How to Really Learn Words

Exposure

To learn anything you have to do that thing , Tendulkar  batted  , Wasim akram bowled , Vishy played chess , The beatles played music . Nobody learned anything without doing it so perhaps that should be our first clue to the mystery of learning words.  Exposure to words then should be the first and foremost rule of learning them . Without Regular exposure to words , Through reading , writing , listening or any other medium , it is unlikely that you will ever develop a good vocabulary or how to use words effectively in your day to day living.

Exposure through the word List Vs Exposure through the real world

So your coaching class gave you a list of words and your seniors told you to prep with them , research however shows that going through a word list if perhaps the worst way of going about learning words . List based learning is a very linear approach and the biggest detriment is the lack of excitement that the process itself brings to the learner . So NO WORD LIST IS NOT A GOOD IDEA . There always wanted to say it.

There are many other much more effective , far more entertaining methods available

Takshzila List of Word Learning Techniques

Learning Through Context

Lot of people especially avid readers develop their vocabulary through reading and guessing/passively learning the meaning through the context , this approach for the purpose of clarity we will call Contextual Learning , Highly recommended technique, for not only you learn words , you also encounter them in their natural environment , in between prose and poetry , Ideas and Arguments , what this means is that you also learn how to use the word and what shades does the word carry. It is definitely a long term approach . 

I recommend Contextual Learning for people who do not read regularly, underlining the word while reading , then looking them up later and trying to guess the meaning from the context , does wonders to your vocabulary in the long run. Plus you are reading. A dictionary can always be used if the context does not suffice.

The agenda in this post is to illustrate not the burden but the delight of learning words  . A major portion of trickery and humor and magic in the English language is the very fact of multiple meanings .  If you really want to master the language then you need to get in touch with it in a playful mood. In simpler words increase your exposure to language , in simpler words still, read a lot of comic strips newspapers , magazines , movie reviews , watch movies , catch a documentary , watch stand up comedy or whatever way you can think of increasing the quanta of touch with the language and of course back this up with a good dictionary and we promise speedy returns.

In that direction @Takshzila we Pursue

Images are worth a word

Any method consisting of a lot of visual aids increases learning exponentially. Text alone has been determined as not to be effective in learning vocabulary, however, a lot of visual imagery with the text will help you build your vocabulary really fast. Key ability needed for this is: Ability to associate a word with image. Plus an image also provides a multi-dimensional aspect of a word, which helps cementing the word in your brain. It is same as looking at a thing from different angles, doing so, makes you comfortable with the word and its usage which would ultimately lead to you achieving a CLARITY & PERFECTION & MASTERY in vocabulary. Following is an illustration of the same:

Words from The Press



: A daily scan of the Print press , presenting words in the news that you are familiar with making both comprehension and retention easy , if on the other hand you are not familiar with the news then this is your cue to get in touch with the real world .

Words from the Magical World of Cricket .

Words from movies

We believe in learning can be fun. Don’t take our word for it. Instead, experience it yourself go through our posts which are updated on a regular basis. The point to notice here would be usage of visual aids with appropriate contextual exposure  to learn vocab. Have faith in your imagination and fusion of all of the above points is perhaps one of the most significant keys to learn vocab. The exact fusion of fun quotient and learning attitude works wonders (ka-boom!). And who doesn’t love watching movies?

Word from books

Learning Through Etymology

Etymology : The technique of learning “roots” of words and stories of origin of words , is one of the most popular techniques of learning vocabulary. Easy to understand , its the ideal method for beginners. You can learn a reasonable number of words in a very short period of time.

Graph means to write. Again a familiar root, Indians are crazy about cricketers’ autograph, most people were impressed with Mahatma Gandhi’s biography, and family photographs are a fairly important part of our lives.A photograph is simply writing down light, a biography is writing down somebody’s life (bio = life). Add an Auto to it and it becomes autobiography, which is writing down the accounts of your life yourself, so easily enough an autograph is writing yourself which is nothing but a signature.

Some more words from the graph family.

Lithograph: writing on the stone (litho=stone)
Epigraph: An inscription, as on a statue or building or a motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. Here ‘Epi’ means upon, so writing upon something is an epigraph.
Graphology: Study of handwriting, ‘graph + logy’ which means study of, easy examples would be Biology (study of life), Theology (study of religion) and Ideology (study of Ideas).
Calligraphy: the art of writing beautifully, ‘calli’ is a form of ‘kallos’ which means beauty.

Lithograph can easily lead to learning monolith(made of one stone) which means huge , also learning mono which means one can give you more words like

Monarch: “one leader”; king, supreme leader
Monk: “one who lives alone”; a man who has withdrawn from the world for religious reasons
Monastery: “a residence of monks”
Monism: a system of thought seeking to deduce all phenomena from a single substance.
Monocle: a glass for one eye
Monogamy: state of being married to only person at a time
Monogram: the combining of two or more letters to form one
Monograph: a treatise or a piece of writing on one subject
Monologue: a long talk or speech by one person while other listen but do not participate
Monomania: form of insanity in which the sufferer is irrationally fixated on only one thing
Monophobia: morbid dread of being left alone; fear of being alone
Monopoly: exclusive possession or control by one individual or entity
Monotheism: doctrine or belief that only one god exists

Etymology as clear from the above examples is a bulk learning approach , as one root often will give you a cluster of words at one go , and will also introduce you to further roots which give you still more words , think of it as a case of nuclear fission. Since the learning is cluster driven it also matches how humans learns most effectively and the learning is a little more permanent.Etymology also provides the much needed logic and structure to words , which makes learning especially easier for left brained people

Cluster them words

One of the ways of Remembering information better is Clustering it together to form a web of ideas , a set of inter related ideas in a web structure the neuron network of your brain. A web of ideas helps put a specific idea in a context thus enabling it’s better usage.