Spelling & Vocabulary Enrichment [ 4 ]

4- ] Spelling & Vocabulary Enrichment .

Using Your Dictionary .

 Good dictionaries , especially ‘learners’ dictionaries’ , can tell you a lot about a word than just its meaning , including [ among other things ] 1-] Word-class [ usually abbreviations ‘n : noun’ , ‘adj. : adjective’ ‘v : verb’ etc. ], whether a noun is countable or uncountable , and whether a verb in normally transitive or intransitive etc. 2-] Synonyms and their differences e.g. mislay and misplace. 

3-] Antonyms [ opposites ] e.g. friend X enemy / foe . 4-] Collocations [ how words go together ] e.g. living [ cost of living , make a living , standard of living , do something for a living , earn a living , living room etc. 5-] Pronunciation : There   are symbols of pronunciation in each dictionary . 6-] Word stress : often shown    by a mark before the syllable to be stressed or by bold type .   7-] Usage : how a  word is used and any special grammatical pattern that goes with it . e.g. suggest – I suggest you ring him right away . 8-] Whether a word is used for people and / or things .

   Don’t forget that most words have more than one meaning .

Revising Vocabulary .

Revising is especially useful for remembering new material in the target language . it involves looking back at what has been studied at different intervals , at first close together and then increasingly far apart . Here are some suggestions :

1-] Highlight any words and expressions that you had forgotten or were not sure about . 2-] Look at your vocabulary notebook and choose six words and expressions or more that you particularly want or need to learn . Write them down . 3-] Look up any words that you selected in an English-English dictionary . Do these words have any other uses or associations that might help you learn them ? Looking up the word ‘heart’ for example might lead to ‘heart-broken’ or ‘to have your heart in your mouth’ . Write anything that appeals to you in an appropriate phrase or sentence . 3-] The dictionary can also help you find some other words based on the same root . Looking up the noun ‘employment’ leads you to the verb 'employ’ , to the nouns ‘employer’ and’ employee’ , and to the adjectives ‘employable’ and ‘unemployable’ and ‘self-employed’ . 4-] Note the pronunciation of the words and expressions you wish to learn . Try to write them down in phonetic script . Use a dictionary to help you . 5-] In your notebook write down the words and phrases by putting them in a table or a network .6-] The next day ask yourself ‘How much can I remember?’. 7-] Test yourself . You can cover a word or a phrase , then you say it or complete it .

When you have done all the steps above that you feel will be useful to you , close your notebook and remind yourself of what you have been studying and how much you can remember .

Making The New Words Active .

One of the great advantages of revising vocabulary is that it should help you to make the step from having something in your receptive vocabulary to having it in your active vocabulary . Encourage this process by :1-] Writing the words and expressions you are trying to learn in a sentence relating to your life and interests at the moment . 2-] Making a point of using the new words and expressions in your class or homework , your daily life or in some other way . 3-] Keeping a learning diary in which you note down things that particularly interest you about the words you have learnt .4 -] Watching out for the words and expressions you are trying to learn in your general reading of English . If you come across any of them in use , write them down in their context in your diary or notebook . 5-] Writing a paragraph or story linking the words and expressions you want to learn .

Guessing And Explaining Meaning .

A-] Inferring meaning from context .

There are a number of clues which you may be able to use to help you work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word . 1-] The context in which it is used such as a-] Visual clues : a picture in a book or film footage in a TV news broadcast may help you . b-] Your own background knowledge about a situation . For example if there is an earthquake somewhere you know , then you will find it easy to understand the word and many other words . c-] The immediate context [ other words around the unfamiliar word ] : these may make the meaning absolutely clear . For example  ,    ‘ The girl picked one tall gladiolus to put in her new crystal vase’. The word ‘gladiolus’ is obvious from the context to mean ‘a type of flower’. d-] Grammatical clues in the context : it is not difficult to understand if the word is a verb or an adjective or a noun etc. 

2-] Similarity to other words you already know in English .

A large number of words in English are made up of combinations of other words . For example the word “ headscarf” it is of two components which are easy to guess.

3-] Structure .

For example a prefix or suffix may give you a clue . There are different aspects of word formation in English that help you to exploit those clues in making sense of unfamiliar words .

4-] Similarity to a word you know in your own [ or some other ] language .

If your first language is of Latin or of Germanic origin , you will come across many words in English that resemble words in this language . However , English has taken many words from many other languages too . So make use of any other languages you know , but remember that some words are false friends – they sound as if they mean the same but in fact they have a different meaning .