vocabulary.

A visitor named Suman wrote this: "thanks for the video.......but there are so may new

words to learn." He continued by asking how to start improving his vocabulary. And he

wanted to know where he should start.

Well, I do recommend watching the video on improving your vocabulary. It's only three

and a half minutes long, and it is full of great tips on improving your vocabulary. We

will include a link to that video in the text below this video.

But what else can you do? I recommend using a picture dictionary. On one page, you can

see pictures of many different things with labels. Some picture dictionaries use only

English.

Now I have good news for English learners, and I have bad news. The bad news is that

there are 1 million words in the English language. The good news is that if you know just 2,000

words and their word families, you can understand 90 to 95 percent of everyday English usage.

The 2,000 most frequently used words make up a list called the General Service List.

We're going to include a link to that list below this video in addition to the link to

the video. I recommend that you know the words in that list.

Flash cards can be really helpful, too. Put the English word on one side, and put the

same word in your language on the other side. You can make your own flash cards, or you

can use a flash card app for your phone that downloads flashcards from Quizlet.com. It

may be that Quizlet.com already has flash cards in your language for learning English.

I use an app for learning French vocabulary, and it's really helpful.

Flash cards are great, but you also need to learn a word in its context. That's why our

video on improving your vocabulary recommends seeing and hearing the word in sentences and

conversations. Watch that video for more tips. Of course, our series of videos in English

Success also includes several videos on vocabulary that allow you to hear the word, see the word,

and see a picture that represents the word. To learn more, visit ontargetenglish.com/success.

Suman, thank you for your question about improving your vocabulary. If anybody else has a question

about learning English, you can post it at bit.ly/askmyquestion.