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He also refers to a study by Johnson O’Connor, an American educator and researcher, who gave vocabulary tests to executive and supervisory personnel in 39 large manufacturing companies. Without a single exception, those who had scored highest on the vocabulary test given in college, were in the top income group, while those who had scored the lowest were in the bottom income group. Earl Nightingale, a renowned self-help expert and author, in his 20-year study of college graduates found: BUILDING BRIDGES VOCABULARY TEACHER DOCUMENT PROFESSIONALLittle wonder, studies point to a correlation between strength of vocabulary and professional success. If you use such precise words in your communication you’ll stand out in crowd. We can easily understand them while reading and listening, but rarely use them (with the possible exception of empty) in speech or writing. If you notice, these words – wash away, empty, dump, and pluck – are simple. What word(s) best describe what’s happening in the picture below? The bridge was washed away by the flooded river.Īlthough both convey the message, the second sentence stands out because of use of precise phrase. The bridge was destroyed (or broken) by the flooded river. What we fail to spot, however, are less extreme, far more common cases where people don’t pause, but they use imprecise words and long-winding explanations to drive their message. You would be all too aware of cases where people frequently pause while speaking because they can’t think of words for what they want to say. passive – your confidence in your vocabulary will be shaken. If you evaluate your vocabulary against this yardstick – active vs. But the real magic, the real use of vocabulary is when you use words in speech and writing. Many mistakenly believe that they’ve strong vocabulary because they can understand most words when reading and listening. BUILDING BRIDGES VOCABULARY TEACHER DOCUMENT FREENote: Feel free to use the above and other images in the post, using the link of this post for reference/attribution. In reality, the outer rectangle is much bigger, representing hundreds of thousands of words.) (While the proportion of the two inner circles – active and passive vocabulary – bears some resemblance to reality, the outer rectangle is not proportionate because of paucity of space. Your active vocabulary is a tiny subset of your passive vocabulary: You can understand these words while reading and listening, but you can’t use them while speaking and writing. Such words constitute your passive vocabulary (also called recognition vocabulary). Do you understand meaning of these words while reading and listening? Highly likely. Think of words such as eat, sell, drink, see, and cook.īut how about words such as munch, outsmart, salvage, savagery, and skinny? Do you use these words regularly while speaking and writing? Unlikely. You, of course, understand these words while reading and listening as well. Words that you can use in speech and writing constitute your active vocabulary (also called functional vocabulary). Once your understand the difference between active and passive vocabulary, you’ll realize that size of your vocabulary isn’t what you think it to be. (Doesn’t this sound so much better when weighed against today’s reality where most professional skills get outdated in just few years?) You may have grossly overestimated the size of your vocabulary Since building such vocabulary is one of the most challenging aspects of English Language, you’ll stand out in crowd when you use precise words and, the best part, you can use this sub-skill till you’re in this world, long after you retire professionally. But the rewards are more than worth the squeeze. In this post, you’ll learn how you too can build such vocabulary, the one you can actually use. This post also adopts couple of best practices such as It’s not to say that it’s easy to come up with words while writing, but in writing you can at least afford to think.) (The ultimate goal of vocabulary-building is to use words in verbal communication where you’ve to come up with an appropriate word in split second. There are no prizes for building list of words you can’t use. That’s why you build vocabulary, right? To use in speech and writing. Some words, especially those that I haven’t used for long time, may elude me, but overall the recall & use works quite well. This post comes from my experience of adding more than 8,000 words and phrases to my vocabulary in a way that I can actually use them on the fly in my speech and writing. ![]()
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