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Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Many learners lack fluency because they feel that they have to know EVERY word. While it is important for learners to understand the vocabulary they read, there are other ways to gain this understand that often better than looking it up in the dictionary. They can learn about the following alternative strategies: 

 

Word Families

Collocations

Synonyms/Antonyms

Word Parts (roots/prefixes/suffixes)

Part of Speech (noun, verb, adjective, & adverb) 

What

Word Families

Most words have many different forms. It can be a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc. These word forms when grouped together are called "word families." Instead of having your learners focus on one form, try having them learn all word forms. This will not only help them remember the meaning and allow them to use it more often, but it will also increase the size of their vocabulary. 

View word families for the Academic Word Lists (AWL)

View a sample of word families for the Academic Vocabulary List



Collocations

Collocates are words that are frequently used together. Learning these can help learners to recognize and use these words in context. Some dictionaries will list collocates, prepositions, word partners, etc. They can also use a corpus (an online collection of language) like the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) to search for collocates. 



Synonyms/Antonyms

These words are words that have the same meaning (synonyms) or the opposite meaning (antonyms). Often times looking up a synonym or antonym instead of the definition will help learners understand and remember the word better. Many dictionaries have synonyms/antonyms, however a thesaurus provides a comprehensive list of synonyms and antonyms. 

: Online dictionaries/thesauruses

http://thesaurus.com/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

http://www.learnersdictionary.com/ (specific dictionary for ESL learners) 



Word Parts (roots/prefixes/suffixes)

Knowing these will be helpful for all academic majors, but will be especially helpful for those learners studying law, medicine, science, and philosophy. Many words can be broken down into different parts. Prefixes are the parts at the beginning like pre-, re-, and un-. Roots are the main part or main meaning of the word. Suffixes are the parts at the end like -ly, -ment, and -able. Linked below are the top twenty six prefix and suffixes used in English. You can also google or search on quizlet for common latin and greek roots/prefix/suffixes. 

Learn the top twenty prefixes and top six suffixes

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Part of Speech (noun, verb, adjective, & adverb) 

Knowing the word's part of speech can help your learners determine its meaning and whether to look it up. Most often descriptive words like adjective and adverbs can be skipped without limiting their comprehension. On the other hand, nouns and verbs carry a lot of content and are words that could limit learners comprehension. They would want to learn or look these words up.

Learn more or review parts of speech

 

How and When

The great news about these strategies is that they can be used at any time for a number of purposes. Keep in mind why your learners are learning a word. They do not need to look up or use these vocabulary strategies with every new or unknown word. If they see the word often or the word is part of a main idea then they will want to learn it. 

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Here are just a few examples of how these strategies can be used...



  • Use these as a preview strategy. Circle the unknown words, pick one or two strategies (like word parts and synonyms) to try and figure out the meaning in-context.  

  • ​Create a word journal. Learners can write down new words they learn. In addition to writing down the definition, also write down some collocates (words frequently used together), synonyms, words from the same family (noun, verb, adjective, or adverb form), and an example sentence or two. 

  • Create flash cards for new vocabulary. For example when learning word parts, they put the word part on one side and have the meaning and an example word on the other. You and your learners can create flash cards by hand or by using  a website like Quizlet.com. You both may also be able to find flash cards already created like these Greek and Latin Root Words found on Quizlet.    

  • Use the COCA corpus to look up example sentences and collocates. This will let your learners see new words in context and can help them identify words used together or word partners. 

  • Analyze new words. Do your learners recognize any part (prefix, root, or suffix)? Do they know its part of speech (verb, noun, etc)? What words are used around it? Do they know any words from its family (the adjective, noun, verb, adverb forms)? Have they seen it before? Is it a common or reoccurring word? Are there any clues from the surrounding sentence structure or punctuation that hint at its meaning? After looking at all of this information, if they still don't know the word's meaning look it up in a dictionary.  

  • If your learners are visual learners, they may benefit from creating a word web for new vocabulary. When creating a web, place the new vocabulary word in the center. Then create a branch for each element/aspect they want to include (collocates, synonyms & antonyms, word family, roots/prefixes/suffixes, definition, etc). Have two to three examples for each element.  

Keep in mind that learners will need to decide whether looking up a word or finding the definition is worth their time. A good rule for looking up words is to see if it occurs often, is part of a main idea (in a heading, topic or thesis sentence), or is a noun or verb.

 

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