Introduction
Vocabulary Acquisition is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most challenging aspect of language learning. There are tens of thousands of words that a learner has to commit to memory — a daunting task indeed.
What makes it all worse is the ineffective techniques that are repeated by many and that lead us - the learners - astray. To counter that, here are the top six mistakes I most often see my learners make with Vocabulary Acquisition. In discussing them, we shall also get an opportunity to look at some effective techniques to make Vocabulary Acquisition smoother.
1.Our Fascination with Fancy Words
How often do you use the word ‘sacrilegious?’ And Sanguine? And, Lacuna, juxtaposition? I don’t know about you but even as an English trainer with C2 level proficiency and a bibliophile, I can assure you that it is all so rare for me to come across these words. And yet, surprisingly, these difficult, never-to-be-used words are the very first we jot down in our vocabulary register.
Do NOT waste your time learning these fancy-sounding words that you can only use to sound pretentious. They are not useful. They do not impress anyone.
What is important is relatively higher-frequency words – words which we are certain we shall use often. And that brings us to the second mistake learners often make.
2.“I Must Look Up ALL the Words in the Dictionary”
When reading an article or a book or watching a series, you are likely to come across dozens of words that you don’t know the meaning of. You leave the article, effectively breaking the flow; you take out the dictionary, and you look up the meaning of the word – if you do this 20 times every time you sit to read an article, you will never actually finish reading it.
We can NOT look up and memorize every single word that we come across. We need to learn how to divine the global meaning of the article or the video from context. We need to learn how to prioritize words.
This begs the question: how do we understand which words to look up?
As we consume content in our target language, we come across a similar set of words in different videos and articles. If during this process, we feel that a certain word keeps appearing in different contexts and could be a useful addition to our vocabulary, it will be a productive use of our time to commit it to memory.
3.Going Beyond One-Word Vocabulary
Hopefully, by now you have crossed out “sanguine” from your vocabulary register, but “unprecedented” is important, and so is “exorbitant.” But are they enough?
Learners often tend to ignore – almost entirely – all that lies beyond one-word vocabulary; or what the IELTS band-descriptors describe as idiomatic vocabulary. These are phrases that have a figurative meaning that is different from the literal meaning of each word taken separately.
Idiomatic vocabulary – or more specifically, idioms, phrasal verbs, and proverbs - is the life and soul of the English language. They’re what makes this language so expressive.
4.Learning Vocabulary Out of Context
All of what I have written so far in this article is unforgettably important. These paramount tips will make this grueling task of expanding your vocabulary easier.
These sentences, don't seem right, do they? Much like Joey from Friends, I used a thesaurus to use some lower-frequency, so-called advanced-level words. However, I used them with insufficient knowledge of their connotations and the words they collocate with.
“Incredibly” and “unbelievably” are adverbs that collocate with “important;” but “unforgettably” doesn’t. “Paramount” doesn’t fit the context. And while ‘daunting” fits perfectly with “task,” its synonym “grueling” carries a negative connotation.
Definition is not the only thing that defines a word and its usage. Far from it. A word may convey the right meaning but if it does not fit that context, the sentence will ultimately sound unnatural.
A dictionary can NOT teach you all that. One of the most regrettable mistakes learners make with Vocabulary is to learn words out of context – from a dictionary or off of a list found on the Internet. Unfortunately, most teachers on social media have also adopted this as their preferred method for teaching vocabulary.
Vocabulary cannot be acquired as a list of synonyms and antonyms you can use interchangeably.
The only right way to acquire new vocabulary is through authentic content in that language. Without sufficient understanding of the contexts in which the word can be used, acquiring it is next to useless.
5.“I know the Words but I can’t Remember them while Speaking”
Acquiring passive vocabulary is largely dependent on how much content we consume. The more the content, the more frequently we encounter new vocabulary in various contexts. However, to turn passive vocabulary into active is dependent on the Production skills – writing and speaking.
Vocabulary Exercises and many techniques help us immensely in the process – techniques like associating that word or phrase to a story or a silly anecdote or joke. In my podcast All Things English, I talk more in detail about such techniques.
6.Expecting Perfection
Lastly, there is one important point that I wish to discuss. As a language learner, you’ve to accept the fact that you’re going to learn and you’re going to forget. You will learn again and once again you will forget. You will make the same grammatical errors and you will forget the words you’ve just learnt - it is an indispensable part of the learning process.
Our mind has its limits. Expecting to be able to use a word when we’ve only just acquired it and expecting perfection leads to frequent disappointment – we’re left with the feeling that we are not cut out for language learning.
Conclusion
Worrying about the grammatical mistakes we are making or the passive vocabulary that we have acquired but cannot use while speaking, we often lose sight of the fact that the core of language learning is consuming content (reading and listening) and using what we have learned to convey our thoughts and ideas (writing and speaking).
Vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are components of language we learn through the content we consume, not separately. So long as we have immersed ourselves in the language, we shall learn grammar and expand our vocabulary naturally and smoothly.
What are some methods you use to acquire remember and use new vocabulary?
