When you first started learning English, you were probably introduced to different “parts of speech.” These are classes of words, like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Each of these classes performs different functions in a sentence.

In English, many words stay the same … they can be used as several parts of speech without changing their form. For example, in “Do you need some help?” the word help is a noun. In “Can I help you?” help is a verb. The form of help stays the same.

But this is certainly not always the case. And if you get the word form wrong, it will hurt your fluency. It’s like wearing a pair of jeans, but wearing the wrong size. You are dressed appropriately … you’re wearing jeans, but everyone notices that they don’t fit. Using the wrong word form is like having the right word, but not having it fit.

For example, if you’re taking TOEFL and you say, “Animals survival by hunting prey,” or “This choice is the most convenience,” you’re using the wrong form of the right word. It should be, “Animals survive by hunting prey,” and “This choice is the most convenient.”

So how do you learn the proper word forms?

First, be sure you really understand what functions a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb perform. Diagramming is a super-effective way to master this. When I teach, I often give students practice where I remove a word from a sentence and have them guess what kind of word goes in the blank. For example, if I say “the — is late today,” you know that a noun goes in the blank. If I say, “He — very well yesterday,” you’ll guess that a verb is missing. You can do the same thing when you study alone by taking simple sentences and identifying the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

Second, when you study vocabulary, be sure to include different forms of the word. The Academic Word List makes this really easy, because each of the headwords includes the whole word family. So if you learn the verb analyze, you should also master two noun forms, analysis (the process of analyzing) and analyst (someone who does the analysis). Perhaps you’ll also want to include the adjective analytical and the adverb analytically. If you do this, your vocabulary will expand exponentially. You’ll get way more “bang for your buck,” because instead of just learning one use of a particular word, you’ll be able to use it in multiple ways.

Finally, focus on commonly misused pairs (or triplets) of words. For example, the verb produce and the noun product are commonly mistaken. If possible, make a mental picture of these words, rather than translating into your own language. For example, when learning produce, picture an Apple factory with thousands of workers carefully assembling iPhones. The factory is producing iPhones. When learning product, picture an Apple store offering a wide variety of items. The store sells lots of Apple products.

Once you’ve chosen a word to learn, what’s the best way to do that? What’s the most effective strategy for learning new vocabulary words?

An interesting book I read in graduate school, Vocabulary Myths by Keith S. Folse, claims that there is no single best way to learn new vocabulary words. As Folse says, “It does not seem to matter so much what students do with new vocabulary provided that they do something and that they do it consistently. In other words, find the method that works best for you and then keep using it.

Overall, the best vocabulary learners, according to research, followed these steps:

• They were instructed on how to learn vocabulary (something I hope my blog posts can help with).
• They set specific learning goals for a set period of time.
• They selected the most appropriate learning strategies (more on that later).
• They periodically evaluated their strategies and used a combination of strategies to improve their effectiveness.
• They regularly tested their mastery of vocabulary words.
• They managed their time and made sure to devote a set amount of time to learning vocabulary during their English studies.

So how about those learning strategies? If there’s no single best way, what are my recommendations for effective vocabulary studies?

I personally prefer a fairly structured approach to learning vocabulary. From my own experience with French, keeping a notebook of new words and reviewing it regularly really helped me to acquire an extensive vocabulary over a period of years. With new technology and mobile apps, it’s no longer necessary to actually write words down on paper, but I believe you should store them somewhere.

To learn each individual word, I recommend four steps.

First, establish a clear definition of the word. For that, research shows that using a dictionary is definitely better than trying to guess the meaning of the word from its context. Should you use a bilingual or English-only dictionary? Although many ESL teachers frown on bilingual dictionaries, I think they’re usually necessary for beginners and even intermediate students. Just make sure you use a high-quality dictionary from a reputable publisher, or a trusted online dictionary. If you are a more advanced student, I would also recommend that you identify common collocations for your target words. Collocations are pairs or groups of words that regularly occur together. By using an online resource such as this, you can identify, for example, when to use responsible for and responsible to. This is a particularly important skill for the IELTS.

Second, place your target word in the context of a sentence. English-only dictionaries are a great resource for such sentences. When possible, if you’re recording a sentence along with the definition, use a sentence that has a personal meaning. For example, my boss is responsible for preparing reports for the managers.

Third, connect the new word to a concept – something that will help you remember it. To do this, I highly recommend that you use a mental image and not the definition in your native language. For example, if you’re learning the word responsible, create a mental image of your boss preparing a report at her desk. With this mental image, you’ll be less likely to rely on your mental translator when you’re speaking or writing that word.

Fourth, explore your word. Is it related to other words you know? This would be a great time to add it to those groups of words I talked about in my last post. So, for example, perhaps you have a group of “adjectives to describe good workers.” You could add responsible to other words like diligent, hard-working, trustworthy, and honest. In addition, you should also learn other words in the same word family. If you are studying responsible (an adjective), you should also learn responsibility (a noun) and responsibly (an adverb). Finally, as you become more advanced, you’ll want to take a look at the morphology of your target word.

Morphology is the study of a word’s structure. Some understanding of English morphology, especially the Latin and Greek roots of English words, can greatly expand your vocabulary. Did you know, for example, that 90% of scientific words in English have Latin and Greek roots? I’ll discuss that in a later post. For now, just try incorporating some of these ideas into your vocabulary learning!

In an earlier post, I discussed how researchers have found that learning vocabulary from word lists can actually be very effective. In this post, I’d like to talk specifically about the Fry Word List of 1000 high-frequency words (for beginners) and the Academic Word List (for intermediate and advanced learners).

The Fry Word List presents the most commonly occurring “sight words” in English. Developed by Dr. Edward Fry for American schoolchildren, this list contains the words most frequently used in reading material for Grades 3 – 9. The list is divided into ten sublists of 100 words each, with the sublists arranged in order of frequency; in other words, sublist 1 presents the most common words while sublist 10 contains the least common of those 1000 words. This organization makes it easy for students to progress smoothly and logically in their vocabulary learning.

The Fry words are called “sight words” because readers should be able to recognize these words “on sight.” Teachers sometimes contrast these words with phonics words, which are generally words that can be sounded out phonetically (like con-tract or bath-tub). But, in fact, both methods are useful to develop reading skills and, in American schools, are usually combined in reading classes.

The Fry Word List is very helpful for beginning English learners because these words are so common. They account for about 90% of the words in a typical book or website. Also, you can Google “Fry Word List” and find many online resources for learning and reviewing them. Although these are often targeted for American children, there’s no reason why adult English learners can’t use them. I highly recommend that beginners use this word list along with a good beginners dictionary like the Oxford Picture Dictionary.

The Academic Word List (AWL) is aimed for intermediate and advanced students. Like the Fry list, the AWL also contains frequently occurring words, but these words appear in a wide range of academic texts. However, don’t be misled by the word “academic”: these are not technical or specialist words like protozoa or photosynthesis, but rather words like create and occur.

The AWL contains 570 different “word families,” with a headword (such as evident) and other forms of that word (such as evidenced, evidence, evidently, and evidential). Like the Fry list, the AWL contains ten sublists; in the AWL, the first nine sublists have 60 word families while sublist 10 has 30. The AWL has also organized the sublists by frequency, making it easier to manage your learning since the words on the first sublist are much more common than those on the last.

Studying the AWL offers a number of benefits. First, there’s a wide range of online resources that provide user-friendly exercises and quizzes to test your knowledge. In addition, you can master different forms of the same word, which is one of the biggest challenges for English learners. I frequently hear students confuse words like intelligent and intelligence and economic and economical. It makes sense to differentiate these words when you first learn the headword. Finally, as the developers of the AWL point out, “Just over 94% of the words in the AWL occur in 20 or more subject areas. This principle ensures that the words in the AWL are useful for all learners, no matter what their area of study or what combination of subjects they take at tertiary (university and above) level.” This means that you’ll be encountering these words again and again in the more advanced texts you’ll need to read for TOEFL, IELTS, or higher education in an English-speaking university.