voicing them, and so much more.

In this post, we’ll look at some learning strategies to help you expand your English vocabulary and make better conversions.

1. Learn a new word every day

Our memory is like our muscles. The more they work, the more we’ll hold information. Learning new words helps create more brain pathways to retain information. Each word gets placed in your long-term memory, increasing brain power. 

Words are memory boosters that jog your brain and help you to visualize images of the word, making your brain more sensitive to what you’re trying to memorize. 

This process is known as top-down processing – that means your brain starts forming perceptions with the most general and moving toward the more specific.

Your past knowledge and expectations greatly influence these perceptions. That means your brain anticipates what’s next by utilizing the information it already has.

For instance, if you walk into a vegetable shop and know the names of certain vegetables, you can quickly find them. Defining vegetables, or any other object, verbally helps you to perceive things using your senses.

Thus, it shows learning new words is a key component that helps to expand your vocabulary. 

If you learn one word a day, that’s 365 in a year. When learning a new word, it’s better to understand how to use it in a sentence, root, and language of origin. Drawing a mental picture also helps retain the word.

You can check out our Personal Productivity course, which helps boost your productivity. It will also motivate you to manage your time better to be able to learn a new word daily. 

2. Engage in extensive reading

Extensive reading primarily promotes reading text for enjoyment to develop better reading skills and expand vocabulary. It’s different from intensive reading, which focuses on reading in detail with specific aims and tasks. 

When you read thousands of words daily, you’re bound to meet new words and discover lexical (word) patterns that can’t be understood easily without context. 

Extensive reading also helps develop an awareness of thousands of lexical phrases, such as idioms. It also develops awareness of common word partnerships.

Diversifying your reading choices helps to build a stronger vocabulary since you’re exposed to a wider literary collection with varying writing patterns. 

Thus, adding different forms of literature, such as poetry, news articles, etc., can also help expand vocabulary.

If you need help reading fast daily, our extremely effective speed reading tool can help you engage in extensive reading. 

3. Develop a strong relationship with the dictionary

Paper or online dictionaries can help you acquire a broader vocabulary, master the pronunciation of words, explore their etymology, improve reading comprehension, and help analyze words in different contexts. 

Dictionaries also help to make the most sense of the words and their context. 

So, instead of pulling out the dictionary once in a blue moon to check a word, try developing a continuous habit of using it in your daily life.

Picking up multiple words and using them in your daily conversations can be very helpful for vocabulary expansion.

4. Participate in word games and puzzles

Word games and puzzles promote a fun and interactive way to increase vocabulary and fluency. Most word games and puzzles focus on phonological skills (recognizing spoken parts of a sentence or word) or semantics (language) to promote vocabulary.

These are important skills that promote reading and learning new words. 

Word games also challenge players to focus on spelling patterns and rules. A great learning strategy is having a firm grasp of prefixes and suffixes that can be improved through games and puzzles. 

Playing these games also helps with the basic deciphering of words and increasing your knowledge of too many unknown words.

Here are some ways to play word games and puzzles:

• Engage in crossword puzzles to practice word knowledge and learn new words daily.
• Match names of animals or objects in crossword puzzles for younger kids.
• Solve newspaper crosswords to challenge vocabulary skills and increase difficulty for older individuals.
• Play word games like Scrabble and Boggle to enhance cognitive skills and expand vocabulary. Scrabble encourages word formation using letter tiles, fostering creativity and word association. Boggle improves cognitive agility by quickly identifying and forming words within a time limit.

Thus, regularly participating in word-focused games can improve cognitive abilities, broaden vocabulary, and improve knowledge of unknown words.

5. Practice writing and using new words

In contrast to speaking, writing new words is more effective for building a strong vocabulary. This is because writing offers advantages like the time to think and create meaningful words that speaking cannot offer. 

When writing, you’ll have all the time to search your mind for an appropriate word in your mind. 

You can also pick up a dictionary – or a thesaurus – which can help when looking for new words for your writing. 

This also helps you develop your own language style by using related words to help understand their word context and usage.

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6. Join book clubs or reading communities

Book clubs or reading communities promote deeper engagement with a book. It also creates accountability since you’ll be committed to reading a book. It also gives you insights into others’ perspectives and how they use vocabulary to describe the content of the book. 

Reading new books encourages critical thinking in you and other club members. Discussing the book together, its theme, the main characters, and other aspects help you understand the book more thoroughly.

7. Utilize vocabulary building Apps or websites

Vocabulary-building apps or websites make learning new words easy. They help improve language skills and build your confidence too. They also have games to help improve your vocabulary, which helps to enrich your writing in English. 

These websites and apps combine words with adaptive learning games that help to improve new vocabulary words. It also helps you keep track of the words you learn.

Check out the Iris Reading Speed Reading Tips App, which helps you learn the fastest learning methods to improve your vocabulary, comprehension, and reading. 

8. Create word associations

Word association can be used as a strategy for understanding context. Also known as mnemonics, it’s a simple way to use words that are commonly associated together. 

A word association depicts a semantic relationship between new and other words. The new word presented is called the “stimulus” word, and the word that appears in your mind after interacting with the stimulus word is called a response word.

These word associations can be utilized when understanding constituents in language learning, starting from phrases, words, and sentences.

9. Identify word nuances

Nuances are subtle differences in the meanings of words or phrases. That means some words will have alternative definitions in different contexts. Understanding these nuances helps with vocabulary improvement.  

Identifying these nuances in English words makes understanding them and their contextual meanings easier. 

For instance, the word “frame” will have several meanings in different scenarios. A frame could mean setting the equipment in a way to capture a scene in a movie, or it could be a border that surrounds a window or a picture.

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10. Identify the synonyms of words

Synonyms are words with the same meaning as another word but with different spellings. Synonyms help with reading and writing skills, which are important for expanding vocabulary. 

Identifying synonyms helps to see how different words are used in the same context without changing the meaning and making the test more captivating.

For instance, the word “beautiful” can be replaced with words like “ravishing” or “gorgeous” to fit into the context.

11. Use flashcards

Flashcards are an effective way to learn new words as they promote active recall in your brain – a process used to retrieve a memory. When you see a term and then attempt to remember the meaning, it helps to move it from short-term to long-term memory. 

You’ll also be engaging with your metacognition unconsciously, which is the awareness of one’s thinking. 

There’s another memorization technique that comes into play here –spaced repetition. This is a method of reviewing material at systematic intervals.

12. Listen to podcasts or audiobooks

Engaging all your five senses when learning vocabulary is very effective. Hearing words in action through an informative podcast or an audiobook helps to grow your mind. 

Listening to podcasts or audiobooks is great for engaging your mind while doing other activities. It’s easier to learn words from podcasts due to their conversational style. 

As for audiobooks, they help you learn words in a more compelling and creative way.

13. Keep a journal for new words

Engaging in active writing and journaling exercises can effectively strengthen your cognitive abilities and enhance your vocabulary. You can write about any new word you learn, its origin, synonyms, and how it can be used in sentences.

You can also create groups of words in your journal. As you learn new words, you can journal them and identify patterns between words you already know, which helps you incorporate them into your everyday life.

For example, let’s take the words “exquisite,” “magnificent,” and “splendid”, which possess similar meanings. When you practice journaling these words collectively, it facilitates better retention and recall of their definitions.

By noting them together in your journal, you reinforce the connections between these words, making it easier to remember their shared nuances.

Our Effective Note-Taking course can help you journal word associations to help form deep connections with the words you learn.

14. Use context clues for unfamiliar words

Context clues are hints that help you to decipher a difficult or unusual word. These hints may appear either within the sentence containing the word or in a preceding sentence. 

Here’s how to use context clues for unfamiliar words:

• Look at the unknown word and read the sentence before and after the word.
• Connect your understanding of the sentences to the word.
• Try to predict the meaning.
• Reread to see if your prediction is satisfactory. If not, try using a dictionary to confirm its meaning.

Thus, scanning your mind and using your prior knowledge to help understand the meaning and usage of unknown words helps to expand your vocabulary.

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15. Watch vocabulary-rich TV shows and movies

Movies are great for evoking emotion, culture, and different perceptions, but they’re also great for enhancing vocabulary, improving pronunciation, understanding word context, and the rhythm of language. 

TV shows and movies with rich content can be great for your cognitive abilities and improving your creativity skills too.

16. Complete vocabulary tests

Vocabulary tests are designed to evaluate the depth of the vocabulary you have. It helps to test your ability to understand different words based on their meaning and the context where they might be used.

You can schedule tests at your own pace and create quizzes online that include vocabulary words, root words, or other aspects to help retain information. 

You can use online apps for taking tests, flashcards, or other techniques to stimulate your mind. 

Also, you can utilize various assessment methods such as answering questions involving fill-in-the-blanks, choosing the correct synonym, antonym, and other assessments to apply your word knowledge 

17. Focus on practical word usage 

Different areas of life have different word usage or may use entirely new words, also known as jargon. Understanding word usage helps to improve vocabulary and make it extensive. 

For instance, some industries use stand-up to refer to a short, daily meeting. The same word can have a different meaning in another industry. “Stand-up” comedy means a different thing in the theatre industry.  

18. Edit content

Editing your content helps you identify areas where you can enhance word choice, sentence structure, and overall clarity. It involves fixing spelling, ensuring the grammar is correct, revising the content, and presenting writing.

You’ll use your writing skills most effectively when you edit a piece of content. Editing your writing helps to make it less boring and monotonous. Thus, you’ll be able to use more engaging vocabulary that makes the writing rich.

You may also like: 12 Ways to Improve Your Vocabulary and Writing Skills.

19. Engage in conversation with native speakers

Engaging in conversation with native speakers is an effective way to expand your vocabulary. When you interact with individuals who have native-level proficiency, you can learn new words, phrases, and idiomatic expressions in a natural and authentic context.

Conversations provide opportunities to practice using vocabulary in real-life situations, improve pronunciation, and gain insights into cultural nuances. 

Takeaway: Supercharge your vocabulary with effective learning strategies  

A firm grip on vocabulary helps you improve all areas of communication – listening, reading, speaking, and writing. 

It helps to convey your thoughts, expand your knowledge, improve comprehension, communicate ideas, and help with language development.

When you use fast learning strategies, your vocabulary growth accelerates too. It also flexes your mind to put in more work, ultimately improving your memorization skills too.

If you want to improve your memory further, take this Maximizing Memory course. It helps you remember the meaning of words and how to use them in context, which helps to improve everyday communication. 

Take action today to expand your vocabulary through an effective learning strategy.