Vocabulary is commonly defined as all the words, phrases, lines, languages and knowledge possessed and used by a particular person in his day to day life. Knowing a word, however, is not as simple as simply being able to recognize or use it. Vocabulary is far more than just knowing the word, knowledge about the word is of great importance to further make a good use of your vocabulary. There are several aspects of word knowledge which are used to measure word knowledge. A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language or out of a particular language that is familiar to that person. Knowledge of different languages also adds on to the vocabulary of the person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language. However, learning and building vocabulary is not a limited process, instead of a lifelong process.
A vocabulary of the person is the aggregate of whole knowledge possessed by the person during various events of his life. A person's vocabulary is all the words that he or she knows. Building the vocabulary is a lifelong process and carries on for entire life. As we grow up in our life, along with us our vocabulary also grows, it has been estimated that five years old would probably know about 5000 words whereas an adult who has studied at university or college may possess a vocabulary of at least 50000 words in his language as well as other languages. Also as there are changes in the life phase of a person, we come across different new words. For example, few words that we use during our teens are hardly being used by our parents or other grown-ups. Hence age also matters a lot in building vocabulary. Also, it is evident that the vocabulary of a language is always changing as there are new words that are being invented and a lot of words whose meanings change with time.
An easy way to find out your vocabulary, i.e. the number of words that you know is by taking up a random page from dictionary and counting the number of words that you know from that page and multiplying that figure with the total number of pages of dictionary can give you a rough idea about how many words you exactly know. Also, there are a lot of words that we have an idea about but we don’t know the exact meaning. At times it is a little difficult to be exact. Some words may be understood but not known well enough to be used. Words that are used are part of a person's “active vocabulary”. Words that are only understood and not used are called “passive vocabulary”. It is not necessary that you understand only those words that are in your vocabulary; however, the way these words are used can also give you an idea about the meaning of the word.
Importance of Vocabulary
When you pass out from your school or college, you would often come across the line that it is not the end but only the beginning of learning. The speaker is right, of course. As we all know that learning is a lifelong process, no educational process is the end, in fact, it is always the beginning of more learning and more living. Similar is the case of vocabulary. To stop increasing your vocabulary is similar to stunt your intellectual growth. But to continue to grow intellectually as long as you remain alive with the momentum that your weeks of hard work have provided will not be at all difficult. Vocabulary is an important part of our lives and plays a very important role in our day to day conversations. The overuse of a word to describe a wide range of seemingly unrelated things saps it of any meaning and tends to make a conversation boring.
The less you use what should be a meaningful word, the more potent it becomes. A good working vocabulary gives you the ability to make finer and finer distinctions between things so that you can say exactly what you mean and at the same time conversation also gets interesting if you use a wide variety of expressive words. Be explicit instead of vague when sharing your ideas and opinions or simply making conversation. This increases your chances of having other people understand what you wish to express, and at the same time, it also makes you clear your intentions and expectations to the other person. A good knowledge of facts and a great vocabulary is very important in our lives, whether a person is a student, working professional or a retired person. The importance of a good vocabulary is:
- Better Understanding: Vocabulary is an important part of human growth and relations. Building your vocabulary involves more than just memorizing lists of the kinds of words you had to know. For understanding the thought and expressions of other people it is necessary for you to understand their words and in turn answer accordingly. If you just can’t replicate the meaning of their words you will not be able to give back a reply which would lead to a distracted communication. Learning a second language can help you understand people from other countries, increasing your working vocabulary allows you to understand those who may share your mother tongue. The more of these “special” words you learn, the greater the variety of people you can connect with. It is not only the vocabulary of words from your concerned field, but knowing some medical, legal, and other technical/professional lingo can prevent you from being taken advantage of, and allow you to be proactive in your approach to dealing with doctors, lawyers, mechanics, customer service, and so on. A diverse vocabulary allows you to build rapport with a wide range of people.
- Allows you to Communicate Effectively: For you to be an effective speaker and to master the art of an interesting conversation you need to have a good set of words to use in your conversation. A masterful command of words and the ability to select just the right ones to express a specific idea, for a particular audience is essential in crafting a powerful and engaging speech and writing. A person with good communication skill attracts the attention of everyone. The repetition of the same words over and over again quickly leads to people around you getting bored of the conversation, while the skilled use of a wide array of them enables you to draw people in and have a good communication with them. This is the reason why an expansive vocabulary is one of the keys for great leaders. Only a speech with the right choice of words is able to draw the attention of listeners and repetition of words can spoil everything. The right choice of words allows you to grab the interest, and then allegiance, of others and also boosts your confidence.
- Helps You understand what You Read: You can’t imagine reading a novel or an editorial newspaper article and looking up in the dictionary the meaning of different words every minute. Obviously, this would spoil your entire mood and interest of reading the story or article. Vocabulary not only aids you in understanding other people, it’s also essential in comprehending the books and articles you read. If you don’t know the meaning of some commonly used words, it may get very difficult for you to understand some common passages or even a simple newspaper report. Words you’re unfamiliar with becoming little holes in the text, preventing you from reaching a complete understanding of what you’re reading and also leads to a lack of interest for reading activities. If you have to look out for dictionary after every second word then you won’t be able to concentrate on the subject that you are reading and would ultimately lead to a loss of interest.
- Enhances the Power of Persuasion: A good vocabulary skill can also boost your persuasive power. It’s really hard to get people interested in an idea. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to convince someone for a tangible product, a business pitch, or a piece of philosophy you need to have a good vocabulary to have a great set of convincing words to impress the other side. You can’t convince anyone unless you understand it inside and out yourself and can describe it to others in an engaging way. Repeating the same word over and over again often makes people sick of you and they simply get bored, as a result even if you have a really useful idea then also they won’t listen to you if they feel boring talking to you. It certainly won’t help you sell them on something, or on yourself issuing banalities in a job interview won’t do anything to set you apart from the myriad of other hard-working, people-pleasing candidates. Having a good vocabulary gives you a chance to come up with exciting new ideas as well as new attractive words that will quickly catch the attention of the other person.
Tips to Improve Your Vocabulary
The more you read, the more you explore and the more you will understand. Reading by far is the easiest way of improving your vocabulary. There are a lot of good strategies for building your vocabulary, you can try a lot of other things like learning the meaning of suffixes, prefixes, and roots of words, going through word lists and making flashcards for the words you don’t know, and signing up for a daily word of the day email from any website or the same on your mobile. There are a lot of ways to improve your vocabulary if you want to, all that is required is a commitment and small amount of time from your schedule which for sure will not affect your other activities of the day, but would surely prove to be effective in vocabulary building. Few vocabulary improvement techniques are:
- Reading: Reading by far has been the most effective way of improving vocabulary and has been adopted by the majority of people to have a good command over their words and also have a host of other advantages too. If your reading today restricted only to the quick perusal of daily newspapers, then it is advised to change your reading habits and involve in some long articles, difficult stories in national, international and business newspapers and magazines, especially the columnists' blogs. A magazine such as the Economist or Time is a great option where few newspapers are available because a subscription can be mailed. Reading not just offers awareness of words but also gives you a real application of those words. Broadening and challenging your reading selections, the beefier your working vocabulary will become. Strive to read both nonfiction and fiction. Instead of only browsing content-aggregator sites, read entire articles in a high-calibre newspaper.
- Make Notes of New Words: We come across new words a lot of time and 70% of us have a tendency of ignoring such words without even trying to understand the meaning. Every time you read something, there are opportunities to increase your vocabulary and one who doesn’t ignore these opportunities masters the art of improving vocabulary. There is a general tendency to skip unknown words and gain general understandings of phrases or paragraphs from their overall context in the passage. A lot of people have a habit of doing this thing and if you're used to doing this, it may require additional effort to remember to note down the unknown words. Once someone uses a word you’re unfamiliar with, or you come across a new word while reading, write it down in a pocket notebook or note it down on some flash card if you are in a habit of using flashcards. Train yourself to be invariably aware when reading and listening to others, and remember the words that are not known to you. Look them up later in a dictionary.
- Write More: Writing is yet another way of improving your vocabulary. The more you write, the more your vocabulary increases as you're forced into a position of expanding your word usage to convey precisely what it is that you wish to get across to the reader. You can try writing a lot of things. You can start by writing a dairy giving a description of your day, whatever you did and how you felt about the day. You may start up using some simple wordings and then you may advance up and start using some complex words to improve your skills. When writing, aim to replace commonly used words with less used and more descriptive and interesting words; get out the thesaurus and use more challenging words. Following this can improve your fictional, biographical and some forms of work writing to a great deal.
- Play Word Games: Another way to improve your vocabulary is by playing word games. Do word puzzles, word building and play word games. Word puzzles are an excellent source of increasing your word knowledge because the puzzle creators will often need to resort to an array of unusual words to ensure that the words fit into their puzzles and that they are interesting for the puzzle doer. Generally, the words used in these puzzles are difficult ones and ones that are not commonly used; hence playing these games may give you knowledge of these words. There are many varieties of vocabulary puzzles, including crosswords, find-a-word, and hidden word puzzles as well as strengthening your word knowledge, puzzles are also good for improving your critical thinking skills. These word puzzles also tend to boost your brain and improves your thinking and memorizing ability. For word games, try games like Scrabble, Boggle, and Cranium to extend your vocabulary.
