by Stephen Pate

Created on: December 15, 2009

Want to improve your English?  It can be difficult for some people to do, especially non-native speakers of English.  But it isn’t that hard to do if you know of a few simple methods anyone can employ.

A very simple method of improving your English vocabulary is to buy a dictionary and read from it every day.  Yes, I know this sounds pretty boring, but it’s the simplest method of learning new words.  Just pick up a dictionary and read a page from it every day.  You will be teaching yourself new words that you can use in everyday conversation.  Your vocabulary will also expand and will help you develop a subtlety to the English language you never knew existed.

Similarly, you can read from a thesaurus as well.  A thesaurus is a collection of synonyms and antonyms for words.  If you use one word over and over again, especially in writing, a thesaurus is helpful because you could find words similar in meaning to it.  This will give you a wide range of words to work with, making you become a more eloquent user of the English language.

If you don’t want to just randomly look up words, here’s something else you can try.  Take one word that you know and look it up in a thesaurus.  Write down all the synonyms and antonyms of that word.  Then look up those words in a dictionary for their definitions.  This is a good, simple way to find words that you don’t know and expand your vocabulary.  Just do one word a day, but over the course of time those words will build up more and more.

That may be rather boring, however.  For a more stimulating activity, you can read books and write down all the words you come across that you don’t know the exact meaning of.  Then, you can look that word up in the dictionary and write down it’s definition.  You can also look up those words in a thesaurus and write down it‘s synonyms and antonyms.

Those are all methods of improving your English vocabulary, which every speaker can do.  However, non-native English speakers may need to better learn how to actually speak words as well.  There are resources for them to pursue as well.

One of the best simple method for them to pursue are children’s read-along books.  Read-along books are books that have along with it an audio medium, such as a tape, CD, or MP3, that has someone else speaking to the same book.  They are used mostly for children so

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