Vocabulary Learning in a Second Language

In this post I will give some tips on learning vocabulary in a second language that have been proven to be effective through empirical studies. 

Firstly you need to know what vocabulary you should learn, which means you should have a good idea of your current level. For anyone learning English as a Second language it is very easy to find this out; you can do a simple test of around 140 questions here, which has both monolingual and bilingual tests. English vocabulary can be separated into High Frequency (HF), Academic, Technical and Low Frequency (LF) word families. Knowing a word family means you know the different forms of the root forms of the word. For example, the word family for nation would include nations, nationalist, nationalistic and so on. For learners of other languages it would be a good idea to see lists of the frequencies of words in the target languages before continuing. This will save you both time and effort in the long run. 

Most of this information comes from this book by Paul Nation.

ENJOYED THIS? HAVE MORE.

MOUNTAINS OF WISDOM

Subscribe to my yamabushi newsletter

RECENT BLOG POSTS

curious little boy playing with brick
The pure desire to play
man person flying arm
We are all opportunists.
photo of salt on white surface
Believing in the invisible

YAMABUSHI BLOG POSTS

Tim Bunting Kiwi Yamabushi
Getting in the way of others’ training
three geisha walking between buildings
How I passed the N1 in one go
NZ’s response to coronavirus presentation

RANDOM POSTS

meditating buddha figurine
Strong convictions
My New Goal in Life
Be kind. Be safe. Don’t be alone.
Tim Bunting Kiwi Yamabushi

Tim Bunting Kiwi Yamabushi

Get In Touch

Sakata City, Yamagata, Japan 

tim@timbunting.com

Share this:

Like this:

Like Loading...
Scroll to Top