Improve, Grow, and Learn More English Vocabulary the Fast and Easy Way (Episode #83)

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You have been learning English vocabulary wrong, my friend. How do you learn more words the right way? Erase everything from your mind that other people told you about growing your vocab. In this episode, you’re going to learn the real secret on how to actually increase your vocabulary in English.

You are listening to Living in English: 365 by Paradigm English.

Welcome to episode 83, “Improve, Grow and Learn More English Vocabulary, the Fast and Easy way.”

Paradigm English.

You know, you want or need to learn more words in English, right? But you don’t know how, which is so annoying. I mean, someone told you some of their methods, but you still feel stuck.

Ah, friend. I have been there when I was learning French. I felt that my grammar was very good. And so was my speaking. heck my pronunciation was so good that some French people thought that I was French. Uh, I’m not French by the way. I’m from the USA.

Hey, I’m Ashley Rhone from Paradigm English. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m an English coach and I teach in the Fluency Academy online. You can learn more about that on my website.

I also am available for conversation. Click the link below to learn more about having Confident Conversations with me.

Before we get started, there are three things you need to do. The first one, stop whatever it is that you’re doing and pay attention. This episode is super important. Number two, get a pen, pencil and paper. And last, number three, share this episode on your Facebook, Instagram, or other social media accounts.

All right. Stay until the end of the episode to learn how you can test your vocabulary in English. All right, you ready? Here’s how today’s episode will go. First, why you’re not learning vocabulary, then we’re going to talk about some lessons from the past. And actually I might make that into a little bit more of a bigger podcast episode next time. Then we’re going to talk about how to learn vocabulary, and then testing your vocabulary in English.

Come on, let’s get started.

Why is learning vocabulary is so freaking hard? Because you’ve been doing it wrong…

Let me tell you a parable that Jesus once said in the book of Mark, chapter two, verse 22; this is from the ESV version and this will help you understand what it is that I mean, and, and just my general meaning.

Jesus said, “and no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins. And the wine is destroyed. And so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

As much as I love Jesus and teaching and talking about Jesus, this isn’t a biblical podcast, but his message is applicable.

Do you understand what he means?

He means you can’t put new something into old something. In our case, you can’t put new ideas into old crusty mindsets. You’re not going to get new and fresh results with those old habits and behaviors.

Learning vocabulary isn’t hard. What is hard is you trying to put a square peg into a round hole. That’s a well-known phrase. What does it mean? Tell me your thoughts on the Facebook group at the living and English 365 podcast on Facebook.

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Your using old methods that you used to use when you first learned English instead of using new methods, you’re no longer just a beginner. You’re an intermediate, your advanced, super advanced. However you want to call yourself.

You’re going to learn what these methods are and just a few minutes.

All right. So I already have, like, I think 15 different podcast episodes about vocabulary learning vocabulary and, um, just some new vocabulary words. So I’m not going to repeat that in this podcast episode. Um, I’ll post some links below where you can, uh, just have a look at some of those episodes or not even look at, listen to those other podcasts episodes.

The thing you need to know is that there are different types of vocabulary. Period. So some of these are specific to your job or your profession. Um, maybe you’re an engineer you need specific, uh, vocabulary for that. It’s not the same as a nurse would use, right? It’s not the same as maybe somebody who works with pre-K children.

It’s not the same.

So knowing the types of words that. It’s pretty important, let’s be honest. The other thing I wanted to mention to you before I tell you the best way to do this is to be not only consistent, but to make sure that you are studying these words every day. You need to practice, uh, make your brain go through that process of remembering that word and using that word every day.

And you don’t have to do it for a very long time. Five minutes is better than zero minutes and 15 minutes is actually way better than studying for an hour. So if you can try to study these vocabulary words for about, I don’t know, five to 15 minutes every day is fine. I’m not going to talk about exactly which ways to do that or, um, which way.

Or just how to study in general, because I already have a podcast episode about that. What I’m going to say now is the best way to learn and improve and grow your vocabulary and learn all of these new words is through lists. Yes, lists. When you have a list of words, they are somehow grouped. And I don’t mean just find any word you see and write it on a list.

No, you have to be very systematic and organized with your lists. So if you are studying, and you have a list of words that you are looking at and you like them– let’s say, for example, you make a list based on a theme– these are, this is a theme for beginners, and it’s about, um, the grocery store. It’s at the grocery store to be even more specific. The dairy aisle. All of the products that you would see there: eggs and, and milk and cream and a coffee creamer, something like that. Once you put all of these words together, oftentimes you are going to be, you know, often grouped by a grant grammatical structure. So these in this case, they’re all nouns. You don’t have to do it like that, but I’m just giving you an example.

But in any ways, make a list like this. This is how you learn them. And the reason why is because, um, your brain doesn’t have to work so hard to jump between different points in different. Just different ideas. You work with your brain and the way that your brain works, that’s how it works. You, you don’t make it, uh, any more difficult than it has to be.

And that’s the beauty of it. So if you want to learn more words and improve and grow your vocabulary. Start with lists now on a podcast episode that I’m going to do next week. Um, I’m just going to, I’m going to talk about that more in depth, but this is already enough for you today. If you want to see how many words like the size of your vocabulary, right?

What are these words that, you know, Go onto my website. I’m posting a link below for you. You can test your, your vocab. Yes. It’s free. It doesn’t take very long. I think maybe 15 minutes maximum. You can test your vocabulary that way.

Next week, as I said, I am going to do a podcast episode about just vocabulary. And if you are maybe intermediate or more advanced, what are the different methods and strategies that you can use to grow your vocabulary? And, um, why the methods that you used in the past are not working and I’ll go into a little bit of research. Okay. Uh, a little bit more about that, but that’s all that I have for you right now.

Tell me over on the Facebook group, what vocabulary learning strategies do you think work best for you also? This podcast will be taking a break for a few weeks because I’m going on vacation. Yes, I am going back to Turkey and I’m going to be there for several weeks. It’s going to be awesome. Thank God I get to go during this pandemic.

Y’all pray for me because it’s going to be… but I will be back after that. Making more podcasts and Fluency Academy will most likely come back in October towards the end of October.

All right. I’m Ashley Rhone from Paradigm English.

I am so excited that you spent this time with me when you could have been anywhere else.

I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.

Paradigm English

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