Daily Guidance # 10

Daily Guidance #10 

The many ways to know a word

What is it that you learn when you first meet a new word in English? It might be the word’s meaning, how it is spelled, its part of speech in a given sentence or simply its pronunciation. Typically we learn to recognize form and meaning first. This is receptive knowledge and even in our first language, we recognize far more vocabulary words than we can actually produce.

To gain productive knowledge of a word, we have to be able to spell and say it, as well as use it correctly in a sentence. Words often have multiple meanings, so the deeper your knowledge of a word extends, the more nuanced meanings you will be able to recognize and use in your own speech and writing. For this reason, when you are learning a language for academic use, the trick is to increase both the breadth and depth of your vocabulary. This means meeting more words and getting to know them better.

TIP: Remember, it’s not just about how many words you know, but how well you know them!