KNOW THE ODDS AND DETERMINE PRIORITIES. There are more than 700,000 words in the English language, and no one ever knows them all. Above the 50,000-100,000 words needed for average adult communication, you'll have to determine which words you need to actively use (or at least passively recognize) according to your own current interests and priorities.

1. TO IMPROVE USAGE VOCABULARY:
a. Develop your own, personalized list of words you want to use -- just one or two new words a day.
 
1. Be alert for "good" words when listening or reading -- both in academic course work and extracurricular pastimes. Get out of your rut and deliberately expose yourself to new environments, new experiences, new books. Read parts of magazines and newspapers you normally skip. New words worth using should become stop signs for detailed attention -- not just sloppily and vaguely inferred from context to keep moving.

 
2. When you've encountered a word a few times and still don't really use it yourself, chances are you'll be needing it again and it's worth your attention. Keep a small notebook, scraps of paper or cards handy at all times wherever you go just to jot down new words and their contexts whenever they occur. You can look them up, learn all about them, and deal with them later.

 
3. Personalize your dictionary. Every time you have to look up a word in your dictionary, mark it in the margin and indicate the context and occasions which caused you to look it up. If you do this consistently and cumulatively over a long period of time, the pages of your dictionary will become records of words you've personally needed. When your dictionary indicates that you've had to look up a word several times in new contexts over a period of months or years, it's time for that word to be made a part of your usage vocabulary.

 
4. If you must resort to a published word list or word book for new words, at least personalize it. Go through to mark out all words you've never seen and all words you already use; those left will be the vaguely familiar words you've encountered before and may therefore need in the future.

 
b. Use and reinforce a few new words each day -- cumulatively for several weeks. It's been estimated that you must need and use a new word at least 10 times before it's really "yours."
 
1. Make flash cards. Write the word and sentence (context) in which you noticed it on the front; write the definition and another original sentence with a personally meaningful context on the back. Thumb through the cards (back and front) and test yourself at odd moments during the day.

 
2. Expose as many senses as possible to a new word -- i.e., see it, say it, hear it, write it.

 
3. Above all, use new words in writing and conversation -- even if slightly contrived at first. Enlist the aid of a friend to hold you responsible for daily conversation with several new words.
c. Seem like long term work and a lot of it? Yes . . . usage vocabulary acquisition should be a lifetime process anyway, but you may as well start now, bit by bit, rather than being stymied into complete inaction by the awesomeness of the ultimate possibilities.
2. TO IMPROVE RECOGNITION VOCABULARY:
a. Enhance your chances of making better educated guesses about the meanings of unknown words you hear and read by becoming familiar with common word parts.
 
1. Examine unknown words for parts similar to words you do know.

 
2. Learn Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes which comprise "word families" in the English language. Knowledge of relatively few word parts can unlock the meanings of many unknown words -- especially when contextual clues are also helpful. One author has even asserted that knowledge of the word parts in only 14 English words can aid in recognition of 100,000 other words.
b. Make use of context clues to approximate the meaning of an unknown word.
 
1. Use what you already know: is the word a form of one you already know? is it similar to a word in a foreign language you know? does knowledge of its literal meaning help you decipher a new figurative use of the same word?

 
2. Read further for possible restatement of the word in another, more familiar way. Is an example used later to illustrate the word? Are there other words and details later in the sentence or paragraph which reflect the meaning of the unknown one?


Read further for words and/or ideas which seem to reflect contrast with the unknown one.