How to develop vocabulary

1. .

2.  Introduction
“Mastery over a language is
possible only if we have
satisfactory command over
both vocabulary and
grammar”.

3. Words are the only Jewels I
possess
Words are the only Clothes that I
wear
Words are the only food That
sustains my life
Words are the only wealth I
distribute among people
Says Tuka Witness the Word He
is God

4.  How many words do we know?
 “The more words we know, the more
efficient we will be in the use of a
language.”
 We are likely to manage with the words we
know and that necessarily means using
inappropriate words or using more words
to convey the same meaning.

5.  How many Meanings does a word have?
 Most words in a dictionary have two or more
meanings.
 The following are some sentences in which the
word “cool” has occurred.
 Exercise
 1. Everyone likes to enjoy a cool breeze in the
evening.
 2. My boss didn’t help me. In fact he was very cool
towards me.
 3. He was not disturbed when he received the sad
news. On the contrary, he was calm and cool.
 4. She looks very cool in her new dress.

6. How to improve our vocabulary
 Consistent hard work.
 Check every unfamiliar word in a
dictionary.
 Habit of making use of dictionary.
 Dictionary gives us the following types of
information--- pronunciation, spelling, part
of speech(grammatical category), meaning,
usage(sentences illustrating the uses of
word), related words, phrases and idioms,
use in specific contexts( labels like formal,
colloquial, American English, archaic, rare
and technical

7. COLLOCATIONS
 A particular word tends to occur in the
company of certain other word and not just
any word.
 For example the word “duty” is preceded
by the verb “do” or “perform” and not
“make”.
 There is no logical reason why we cannot
use the expression “make one’s duty”.
 Collocations are purely conventional.

8.  If we try to translate literally from our
mother tongue into English , we are likely
to make errors of collocations.
 Consider the following examples
 A big mistake and not a large mistake
 A golden opportunity and not a silver
opportunity
 A hot favourite and not a warm favourite or
a cold favourite
COLLOCATIONS

9. Lexical Sets
 If we take a particular subject matter or
area of knowledge, we find that a large
number of words are interrelated.
 Lexical set of “traffic”
Heavy traffic, traffic jam, crowd, vehicle,
road, corner turn, traffic lights, policeman,
licence, traffic sense, transport, peck hour,
rules and regulations, travel, journey,
highway lanes,

10.  Identify from the passage words and phrases related
to ‘rain’.
One Monsoon evening, when the sky was overcast
with threatening clouds, Rahim Khan returned from
the fields a little earlier than usual. He found a group
of children playing on the road. Meanwhile, it had
started drizzling and he hurried homewards to tie up
the bullocks before big downpour came.
Entering his hut, he found that the roof of his hut
was leaking. He took a ladder and went in the
pouring rain to repair the damage. By the time the
job was satisfactorily done he was throughly
drenched. As he sat on the cot, Rahim Khan

11. Word Formation
 In order to improve mastery over
vocabulary, it is necessary to understand
how longer words are formed from shorter
words by adding certain elements.
 Sometimes words are made by combining
two independent words or by shortening a
longer word.
 For example , the word “room” is a base
word because it cannot be divided further
into meaningful unites.

12.  But the word “childhood” is not the base
word because it can be divided into two
meaningful units, -- Child and -hood.
Similarly, the word ‘preview’ is not a base
because it can be divided into two
meaningful units ‘pre’ and ‘view’.
 Elements like ‘pre-’ which are added before
the base are called prefixes and the
elements like ‘-hood’ which are added
after the base are called suffixes.
 Each prefix and suffix has its own meaning.

13. Affixation
 Some important Prefixes
 Re- again
 Anti- opposite, against
 Auto- self
 Inter- between
 Vice- person in next rank

14.  Some important Suffixes.
 -al- concerning something
 -ful- having the quality of-
 -less- without
 -logy- scientific study of-
 -ness- condition of being-
Affixation

15. Nation
Prefix
Inter - Intra-
Suffix
-al -ize -ation

16. Compounding
 Another common method of forming words
in English is to combine two or more bases
is called compounding.
 For example the word ‘classroom’ we have
two bases- class and room.
 Examples:
Class teacher, art gallery, postcard, night,
lamp, whitewash, bullet-proof, class
teacher.

17. Blending
 Sometimes two bases are combined in a
word as in compounding but word retains
only a part of one or both the words.
 For example the word ‘medicare’ is a
combination of ‘medical ‘ and ‘care’.
 Examples: ‘edutainment’, ‘smoodles’,
‘brunch’, ‘motel’.

18. Words Often Confused
 Words may be confused due to the
similarity of spelling or pronunciation. The
following are some of the words confused
in this manner.
 1. accept and except
 2. principal and principle
 3. compliment and complement
 4. advice and advise
 5. discover and invent

19. VERB PHRASE – “LOOK”
Look
into
after
in
at
through
over
up
forward
out
for