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Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Vocabulary & Dictionaries & Collocations & Idioms & Phrasal Verbs & More!
Vocabulary & Dictionaries & Collocations & Idioms & Phrasal Verbs & More!
Having a good vocabulary is important so that you can communicate with other English speakers. If you don't know the right words to use, you won't be able to share your ideas. Research has shown that you need to see, hear, or use a word at least 10 times before you really know it. So keep using English as much as you can and notice the way people use language all around you! I hope the websites linked on this page will help you master new vocabulary and idioms, and understand how to use vocabulary in context. Please note that some of the information on this page is for advanced language learners.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Free Rice lets you practice your vocabulary and, for every answer that you get right, they will donate 10 grains of rice to help end hunger in the world.
Language Guide offers visuals and sound files of basic English nouns. This website might be useful to learn some basic vocabulary. Most (but not all) of the pronunciation is accurate.
Vocabulary.com is an excellent website to help you increase your vocabulary. You do have to signup, but it's free.
There are over 120,000 vocabulary questions.
Vocabulary for learners of Englishhas lists, exercises, quizzes, and advice.
Engames is a small website with some good visuals (mostly mindmaps) that can help you learn some common English collocations.
BBC Learning English is an English website so the language is not quite the same as the English used in Canada. However, it's an excellent website with lots of language learning activities.
Lexipedia helps you learn vocabulary in a visual way.
Your Dictionary has easy-to-understand explanations of root words.
Quizlet is an excellent tool for learning new words and improving your vocabulary. I've made many thematic sets; you can study these sets on my Quizlet page at
https://quizlet.com/BonnieNicholasHere's a link to my Screencast on how to use Quizlet. Here is a link to my Quizlet set on Preparation for Online LearIf you click on my name on Quizlet, you will be able to see the other sets I have made on Quizlet. You can find many other sets made by other people on Quizlet, too.
The General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL)
The General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL)
Some of you may be familiar with the General Service List (GSL), which lists the 2,284 most common general words in English. If you know all the words on the General service List, you should be able to understand about 80% of the words in most English texts. You can find the GSL here or on the University of Nottingham website.)
The GSL was created in 1953, so some reserarchers have updated this list to include more words as well as some newer words. The New General Service List (NGSL) has 2,818 words. (Note that this particular website is designed for English teachers, not English learners although you may find the website interesting.)
You can study the NGSL on Memrise. I have also added the words on the NGSL to my sets on Quizlet.
There is also an Academic Word List, which lists the 570 most common words found in academic texts. Avril Coxhead revised this list in 2000. There are many websites for both the GSL and the AWL; try this one from The University of Victoria.
Another website for the AWL is Academic Vocabulary, again from the University of Nottingham. As the Nottingham website points out, you cannot simply memorize these lists of words. To learn vocabulary effectively, you need to study and use the words in context. Research has suggested that, if you know the 2000+ words on the GSL and the 570 words on the AWL, you should be able to understand 90% of the words in any academic text. (Here's the source for this information, if you're interested.)
You can find the word families of the AWL sublists on the University of Victoria website, or on the Using English for Academic Englishwebsite . This website also has practice activities and definitions for the AWL words.
Gerry Luton has created an excellent website with many online AWL exercises.
Dictionaries
Dictionaries
There are some very good online dictionaries available on the Internet. You should always use an English-English dictionary first. Almost all of these online dictionaries have ads on their websites.
The English Picture Dictionary lets you look at words with pictures.
One Look is a website that brings together many different dictionaries.
I like dictionary.com, because it is clearly laid out, easy to use, offers an audio file of each word and the online dictionary provides links to suffixes, prefixes, similar words, etc.. However, like many excellent websites, it is American, and so you will have to spell words the American way.
This is an online thesaurus; a thesaurus is like a dictionary, except that it lists synonymsand antonyms.
Try looking up a word that you know really well and see what synonyms and antonyms you find.
The Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary is also an American dictionary.
The Longman ESL Dictionary is a good general dictionary.
Oxford is an English publishing company. Their site has some excellent supplementary resources.
For fun, here is the Twitter feed from Oxford Dictionaries.
Concordancers and Collocations
Concordancers and Collocations
A concordance is a collection of text samples. You can use concordances to find collocations, or words that often occur together.
Concordances and Collocations
Comments
Flax Learning Collocations is a well-designed, easy-to-use tool for finding collocations.
This site, https://www.ozdic.com/, has a very simple concordancer. Just type the word that you are trying to find collocations for and click on the search key.
This is another easy-to-use concordancer. Type a word in the search box to find its collocations; you don't have to download the dictionary.
Flax Interactive Language Learning can be a little more complicated to use, although the Learning Collocations page is straightforward.
This is a very useful site but again, it can be a little tricky to use. See my comments below.
WebCorp allows you to search the internet for collocations.
One of the best and most well-known concordances is found on Tom Cobb's The Compleat Lexical Tutor. Tom Cobb is a Canadian, living and working in Quebec; although his website has excellent information, you may find it a little difficult to navigate. The link will take you directly to the concordancer; you will have to choose a corpus before entering your chosen word or phrase. (I recommend that you choose the largest corpus, as this will give you the most hits.) Here are some visual instructions that you may find helpful:
Jason Levine (aka Fluency MC) is an English teacher who uses rap songs to teach collocations. He is very entertaining, and he has some very good ideas. He has his own website, Collo and Spark, as well as a YouTube channel where you can watch many of his videos.
Idioms
It's very easy to find the meaning of idioms online. Try googling any idiom (in quotation marks) + the word "idiom":
"knock your socks off" + idiom You should get several explanations of the meaning of the idiom.
You also might check out these websites:
You can search for a specific idiom in the idioms section of the Free Dictionary
English Idioms and Idiomatic Expressions from UsingEnglish.com.
The Idiom Connection This website allows you to search for idioms on specific topics.
The Idiom Site allows you to scroll down and look at many idioms without opening new pages.
Learn English today is a well-designed website where you can search for idioms by theme.
Learn English Idioms is a series of funny British videos.
Open English World lists many useful idioms. There's a lot of advertising on this website so don't be distracted.
Phrasal Verbs
Phrasal Verbs
Phrasal verbs are a special class of verbs in English, consisting of a verb plus a particle (either a preposition or an adverb). They behave very much like idioms in English, in that the meaning of a phrasal verb is different than what you might think by looking at the verb + the particle.
Here are some websites to get you started:
- The Phrasal Verb Demon. This site has listening exercises, quizzes, videos and lists of phrasal verbs.
- English Grammar Onlinehas some good information, as well as some online exercises.
- Learn English Todayhas a comprehensive alphabetical list of English phrasal verbs.
- UsingEnglish.com has a very useful and easy to use Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.
Business Vocabulary & Idioms
Business Vocabulary & Idioms
- Learn English Todayhas some excellent information on business vocabulary, phrases, and idioms, all organized by topic.
- English Club(another good website that some of you may be familiar with) also has a good section on the language of business.
- The Business English Sitehas some exercises that you can use to test your knowledge of basic business English.
- ESL Mania has a good list of business idioms.
Spelling
Spelling
Spelling is important! While English is not a strictly phonetic language, there are some basic rules to help you learn how to spell correctly.
Barron's Study Guides and Strategies is an excellent website, with lots of good information on (no surprise!) study skills and strategies. If you scroll down the homepage, you will also find some pages that may help you with your spelling. I believe that reading widely in English will also help your spelling.
If you have a lot of problems with English spelling, you might want to try some of the spelling quizzes on this website from the ESL Resource Center. Some of the quizzes have sound and some don't.
Spellzone is a site that allows you to learn spelling words by theme.
Prefixes and Suffixes
Prefixes and Suffixes
- English Grammar Online: Prefixes and Suffixes
- Prefixes and Suffixes Quiz
- Noun Suffixes Quiz
- Prefixes and Suffixes - Online exercises
- Enchanted Learning: Prefixes and Suffixes
- Oxford Dictionaries: Prefixes and Suffixes
- My English Teacher: Prefixes and Suffixes
- UVic Study Guide: Prefixes and Suffixes
- Reading Rockets: Root words, Roots, and Affixes
- If you want to find some examples of words, you can Google "words with the prefix re" (using whatever prefix you are looking for) or "words with the suffix er" (and again, type the suffix that you are looking for).
- And here are some quizzes and practice exercises that you can try if you have extra time (make sure you have completed all your required tasks first):
- English Grammar Online: Prefixes and Suffixes
- Prefixes and Suffixes Quiz
- Noun Suffixes Quiz
- Prefixes and Suffixes - Online exercises
- And finally, here is a video that you may find helpful to review the basics about prefixes and suffixes and how they work in English.
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