Build your vocabulary skills! : a quick and easy method

247 Pages·2000·0.83 MB·English

Build Your Vocabulary Skills!
A Quick and Easy Method
by
John LaCarna
To Gussie
CONTENTS
Preface
The Technique of Mnemonic Vocabulary Building
How To Use This Book
The Mnemonic Vocabulary
List of Words Treated in This Book
Appendix: Suggested Projects for the Researcher
References
About the Author
PREFACE

This book will enable you to increase your English vocabulary as quickly and
easily as possible. The immediate focus is on expanding your recognition
vocabulary -- the words you are able to understand. You will learn and retain
forever the meanings of words you are most likely to encounter in your reading,
and on various psychological, academic, and professional tests. The method
presented here is starkly goal-oriented -- you might say ruthlessly so. The aim
is that after applying yourself to this book, you will be able to supply a
synonymous definition for up to 1413 words you did not know before. We are
not concerned with learning derivations or word roots. These matters may be
interesting and important but they are irrelevant to the business at hand.

Our purpose right now is to get a higher score on that SAT or GRE next week, or
to gain a deeper understanding of those novels and non-fiction books you read
throughout this year and every year from now on. The words you will learn are
derived from lists of study words for academic tests and are judged to have the
widest general use.

Another phase of vocabulary development involves the active vocabulary --
words you use in your own speech and writing. We don't provide a quick method
to improve that -- we don't know of any -- but we can point you to a couple of
easy ways.

You will find that as you use this book and recognition vocabulary grows, words
that you previously skimmed over in your reading will stand out. When you
encounter them, you will automatically take note of the new words you have
learned. In this way, over time, you will get a feel for proper usage, for the
nuances of denotative and connotative meaning. Then these words will naturally
pass into your active vocabulary as they did when you were a child originally
acquiring language. This process might be accelerated by using one of the
books available at book stores and in libraries, designed to enable their readers to
use the words they present.

We strongly recommend against using words before you assimilate their precise
meanings. If this is done in an attempt to impress others, it may well have the
opposite effect, for there's no more pathetic sign of a poorly educated person
than the inappropriate use of a five-buck word. Make sure that you really know
words before you use them.
THE TECHNIQUE OF MNEMONIC
VOCABULARY BUILDING

The word "mnemonic" refers to a device that assists in the acquisition and
retention of matter to be memorized. In this book, we will use such a device to
expand your vocabulary. We will teach you new words by artificially associating
each one to its definition, using what we call a "key" and a "link sentence".

Research has established this method to be effective for learning both English
and foreign language vocabulary words. To illustrate the method, let's take the
word mnemonic itself. How would we associate it with its meaning? Well,
mnemonic sounds somewhat like pneumonia, so suppose we use that as the key.
So now mnemonic calls up pneumonia in our minds, but how does this remind
us of memory systems? What would a good link sentence be? Well, suppose we
think of our grandfather having a bout of pneumonia so severe he loses his
memory of who we are.

So, the next time we see the word mnemonic we will think of pneumonia. We
ask ourselves, "What about pneumonia?", and we answer, "Grandpa had
pneumonia so bad he lost his memory. Oh that's it! Mnemonic has to do with
memory systems." In the format of Build Your Vocabulary Skills, we have:
MNEMONIC (neh MAHN ik) related to a memory system
KEY: PNEUMONIA
LINK SENTENCE: Grandpa had pneumonia so bad he lost his memory.

Now, answer the following without looking at the above:
MNEMONIC What is the KEY?
What is the LINK SENTENCE?
What does MNEMONIC mean?

So if you didn't know mnemonic before, drill yourself on this a couple of times.
You've already learned a new word. Still not convinced? Already knew
mnemonic? Well, let's try another word, one we're fairly sure you don't know.
How about defenestrate, which means to throw out of a window. If you know
that one offhand, you probably don't need this book.

What does defenestrate remind you of? How about defend the street? Well, we
could Imagine that the enemy troops invaded a city, and the citizens defended
their streets by throwing objects out of the windows at them. So, we have the
following:
DEFENESTRATE (duh FEN es trate) to throw out of a window.
KEY: DEFEND THE STREET
LINK SENTENCE: The townsfolk defended their streets against the enemy
invaders by throwing things out of the windows at them.

Now, without looking:
DEFENESTRATE What is the KEY?
What is the LINK SENTENCE?
What does DEFENESTRATE mean?

Now, drill yourself another time or two. You've learned another new word, and
will retain it to the days of your dotage.

Admittedly, this word is of quite limited use, but we wanted to illustrate the
principle by actually teaching you a new word. Over fourteen hundred much
more useful words follow, so don't defenestrate this book yet.

The thought might have occurred to you, "Why do I need this book? I can just
make up my own keys and links for words I want to learn."

Sure you can, and more power to you if you will. You can write this whole book
yourself in your own way. But in reality, most people won’t. Also, despite the
common-sense expectation that associations you develop yourself would be
superior because of their personal nature, and because of the mental effort made
using the words to be learned, this is not attested to by research. When subjects
were provided associations by the researchers, they learned and retained material
at least as well as, if not better than, when they generated their own associations.
So we can be confident that our list of ready-made associations provide
an effective means of vocabulary development.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book may be used as a dictionary, or a text for a course of study. You can
look up unfamiliar words as you run across them in your reading, just as you
might do with an ordinary dictionary -- but with the difference that the meanings
will be locked in your memory. But most of you will want to use this book as a
text to increase your vocabulary systematically. You can start with the A's and
go through the Z's, or you can skip around, checking off each word you
complete. In either case, you will, of course, skip the words you already know.

As much as we tried to minimize effort on your part in using this method, a
degree of application is unavoidable. For each word, first note its pronunciation
and meaning. Pronounce it several times mentally or aloud. Then note the key
word or words. Pronounce the original word followed by the key a few times.
Then read the sentence linking the key to the meaning. It's not important that you
memorize it word for word, just that the connection between the key and the
definition is noted. If you think mainly in words, verbalize the link sentence. If
you think in visual images, create as vivid a mental picture as you can of the
relationship expressed by the link sentence.

Now look away from the page and think step-by-step of the word, the key, the
link sentence, and the definition.

For general vocabulary improvement, we recommend that you study groups of
five words each. After you've gone through five, use the list of words in this
book to drill yourself by reciting keys, link sentences, and definitions. Then fill
in any gaps in your learning by review and recitation, and move on to another
five.

Ideally, you should take time the next day to recite the words learned the
previous day. Recitation a few days after that, then about a week later will secure