CAT 2014 prep: How to build your vocabulary

By Ankur Agarwal

Learning the English language is a never ending process. Though, aptitude tests require good understanding of vocabulary, in terms of meaning and usages.
Sometimes it’s about not remembering the right word at the right time and sometimes it’s about not knowing the word altogether. In any case, having a good vocabulary increases the understanding one has, of any written piece of information, be it a newspaper article, a novel or a reading comprehension.

Building vocabulary is a not about rigorous practice and cramming words but about regular practice and curiosity. There are four easy steps to learning new words:

• Awareness: Many a times, when we come across a new word, we ignore it. A good thing to do will be to find out what it means. A curious reader can guess the meaning of the word by reading the sentence in which he encountered the word. This will however, give only the contextual meaning of the word, as this will just be an educated guess. Mark the word and look it up in the dictionary. This might slow down your reading but gives a better understanding of the written text.

• Read, Read and Read: Reading not only introduces you to new words but also checks on the words you already know. Read something that you are interested in. For eg: if it is automobiles you are interested in, read magazines like Auto India or Overdrive. If politics interests you, then read India Today or a similar magazine. Novels and newspapers are also an excellent source of reading. Nothing improves your vocabulary more than reading.

• Vocabulary Notebook: If your reading is going good, then you might encounter new words on a regular basis. It will be wise to look up these words in a dictionary. Read the entire explanation as it should contain other meaning with examples of contextual usage. Make a note of the word in your “Vocabulary notebook”. This book serves as your own personal dictionary and helps you recall words.

• Study and Review: Apart from this, you must also review the words that you encounter on a regular basis. Retention of the words will increase with revision. Try to use the new words in your daily conversation. You can also study new words by using the following approaches:

o The Root word approach: About 70% of the words in the English language are derived from Latin, French and Greek, and 22% from German. If we understand the words from which the English language is derived, it can help us understand a lot of words in the English language. For eg: The word “thermometer” has two root words “therma” which in latin means “heat” and “metron” which means to measure. Hence, we can relate these root words to understand other words such as thermal, geothermal, exothermic, thermoelectricity, barometer, voltmeter etc. This approach not just gives you the ability to learn new words independently but also guess the meanings of newly encountered words.

o Flash card Approach: Write a word on one side of a blank card and its meaning on the other. You can test your retention by using these cards.

The last and perhaps the most crucial thing to do is to stay motivated. You can learn as fast as you want. You started out in life knowing no words at all and now you know thousands. You can learn more. Then why wait?

Happy Learning!

About the author:

Ankur Agarwal heads the IT and Publishing verticals of Endeavor Careers and Catgurus - a leading online Testing portal for CAT Aspirants.