Learning TOEIC Vocabulary is not easy and sometimes a puzzle to TOEIC test takers. In this article, you’ll find many different ways to improve and expand your vocabulary.
You can do it fast…
1. A word a day
Choose a new word or phrase from your notebook and try to use it as often as possible in one day. Think of situations where you would need to use it, and write down a couple of example sentences. Go back to this word or phrase after a week, to make sure you still remember it.
Some people find index cards useful. You can write down the word on the card and carry it around with you for a day, taking it out of your pocket whenever you have a moment and trying to put it into a sentence.
2. Review
The next time you have a spare couple of minutes, flick through your TOEIC notebook. You’ll be surprised how much comes back to you! Choose a page where you have already stored a number of words and expressions, cover the page, and try to remember what you wrote. Then look at the page and see how many you remember.
3. One word at a time
When you read a page of a TOEIC material, decide you will only look up one word in a dictionary. When you write it down in your notebook, also make a note of any synonyms (words that mean the same) or the opposite of the new word.
4. English word building
Take a prefix (such as “en”, or “pre”) and make a list of all the words that can follow. (For example, encircle, enclose, enlist; prenatal, premature, pre-war.) Here are some more prefixes you can use:
dis (dislike, dismiss), il (illegal), im(impossible, impatient), ir (irregular, irresistible), anti (anti fan, anti war, anti biotic), un (unhappy, unthinkable), re (redo, rename, refill)…
Or you can do it in time…
1. Read
Read something that interests you. It could be a newspaper, a novel, a magazine, or even an English graded reader (a simplified book). Working page by page, underline the words or phrases that you don’t know. Look up only those that are important for understanding, or which are repeated. Use a good dictionary, and make a note in your vocabulary notebook.
2. Blitz
Focus on a theme, such as sport. Divide one page of your notebook into three columns. In the first column write down as many sports as you can think of. In the second, write down all the equipment you need for the sport. In the third, write down the scoring systems. You might end up with something that looks like this:
tennis racquet, ball, net umpire, love, linesman
football pitch, ball, goal posts referee, offside, penalty
You can use this method for many different themes: houses (rooms of house, furniture, styles); jobs (names of jobs, places where these jobs are done, characteristics of the job) and so on.
3. Word association
Write a key word in the middle of a page and draw a bubble around it. Then draw lines out from this word connected to smaller bubbles. In the smaller bubbles you can add words associated with the main word.
For example, you could write “email” in the middle of a page. Then the smaller bubbles could contain words such as “write”, “compose”, “receive”, “delete”, “reply” and so on.
There is visibly a lot to realize about this. I suppose you made certain good points in features also.