Though many people might have given some views on this post that how to enrich your vocabulary, but still I would like to throw my own points there up. There are many ways through which one can enrich his/her vocabulary. As a formality, let me first tell you the meaning of vocabulary. What is vocabulary? Vocabulary is a person's own knowledge of words. It may be anyone, not necessary to be a just language user and it is really very useful to have a good vocabulary because today we can't keep up without any good treasury of words in our minds. What can we do without good English nowadays? Nothing, because English is the biggest global language. Though it is not just English which has need for vocabulary but all languages, and it applies for all the languages.
We must not forget that what had made Shakespeare a really successful playwright. It was his usage of language, because he possessed a great amount of words. He is known to have used thousands of words in all of his works. So, on the whole we can say that though we can survive, but not well, without a good vocabulary. So there is really a need to have good enriched vocabulary.
There are really many benefits that an enriched vocabulary can give to someone. The biggest benefit is the impact on others. When you use a language with good words, it really gives an impact to others in such a way that people really tend to think that this man is really something different. Not all people have good vocabulary. When we use our own vocabulary, it can open a lot many fields for us which are only related with this thing called vocabulary, like newspaper editing, online editing, magazine editing, etc, which are really good paying jobs. There are even some part time jobs which require you to have really good vocabulary. Yes, it is definite that only and only vocabulary is not going to help you in any ways. Until the grammar concept is good, one is nowhere. When you use great language skills together with your vocabulary, people often find it really interesting to hear you, people respect you, even if you don't know much. It is something really fantastic, that many people are employed just because they have impressive vocabulary at their account. Moreover, it is also fun to be with the new and really new words also. It is a weapon(I must say because it sometimes has incredible effects) to impress others. Vocabulary can therefore also be defined as one's mindset and collective information about "words" in a language.
I have discussed a lot many benefits why one should have a good vocabulary and must have good usage skills of it too. Now, let me tell you what points are required to be considered to enrich your vocabulary. In short, I have completed about the "Why" part of the topic, and now I am going to start about the "How" topic.
Underlining Tough Words - Often, a student finds some problematic words while reading textbooks. He does not understand the literal meaning of the word and also, therefore, does not understand the sentence and most of the students tend to skip it. While some have the habit of skipping these words, some have the habit of writing a collection of words from each chapter in a notebook. But sometimes, these notebooks are not maintained because, for most of the students, it looks to be really boring after a few number of chapters, he completes in this way. Also, these copies are tender to be kept safe, because often they are lost even. Sometimes, it happens that student even does not know about the words, not even the name of the words, so how will he develop his vocabulary.
It is really good to find more words to be put into one's own vocabulary library. So for this, one can make some of use of the textbooks, which one reads. But often, many methods fail to succeed. But I bet, that there are many words which cannot be remembered for a long time. There are specific type of such words for every person. And so, there is one method which will not fail and will help everyone. What is it? Well, it is the underlining of the words in the book itself.
Well, as far as the book belongs to someone else, one cannot underline the words without prior permission for the person from which the book has been borrowed. But if the book belongs to you yourself, then you can underline the words in your own book. After underlining, consult a dictionary and try to find out the meanings. When done, just write about the underlined word, the meaning of that word. How is this going to benefit you anyway? It is going to benefit you really in good way. Whenever you will open your book, will read it once more or even have a glance, your eyes will automatically be caught by these words and you will have a glance at the words. As a result, you will have an attention towards that word. This can be very helpful during examinations, because most of us have a habit of going through the books during examinations.
Reasoning - Whenever we find some tough words while reading, we consult a dictionary. People say that consulting the dictionary is the best way to find out a meaning for a given word. But, at this point in this topic, I would disagree with the statement. I would say that there is another way which can help to enrich the vocabulary. It is the reasoning method. What is it?
It is often seen that people find a word in a sentence which they don't understand. But sometimes, the sentences are such, the paragraphs are such that if read carefully, one can easily find the meaning of the word by reasoning out what can be the meaning of the word. If done, it is good. Now if you consult a dictionary after taking your time to think and predict, and then look into the dictionary, you will be able to retain that word for a longer period in your mind.
Developing Synonymous Knowledge - As said, many people thinking that it is really tough to have a great vocabulary, but it is not so. We can have it by having a good knowledge of synonyms. Why synonyms? Synonyms are nothing but classification. Just like in biology, life forms are classified on the basis of their characteristics and the classified organisms or life form are similar to each other in many ways. Similarly, one word has got many synonyms, sometimes, even 20-30, means not same one hundred percent, but at least having the same meaning to some extent. The idea of developing synonymous knowledge can help one to use effective language in a work. How? When we learn, say 5 synonyms, we learn 5 words, but when we count the meaning, it is one. So, it is like learning 5 words but learning just 1 meaning so it saves time actually, because all the words more or less have the same meaning.
Reading Old Novels - In old days, the class of writers like Sir Conan Doyle and many others, had a style of writing. It is often seen that good writers have great vocabulary. And the old writers, and their old novels are good because they know the old words, as well as the new ones. Though their books may not have new words, but we can have a lot many words which we don't know and may know when we come to read such old novels.
Old novels are most classic ones, which help us to beautify our works even today. Not only, old novels, old newspapers, old editorials, all have some particular greatness in their work.
Dictionary Fun - Though most of the people consider this idea to be a flop one, but I still consider it to be useful. What is the idea? The idea is to read the dictionary. Of course, many terms may come consecutively which may not have been installed in our cerebrums and then we will have problems learning, say 10 words, whose meanings we don't know but they are in series. But, there is a game like thing, just fun to use dictionary in such a way, that one finds it fun to add more words to one's vocabulary. What is that way? Of course, as said earlier, learning more words consecutively on a single page of the dictionary would be quite tough to learn. We may easily forget these words, but if we learn words in a dictionary by turning the pages in a funny way, learning the whole lot of words will be fun.
What to do? When we see a word in one page, we would surely like to have a glance during this fun on a word whose meaning we do not know. Go through the meaning nicely. Now just hold your dictionary and just choose some another page, just by turning the pages. Now see another word, which is not in our own vocabulary and now learn that word. So, in a nutshell, it is like just go on learning more and more words by just turning the pages. In this way, one finds words starting with different alphabets and then does not find it boring to "read" a dictionary. Is it not fun?
Use Word-processors - We, specially the members of ISC are often linked with the world of mass typing. We type a lot, in short. While making posts in resource section or sections like that, we can do one thing. We can just first type those words in a word processor like MS - WORD or some other word processor, edit it and then post it here. Now how can a Word-Processor help to enrich one's vocabulary? Yes, they have great potential to do so. Most of the word processors have synonym, homophone, homonym, etc. options in them. While using these softwares, we can just learn new idioms, new synonyms and therefore enriching the vocabulary.
Just below, now I am going to give an example of a topic, typed by myself, with about good use of vocabulary in it. Read it and see the use of variety of words in it.
Sample Usage
Prediction of War - India and China
Since ages, the two nations, namely India and China have been the biggest enemies of each other. Both the countries are very powerful. Since 1962, China has been always cheating India. Its strategies have been deadly. India is the second biggest populated country in the world, where China is the boss of the world in means of population. Since ages, it has been like a continuous cold war going on between the two nations. China has tried many times to overpower India. Though it seems that the Sino-Indian War has been a history but even today we have not forgotten the deadliest situations that we had faced. It always makes a pinning pain in our hearts when we recall the war. Though India was defeated, but both the sides had faced a big list of problems. It is not that the Indian soldiers were not capable to fight. They were the brave soldiers of our country who fought on the border till they breathed their last. It is easy to say that I salute them but saluting does not cure the wounds of their bodies and the wounds that their families had in their hearts. Whenever there has been a war, always the soldiers are the ones who have been facing the worst. We always see movies, but the real heroes are those bullet men who saved us from dying and died there. Recalling that war brings sobs in my eyes. On one side, there were 80,000 soldiers with China and on the other side there were only about 12,000 brave brothers of ours facing their heat. In Siachen the conditions were miserable. Due to the cold weather, even the tooth pastes froze. Chocolates used to become like hard rocks. When the soldiers fired a bullet, the shells of the bullet stuck to their palms and came out only with the skin of the palm. Such were the conditions, which the Indian soldiers faced.
The result of the Sino-Indian war was a bitter truth for India. India had lost it. India had lost 3,150 soldiers and about the same number of the soldiers got captured. About 1,050 got wounded, whereas the China military faced far less casualties. About 750 were killed, and 1,700 wounded. No soldier was captured.
What I am trying to say is that the China military does not always win just because of its military strength, but also because of the strategies it plans. Ever since India has been discussed with China, China has been trying to make India confused, excited and anxious. Sometimes, it gets into the borders of India and etches its name on a stone present in India. Sometimes it finds no patrolling over the Indian border and gets inside to take a look and idea and a glance of the Indian military system. Sometimes its plains enter the Indian border without permission.
Recently it was observed that China has increased its activities around the Indian border. What can we make out of this? Is he Chinese army entering the Indian border to see the beauty of Indian forests without any prior permission? Or are they trying to inhale the fresh air present in the Indian subcontinent. Do they want to move further, see the Taj Mahal or the Qutab Minar? Or do they want to enjoy a beautiful picnic over there in the Indian places. Whenever India said that China has been breaking the rules and is trying to take the advantage of the absence of the military on the borders in a small area and gets inside the Indian border, it completely disagrees on this topic. It says that it has never done this. It always tends to make some confusion in the minds of the Indian military personnel. It gets inside the border of India and says that it is its own lands. First it integrated Tibet into its own landmass and now with this expansion in its territories, it says that the area in which it enters is its own and it has rights to get in.
It has also been heard that China is trying to place its warships around the Indian coastline and wants to capture the ports of India after some warfare. It has been heard that first it will destroy the patrolling of the Indian navy around the coastline of India and then capture the ports of India. After this it will bombard on the Indian subcontinent and try to expand its territories.
It is not something new to hear that India can be defeated and almost destroyed if there is a war between India and China. It's due to the defensive and aggressive capabilities that China has. India's combat ships are becoming older. Now also let's see the strength of both the nations. China is the biggest Air force in the whole of Asia with around 400,000 soldiers. It has around 9200 aircrafts out of which 2300 are combat aircrafts. It has more than 490 air bases and has more than 400 nuclear bombs. India has only 170,000 soldiers in its air force. India has around 3400 aircrafts out of which 1330 aircrafts are combat aircrafts. India has 334 airbases and only around 60-70 nuclear bombs. The main thing that is the army strength of India is also far less than that of China. Where China has around 2,225,000 soldiers in its army with great and heavy weapons, India constitutes of only 1,325,000 soldiers in its army with no so developed, modern, hi-tech and strong weapons which disable them to cope with the China army.
It is of great concern for India why China is doing such activities. It is notable that we don't know what they are willing to do. We only have some guesses whereas as usual China is known to be making daring and harsh secret strategies against India. However, China has been making such type of activities always, but this time, it is more active in the Indian borderline. This is the thing which is considered to be concerned, because even the old military professionals are known to be saying that this time China is anxious, more than ever. It is willing to increase the territory of its subcontinent and is willing to capture, part of the Indian subcontinent in the North. It seems that this time, in the greed of landmass, it is in mood to do anything, and it is not going to care about how many people of their country die or how many of ours.
It has been always observed that India has not powerful weapons as compared to other nations like China, US, Russia and all. It has been using the old warships to guard the Indian coastline. It has been very reluctant towards building a new set of powerful weapons and investing a larger amount. It was clear and proved in the 26/11 terrorist attack in the city of Mumbai. Due to incapable helicopters, the soldiers got late to reach the place to act in time. It proved to be fatal. Moreover, the submachine guns that Indian army uses are a bit old fashioned and not able to cope with the deadly machine guns of US, China etc. The combat aircrafts of the Indian Air Force is also not so deadly and the ones which are very good combat aircrafts, the Indian Air Force has only few of them.
India needs to invest more money to the weapons it possesses. It needs to cut down its unnecessary expenses like too much investment in the elections. The politicians may think that I am saying something very bad. But according to me, a good politician never needs to advertise himself. He/she needs to do some work, which makes them popular, and people tend to vote them otherwise, no one would have known the father of the nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I think that he had not advertised himself ever to be known. Why is there a need to make so much expense on advertising for political parties? I think that advertising imparts an image to the politicians that they have not done anything, so people do not know them and they need advertisement. With the development of fashion, now even big parties like Congress and BJP tend advertise via the medium of television. Is there a need? I think that India needs to cut down its unnecessary expenses and add more investment into the ‘security and safety of the entire nation'. India needs to come out of corruption and give more effort towards investing. It needs to increase the salaries of the soldiers to encourage the young men to get into the army, and have a better attitude to work for the country.
At last I would like to conclude by saying “Best of luck to the Indian security, the Army, the Police, the Navy and the Air Force and to me."
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