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We, as language learners, know that having a vast vocabulary helps when we are trying to convey our ideas, so how do we increase our vocabulary when learning a foreign language?

Let me share some tips with you.

1. Read, read, and read some more. What are you going to read? Anything and everything. Choose a topic you’re interested in and read. For example, if you like cars, read a magazine about cars. If you like movies, read something about movies. It doesn’t have to a magazine or a book; there are oodles of websites with very good articles in nearly every subject on Earth.

If you like a movie that’s based on a book, read that book! This is called narrow reading and you eventually learn many words that appear in the movie and book!

2. Write! Whenever you come across a new words, write a contextualized sentence with it. For example, you’ve just learned the word “grandmother”. Why not write what your grandmother is like, for example: My grandmother is caring and loving because she always makes cookies for us.

3. Learn words of the same family. For example, if you learn the word “hot”, you can also look up how to say “heat”, a noun, and “to heat”, a verb. If you learn the verb “to die” you can also learn the noun “death” and the adjective “dying”, and so forth.

4. Learn prefixes and suffixes. Almost every language has words made up of a ‘root’ word and prefixes and suffixes. For example, the suffix -mente makes adverbs in Portuguese: rápido (quick) –> rapidamente (quickly), lento (slow) –> lentamente (slowly). There are several Latin and Greek prefixes in Portuguese that you can also find in English, so it makes your reading easier and you will more words.

5. For intermediate learners = use a monolingual dictionary. Nowadays you can find a myriad of apps for learning languages so if you are an intermediate student, make sure to have a Portuguese – Portuguese dictionary on your cell phone, tablet or computer. That way when you look up a word, you will also learn more words on the go.

6. Listen! I always tell my students that listening and reading are the most powerful tools for increasing your vocabulary because they combine elements like pronunciation, grammar, word usage etc. YouTube is full of videos for any purpose so there’s no excuse!

7. Don’t skip new words. If you are reading something and there’s that one word you were going to skip, don’t do it. Learn that new word and you’ll see that it will keep popping up! Always keep a notebook or a notepad with you.

8. Why not set a goal of learning at least five words a day? By the end of one year, you will have learned almost 2,000 words!

Por hoje é só! Nos vemos em breve!

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