ESL Blogs

Dictionary method

There are three stages of knowing new words. If you recognise a word by reading, it is in your passive vocabulary. If you can translate the word into English, it is already in your active vocabulary. And at the third stage you are able to use it in a sentence while speaking to a foreigner.

If you are at elementary level, your first dictionary is the vocabulary list of your English textbook you started to learn from. These lists usualy can be found at the back of books. When you have finished the book, revise this list until they are in your active vocabulary.

If you are an advanced learner, you can take a good bilingual dictionary and test yourself by reading it from "a" to "z". Mask the English side of the dictionary and looking at the side written in your mother tounge, try if you know the word. Use two signs, for exampe a small circle for the words you have already known and a small line if you decide to learn it.

You can write the words to be learn into your vocabulary notebook if you want. Study them for a while and start to read the dictionary itself again, but this time you have to test yourself by finding out the words only with the small line next to them. It is a shorter task. Make a new sign if you have found out a word, for example you can cross the small line. Next time you have to try only the words you didn't know at the fist revising. This process will be even shorter.

It seems as hard and boring as the galley-slaves' work. But during the procedure you will feel richer and richer as the dictionary is going into your head.

With this method you can get a great passive vocabulary. Don't forget to activate it later. And then the most difficult task for you to speak to a foreigner.

In my next blog I'll tell the readers what I answered to the first foreigner who was so unlucky that he had asked me something in English.