Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Use Repetition
First, be sure to use repetition. To become familiar with a word, you need to see it over and over again.
Besides, you need to use it in conversations over and over again. The more times you repeat the word,
the more likely you will memorize it, and it will become part of your daily repertoire.
Group Similar Words Together
Second, group similar words together. You should never learn vocabulary by looking at a list of words.
Think of words as different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It doesn’t make sense to look at each piece of
the puzzle individually. Rather, you need to fit them together to see the whole picture. The same thing
should occur with words. You should memorize words that have similarities in some way. For instance,
create a vocabulary around a theme, such as music, or an adjective, such as beautiful.
Build Your Vocabulary
Third, it is essential to make vocabulary that is personal to you. Vocabulary can be defined as all the
words understood by a person or group of people. As early as four months, a baby can start to distinguish
between language sounds and other sounds. According to David Crystal, language acquisition happens
quite rapidly:
• By age 2, people can recognize and speak 200 words.
• By age 3, people can recognize and speak about 2000 words.
• By age 5, people can recognize and speak about 4,000 words. 33
That means your average infant to toddler is learning three to four new words every day. Infants are
hardwired to learn a language. If you want to ensure your child can speak multiple languages, it’s best
to expose them to multiple languages during this crucial developmental cycle. Even though we start as
infants, we continue to improve our vocabularies right through middle age:
• Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words
• Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age
• Adult test-taker vocabulary growth basically stops at middle age 34
As you can see, most native English-speaking adults have fairly substantial vocabularies, but we do see a
drop in new language acquisition as people enter into their middle age. As such, it’s important to keep
learning.
One way to keep learning is to find words that have meaning for you. If you have ever heard a story
about survival from someone who has gone through something life-changing, they probably used words
that touched you and helped you to connect to the story. In the same fashion, you should find words that
can relate to your story. When we find words that have personal meaning to us, we can use those words
more effectively in our own vocabulary. Here are some essential tips for building your vocabulary:
1. Keep a journal of words you don’t know.
2. If you don’t know a word, look it up in a dictionary.
3. Learn to recognize both Latin and Greek roots of words.
4. Play vocabulary games (e.g., anagrams, Boggle, crossword puzzles, scrabble).
5. Make synonym and antonym word lists.
6. Take a writing and/or editing course.
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