science, medicine, engineering, and law, there are likely about one million English words. None
of us can learn all of these—nor do we need to—but the more words you know, the more you
will understand the world around you. When a news anchor says that a bill has “bipartisan
support” in Congress, you will be a more engaged citizen if you know what bipartisan means.
(It means that both political parties support the legislation.)
A complaint we often hear from students is that the English language is too complex. For
instance, why are there at least seven synonyms for friendly (affable, amiable, amicable,
amenable, cordial, genial, solicitous, and so on) when we could all just say “friendly”? For the
same reason there are there at least a million songs available to download when you could just
listen to the same Beyoncé song all day. Variety is the spice of life!
Convinced yet? Well, what if we told you that having a stronger vocabulary can actually make
you smarter? How can we make such a bold claim?
Psychology researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley conducted an important study on
preschoolers nearly 30 years ago. The study was simple: They counted the number of words
that the preschoolers heard in their everyday lives from parents, siblings, playmates, television,
and so on. They then tracked these children throughout the rest of their childhoods and
measured how well they performed in school and, later, whether these children went to college,
where they went to college, and what careers they pursued.
The results were startling and undeniable: The children who were exposed to the highest
number of words were the most successful later in life. And here is the best part: It was not
only the quantity of words they were exposed to, but also the diversity of words that affected
the final outcome. In short, knowing seven different words for friendly is not just a strategy to
boost your Scrabble game; it might actually make you smarter.
Scientific evidence that vocabulary is “good for your brain” is a good motivation for learning
some. This book will show you the way.
Who Needs This Book?
Some might tell you that the best and easiest way to learn vocabulary is to learn it naturally
over the course of a lifetime: from your friends, parents, teachers, the media, books, and so
on. After all, that’s how you first learned many of the words you use every day.
While there is no substitute for the natural, organic way of learning vocabulary from reading and
real-life interactions, if you feel that your vocabulary is weaker than it should be, you need a
fast way to bring yourself up to speed. Reading the world’s great classic works of literature and
listening to hours of NPR on the car radio takes years of dedication. There is a faster way.
This book is written for people at all levels of English knowledge and expertise. Maybe you are
relatively new to the English language, know the basics, and now want to learn more