Erin: How can I improve my vocab?

[hoang_luong]

I think one of the best ways to learn new vocab is reading well-written English-language newspapers or magazines. A large vocab will significantly help you to improve the chance of giving more correct answers in the reading test. However, learning new vocab by heart from lengthy word lists doesn't help a lot in tackling the reading problems. A friend of mine who has built up a very large vocab says he still couldn't answer correctly as many questions as he wished on the TOEFL's reading subtest, wheareas I know for sure many others who have much smaller vocab performed extremely well, say achieving 45-48 correct answers for a total of 50 reading questions! This example clearly tells you that reading, reading and reading suitable materials regularly is extremely important, as it builds into your mind a conditioned ability to work out the hidden meanings, main ideas, or so of the reading passage.