Welcome to

The Pending Subject Newsletter

Every Thursday you will receive:

• Tips to improve your English
• English language content to keep you in touch with the language
• A weekly challenge to keep you progressing
• A quote to inspire your learning

I am often asked how students can increase their vocabulary. Writing new words with a definition and examples in English is a good technique if those words are then reviewed and practised, and not forgotten in a notebook somewhere. But sometimes we can take what we already know to learn something new.

There are different theories on how many words one needs to be able to effectively speak a language. Stuart Webb, professor of applied linguistics at the University of Western Ontario, has studied the process of language acquisition. Prof Webb says the most effective way to be able to speak a language quickly is to pick the 800 to 1,000 lemmas which appear most frequently in a language, and learn those.

A word family/lemma is a root word and all its inflections, for example: run, running, ran; blue, bluer, bluest, blueish, etc.

Typically native speakers know 15,000 to 20,000 word families - or lemmas - in their first language. But that is not a realistic goal for non-natives, nor is it necessary. If you know the word house, that will be enough. You don't need to know the word abode (which also means house) to be a good speaker.

So which words should we learn?

Common ones, and all of their derivatives would be the simple answer.

The next question is how?

Below, I give you some tips on how you can use words you already know to improve your English speaking...

TIPS

1. Learn the word families of words you already know: Do you know all of the combinations of describe (describe, describable, descriptive, descriptively, descriptiveness, description, describer, indescribable, indescribably, indescribability), or think (think, thought, thoughtful, thoughtless, thinker, thoughtfully, thoughtlessly, unthinkable, unthinkably). You don't need to know all of them, but learning the most frequent ones would be very useful.
2. Learn phrases and phrasal verbs that go with a word: Let's take the example run. I counted 41 phrases and phrasal verbs in The Oxford Dictionary that contain the word run. For example: run up against (run up against something): experience a difficulty or problem: the scheme could run up against European regulations. Another example would be: run before one can walk: attempt something difficult before one has understood the basic skills: don't try to run before you can walk.
3. Make something new from the old: You could try to find out new meanings of old words. You probably know the meaning of table, but did you know it was possible to table an offer for something? It literally means to put an offer on the table.
4. Learn synonyms of words: Another great way to learn words is to think of synonyms. For example, beautiful: attractive, pretty, handsome, good-looking, nice-looking, pleasing, alluring, prepossessing, as pretty as a picture; lovely, charming, delightful, appealing, engaging, winsome; ravishing, gorgeous, heavenly, stunning, arresting, glamorous, irresistible, bewitching, beguiling; graceful, elegant, exquisite, aesthetic, artistic, decorative, magnificent.

You probably know a lot of these words, and some of them are old or rarely used. But it's another good way to test and improve your vocabulary.

CONTENT

1. Take this fun test to measure your vocabulary size.
2. Do you know all of the words on this list?
3. Make a word table like this one. Study the different forms of the words and practise using the vocabulary in context. Word Formation Table.pdf​

A CHALLENGE

To improve your vocabulary do any of the following:

1. Learn a new meaning of a word you already know.
2. Test yourself to see if you know all of the forms of a word (use the table I provide in the content section).
3. Think of synonyms of words (use the word table, the list, or a good thesaurus).

You just need to start...

(A great place to start is the 5-5-5 Progress Plan).

AN INSPIRING QUOTE

"Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic." J.K Rowling via Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.

If you really want to learn English, you can also read the How to (finally) learn English book:

​https://benpalmercoach.com/books/​

Out now on Amazon!

Find out more at https://benpalmercoach.com/​

Until next week,

Ben

PS: Keep learning!