How to increase your word power using the Imported Content function

You can find a podcast of this on my main blog.

I do not know if people realize how powerful the Imported Content section of The Linguist can be in increasing your English word power. Let's look at some examples. I am going to talk about importing word lists to get them into your Words I am Learning area. Remember, however, that I do recommend building up your language power and fluency by doing a lot of reading and listening with with easy content and constantly updating your "known words" total. Still, here are some "power user" tips for people who already studied a lot of content.

1) Create word files with some of the common words that you know still cause you problems. You might create one file with only prepositions. Import the list into your Imported Content area. Call it "prepositions" and maybe add the date. Save it. Go back and save all the prepositions you want to see in action. These will now be on your Words I am Learning list. You will see lots of examples of the word in use from content that you have already studied. You should select "Prepositions" as the content item to study in the Review section. If you want you can then select them all and "move them to known" to remove them from your list.

You can do the same for short phrases that cause you trouble.  Mabye you have trouble with things like when to say "to do" and when to say "doing", "to talk" and "talking" etc. Make a Word document of examples like this and import them into The Linguist. You can do the same with adverbs and adjectives or whatever you have trouble with. Now you can see examples of these words in use in Review. You can always clear them out by selecting them and "moving them to known".

2) There are many lists of words and phrases available on the Internet. If you want the list of the most frequent 1000 or 2000 words or the Academic Word List you can go to Tom Cobb's site. If you just want the Academic Word List try here. Here is a TOEFL Word List. Here is another long list of useful words from Lava.

Open up these lists on your computer. Copy and paste a batch of words into your Imported Content area. Give this imported list a name, for example Academic Word List and a date. Now go through and save the words you need to learn. Do not forget to "update known words" when you are done. Now these saved words will be in you Words I am Learning area. You can select that list as a content itme and you can find examples of them in use from your content, or from content available to you in our Library. You can then study these words and at the same time quickly add some of the more difficult words that you already know to your "known words " total.

3) When you study these words, look for the connections and relationships. Look for common roots. Look for the suffixes that tell you that the word is a noun, (like "ness", "hood", "ism", "ion" etc., ), an adverb ( like 'ly") or and adjective (like al, ary, able, ible etc.) Remeber you can always search your Words I am Learning list by prefix, suffix and root word.

Let me know if these hints are useful. Or is it too much like work and do you just prefer listening and reading? That is OK too.