Increase Your Vocabulary -- Improve Your Language Skills

Drive is the best predictor of action, so here is reason to grow your vocabulary! We tend to describe our cognitive abilities with intelligence. General intelligence is the subject of long, ongoing research in psychology. To that end, researchers agree today that intelligence involves at least two major parts; intelligence consists of an innate, general fluid intelligence and an extrinsic, general crystallized intelligence.

Fluid intelligence is related to visualization, abstract reasoning, and quantitative conceptualization. Crystallized intelligence is related to reading comprehension, reasoning, and general knowledge.

Fluid intelligence is pre-set and peaks in young adulthood, while crystallized intelligence, by its nature, rises steadily with age.

Verbal faculties rely on our experiences, exposure to facts, and our trials and triumphs. Most of our reasoning is conducted through comparisons -- analogies that build on each other and which we store in more depth as we grow older. Learning vocabulary words won't make you a more intelligent person for the sake of intelligence, but it will enable you to think in more refined terms.

You should assume that you encounter unfamiliar words regularly, and if such isn't the case, start reading a few news articles and survey the contents of other literary works.

When you see a word you don't know, stop and make a mental note. Scan the surrounding information a couple of times and scrutinize the style and tone for hints about the meaning of the word. There's almost invariably enough information to place the word in fair perspective. Does the passage hinge on the word, or is the word ancillary; or is it not needed at all? Ask how you can describe the word, through the purpose you can perceive in it. Maybe the author was brusque and understandable up until the new word, and maybe this new word is the operative shift in his indictment. Then the word would seem to have at least some relation to the preceding opinions and assertions by the author.

It is important to anticipate what the word means, independent of the process of defining it. As much as you can try to infer its meaning, you are putting in work to establish a working meaning for yourself. Sometimes the careful recollection about a word and the places you've seen it serves more useful than the definition from the dictionary. There is a bit of importance in truly understanding how a word is used, because the connotation can impose major differences between words that appear as synonyms in a thesaurus.

If possible, try to hear its pronunciation so you can discuss it if need be (without sounding uninformed).

On that note, if you see a word enough times that it's bothersome to temporarily ignore it any longer, make sure to look it up. Use multiple definitions that are superimposed, so you can identify what is basically at the heart of the definition.

Try to find a few examples of the word being used in a typified phrase or a sentence. With the benefit of these examples, try to make your own example that is just slightly modified in order or arrangement. Refer to a thesaurus for the word's synonyms and look up its etymology if you want. See what words are the synonyms when the word is used as the main article, because it helps to relate the word to a web of related words, some of which you might know already. In the course thereafter, you should become much more aware of just how often the word is used, and these are the opportunities to provide a solid reinforcement or adjustment of your notion of it.

Practice writing sometimes using words that are fresh and you should hasten the uptake fast. Do not be afraid to misuse words, and avail yourself of the advice by asking for its correct use.

Before long, you will be fully comfortable using the word as part of your active vocabulary. But this is only true of normal words that you would already gain exposure to more frequently, at some key phase in advancement in knowledge acquisition.

Aside from the required duty of learning words that you've found to be necessary to learn through repeat encounters, it is fun to pay some casual attention to vocabulary. Search a word list and see how many words you don't know, and then observe how many words that you do know only because of your efforts. Play a few games and find the fun in vocabulary, variety, and all that is entailed in the attainment of mastery over these elements.