Vocabulary and how to learn it

If you have difficulty in speaking or listening, it may be because of problems with vocabulary. You may not know enough vocabulary, or you may be unable to use the vocabulary which you know effectively. Problems with vocabulary will also affect your reading speed, and make it difficult for you to express yourself in writing.

If you want to find out roughly how many words you know now, click here for some tests which might help. The recognition tests are related to 'passive' vocabulary' (words that you can recognize), and the productive tests are related to 'active' vocabulary (words that you can actually produce, or use). The tests have been developed by Paul Nation, Batia Laufer and some other people.

It is important to know how to use words correctly, and to understand that even though a word in English may have a meaning close to a word in Japanese, this does not mean that the two words have exactly the same meaning, or that they will be used in exactly the same way.

Good examples of the above are 'hot' and 'warm' in English and 'あつい' and '暖かい'in Japanese. In English we talk about 'hot drinks', but the Japanese equivalent is '暖かい飲み物'. Also interesting is the relationship between 'blue', 'green' and '青','緑' . Compare the following:

The sky is blue. 空は青い。
The traffic lights have gone green. 信号が青になりました。
London has many green spaces. ロンドンは緑が多い。

You should also beware of katakana words that seem to be the same as English words. Here are two examples that often cause confusion: チョイス and タバコ.
Because you can say チョイスする in Japanese, students often want to use 'choice' as a verb, but this is not possible. 'Choice' is a noun; 'choose' is the equivalent verb form.
It's your choice, so I will not interfere with your decision.
You must choose whether to work in the United States or stay in Japan.

タバコ in English is, in fact, spelt 'tobacco' (and entered the Japanese language from Portuguese). Note also that タバコをすう is 'smoke (cigarettes)' in English.
Do you smoke?
Not any more. I smoked twenty cigarettes a day when I was living in Japan, but they are so expensive in the UK that I have given up.


There is a difference between 'active' and 'passive' vocabulary. Your 'active' vocabulary will contain the words that you want to be able to use as well as understand. Your 'passive' vocabulary will contain the words that you want to recognize but not use yourself. Your passive vocabulary will be bigger than your active vocabulary. For example, you might want to know the meaning of the word 'alter' even though you yourself will normally use 'change'.

How many words should I know? Which words should I learn?
You should aim to know at least the 2,000 words that are most often used in English. (This list, from the Compleat Lexical Tutor, gives the 2,000 words, and their most common variations.) Beyond that, there are an additional 570 words that are frequently found in academic English. (The tests referred to above come from the Compleat Lexical Tutor and are based on these lists.) If you have all these words in your passive vocabulary, you should be able to read most general texts without using a dictionary. This is because you will understand enough to be able to guess the relatively few words that you do not know.
There is another version of the list here, with useful links, as part of Andy Gillett's Using English for Academic Purposes Site.

A useful site for encouraging you to learn vocabulary is Merriam Webster's Learner's Dictionary. It has lists of the 3,000 core English words, and a separate list of the words in that 3,000 that are related to economics. There are also various apps to download to your phone. Some of these are free, others are not... (If you really want to improve your economic vocabulary, and your ability to write about economics, however, I strongly recommend the Economist's Economics A-Z.)

There is also the Professional Word Web, provided by Hong Kong University's English Centre. If you register and then log in you will gain access to texts using useful economic vocabulary, with explanations of meaning, examples of use, quizzes, and games!

(There are quite a lot of websites about vocabulary and vocabulary learning. Find a site that suits you.)

The Longman's Language Activator is a good dictionary for increasing your active vocabulary since it presents words in groups with similar meanings and shows how each one is used. It may be in your electronic dictionary.

Here is some advice for learning vocabulary:

1. Learn a few words every day, and revise all the words you have learnt once a week. Just before you go to sleep is meant to be a good time for memorising.

2. Do not learn long lists of English word = Japanese word. Learn words which you have met in a passage that you were reading in class, or when you were reading by yourself. In particular, learn words that you might want to use in the future, in class discussions or in writing, for example, or after you have graduated. The lists given above should help you to select which words to learn, and whether to learn them for active or only for passive use.

3. Learn words in phrases or sentences which will help you to remember their meaning and how they are used. For example:
'We discussed the problems of the Japanese economy.'
'We had a discussion about the future of the Japanese economy.'
It might help to say them out loud (or whisper them) in a jazz- or rap-type rhythm (in the style of a Study Skills jazz chant).

4. If a word has several related variations, learn these together. For example, learn 'alteration' and 'alternate' along with 'alter'.