Vocabulary

Here are some ideas for praciticing and developing your vocabulary. First of all you should get yourself a good Advanced Learner's Dictionary. The dictionaries from Oxford, Cambridge, Macmillan and Collins are all good. The reason you should use an Advanced Learner's Dictionary is because they contain so much more information about each word or phrase.

If you just have a few minutes to spare the vocabulary quizzes on the BBC are a good way to learn everyday and idiomatic language. There are loads to do and they are organised by topics.

If you are interested in the meaning and origins of English phrases and idioms then this is worth checking out. For example do you know where OK comes from?

And finally here's a different way to see the vocabulary of a text or website. Paste in some text or just a website and Wordle creates a word cloud. Here's a word cloud for this blog. The word which appear a lot are the big ones.