How to improve vocabulary

Improving vocabulary is not a cake walk. It requires very high efforts from the individual. Today Improve Spoken English is coming up with a very important article on on how to improve your vocabulary. I have done it myself when I was preparing for MBA. Today my friends are amazed by seeing the power of my vocabulary. It happens many times that they say some word, and instantly I say the meaning of that word. It impresses a lot.

I will start from the beginning, from the very starting my vocab was very weak. In-fact i don't knew the meaning of very simple words also. My friends used to laugh at me, but I was not concerned. The things changed, when I decided to prepare for MBA (Masters of Business Administration). I decided to go for the CAT (Common Aptitude Test) for IIM's (Indian Institute of Management). When I started to give mock tests for CAT, I realized that I was good in Maths and Data Interpretation, but every-time, I used to score very low in my vocabulary and English Section.

So I decided to give it a pull shot. I tried many short cuts on various sites, but all of them used to define some words only. I wanted an exhaustive and decent way to improve. When I was fed up with all the short cuts, I finally realized that "there are no shortcuts to success". So I picked up a dictionary. The dictionary was a decent one, with about 3000-4000 words. And I started to cram every page.

My room partner used to laugh at me by seeing that I am learning every page and every word. But to his and my surprise it started to work. I broke my work in 26 modules, one module for each alphabet. Then I started from alphabets which have less number of words, so as to gain confidence as soon as possible. Infact I started from the alphabet "x", which has the least number of words. After learning this, i moved to "z", then all the words starting from "y", and then so on.

I never used to overburden myself. My daily routine consists of learning at least 20 new words, and the most important thing was to give a revision to the words I learned earlier. I asked my room partner, to take that dictionary, and ask the words in random manner from a particular alphabet. To our great amazement, I always used to score with more then 95% of the words as correct.

The most important part is to revise the words which you learned earlier, or slowly the words will dissapear from your memory. Slowly I covered almost every alphabet. The maximum difficulty I faced was with the alphabet which has the most number of words. But still I managed to cover it anyhow.

The time consumed by me for this complete Vocabulary improvement process was about 6-8 months. But my vocabulary became rock solid. If you have a smaller time span, then you can start from a smaller dictionary with less number of words.

All the day I used to keep thinking about the words, even in the night while going to sleep, it used to happen that some word come in my memory and I am not clear about it's meaning. Instantly I used to get up and check the dictionary or else I would not have been able to sleep. Take this process as a very serious and regular one. Do not break your learning process or it can hamper your growth.

I remember that while giving the XAT (XLRI Aptitude test), there were three sections, one for vocabulary with 50 words, the second for mathematics with 5 questions (each question has 10 sub questions), the third section was for general knowledge.

I started from the general knowledge section, in which I knew the answer for 38 questions. Th rest I just guessed. Then I moved to the vocabulary section. There were 50 questions, and I knew the meaning of 49 words from those 50 words. It took me hardly 10 min, to complete that section. The maths section was very very hard, and I was not able to solve more that 1 question (with 10 sub-parts).

Finally I knew that I will not be able to make into XLRI because of my bad performance in the Mathematics section. The main point is that the confidence I achieved regarding my vocabulary was immense.
Even today I rate my self as very good in my vocabulary. All of my friends always keep asking me, about how was I able to achieve this level of excellence in vocabulary.

I would like to summarize my learning for all of you, for a reference.

• Use a good dictionary, normally the one used for GRE is good enough.
• Make a habit of learning 20 new words everyday.
• Do not over burden yourself, as it might lead to frustration
• Always revise the words which you have learned earlier.
• Ask a friend or family member to ask words from that dictionary, and confirm the meaning spoken by you. This will help in analyzing yourself.
• If possible, take mock tests for vocabulary.
• Be consistent, and do not let breaks come in your consistency.

I hope that this article will be beneficial to all of my readers, as this is my personal experience, I bet that if you do it, then you also can attain these limits in vocabulary.

That's it for today friends. Do post a comment to share your opinion about this article.

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