What are active and passive vocabulary and how to increase them significantly. How many words does a person use in everyday life?

Vocabulary is a set of words in a person’s native language that are understandable in meaning and used in communication. It consists of words that are constantly used in oral and written speech, as well as words that are clear in meaning during conversation or reading literature.

There are two types of vocabulary:

Active. This is a stock of words that a person uses every day in speech when communicating with people around him.
Passive. These are words that are not used in communication, but are familiar by ear and content.

Active and passive vocabulary contain unequal word volume indicators. The active vocabulary of an adult greatly exceeds the passive one. The volume of words in both dictionaries is prone to constant change. They are able to increase if a person learns new terms, reads, develops, or decrease.

Active and passive vocabulary can decrease due to age, when words are forgotten or when they stop being used in communication. In this case, words will disappear from a person’s vocabulary or be replaced by new ones.

Estimating the exact vocabulary size of the average person is a difficult task. No one knows specifically what it should be in terms of content and number of words. The guideline in this matter is the Russian language dictionary of V. I. Dahl, which contains about two hundred thousand words and Ozhegov’s explanatory dictionary, with a volume of 70 thousand Russian words.

Of course, it is clear that such a volume of words is beyond the power of even the smartest person. Human memory is not capable of accommodating such an amount of information without harm to health.

An interesting study was recently conducted to determine the volume of words among native Russian speakers. It was carried out in the form of testing, where those interested marked in the provided list the words they understood and used. Words were marked only if the definition was fully understood.

To improve the quality of testing and sort out unreliable information, non-existent designations were present in the lists. The presence in the subject's questionnaire of at least one non-existent word marked as familiar to him was considered unreliable information and was not taken into account.

During the work carried out, the following data were obtained:

A person's passive vocabulary increases every year until the age of 20. Further, the rate of development decreases, gradually disappearing after 40 years. At this age and until the end of life, a person’s vocabulary remains unchanged.
Studying at school adds up to 10 words to children's passive vocabulary every day. The student’s active and passive vocabulary is constantly growing.
By the end of their studies, teenagers speak an average of 50 thousand words.
School time increases the growth of word volume by almost 3 times.
After leaving school, a person’s passive vocabulary stops growing and averages 3–4 words daily.
At the age of 55, the vocabulary continues to decline, due to irreversible deterioration of memory and the use of some words in practice.

The study assessed the educational level of the subjects, yielding interesting findings. It turns out that people have the greatest amount of words at different times in their lives. Secondary specialized education implies the end of word growth at the age of 40, and higher education a little later - after 50 years. This 10-year gap is explained by the discrepancy between the work performed and the position held by people with different education. Some people at the age of 50 read scientific books and gain new knowledge due to the specifics of their work or at their own request for self-education.

An interesting fact was also revealed, which showed that the subjects who completed their studies at the educational institution and did not graduate for personal reasons had the same passive vocabulary.

Vocabulary vocabulary of adults with different levels of education:

Passive vocabulary has the same indicators among people with secondary education and secondary special education. It varies between 70-75 thousand words.
People who have received higher education or have not graduated from college have a stock of 80 thousand words in their luggage.
Educated people, candidates of science, have a rich vocabulary of 86 thousand words, which is 6 thousand more than those who have received a higher education.

The education received, of course, affects a person’s vocabulary, but not 100%. A person himself makes a huge contribution to the development of vocabulary, constantly improving himself and engaging in self-education. Therefore, it is easy to meet a person who only graduated from school with a vocabulary several times larger than that of someone who received a higher education. The main role in this issue is played by a person’s sociability, occupation and lifestyle.

The conducted research does not provide a complete picture of the vocabulary of the average Russian person, as it contains small errors. But despite this, it helps to determine the connection between vocabulary and age and level of education.

How to expand your vocabulary

There are no universal ways to increase words in the vocabulary of your native language. Each person chooses what suits only him. To replenish your vocabulary, several methods developed by polyglots for learning a foreign language will help.

To increase passive vocabulary:

Reading literature.

The more and more often a person reads books, the richer and more interesting his speech sounds. It is pleasant to communicate and spend time with well-read people. This is a universal way to enrich your stock of new words. The quality of the selected literature is not the least important. It is better to give preference in the choice to popular science books and classical literature, avoiding modern “soap” novels or detective stories in them; you definitely won’t find new words in the correct application.

Be interested in the meaning of unknown words.

Always ask your interlocutor for the meaning of unclear words or new terms; do not ignore them. During communication, new information will be much easier to assimilate and can be quickly recalled if necessary. If a new interesting word was heard by radio announcers, then its meaning can be looked up in a special dictionary.

Dictionaries.

Every literate person should have a set of dictionaries at home that need to be used periodically. This is the explanatory dictionary of V. I. Dahl, Ozhegov, as well as the “Dictionary of Stresses for Radio and Television Workers.” It will help restore gaps in stress placement and contains many interesting words.

“The Dictionary of Stresses for Radio and Television Workers” has been published since 1960. Its authors are M.V. Zarva and F.L. Ageenko. The history of creating a dictionary of accents for radio and television workers began with the release of an announcer's reference book in 1951, and 3 years later the “Dictionary of Stresses” was released. To help the announcer."

All dictionaries for radio and television workers are based on the reserves of “heavy” words accumulated in the card index during the formation of the first radio in the era of the USSR. The radio and television files were constantly being replenished. Many words were never included in dictionaries. "Dictionary of Radio and Television" contains the names of geographical names, names of works of art, surnames and first names of people.

How to expand your active vocabulary

To increase your vocabulary, you will need the ability of a person to translate words from a passive vocabulary to an active one. The following methods will help with this:

Notes.

Write down new words along with their meanings on pieces of paper and stick them around the house in places where they will be most likely to catch your eye. This method will help you remember information more efficiently and quickly without memorizing it.

Associative series.

To remember a word, build a suitable association for it. It can be aimed at smell, taste, motor, tactile characteristics or tied to color. The result depends on the person’s imagination and desire to consolidate the information received. The associative series helps to remember difficult words and makes it easier to remember at the right time.

There are also exercises for developing your vocabulary. One of the most effective is the oral exercise of composing a story. To do this, you need to try to tell a small story, using only nouns, then only verbs or adjectives. This is not an easy exercise. It helps to use the existing stock of words, while refreshing them in a person’s memory.

The fact that the language's dictionary contains approximately 300 thousand words is only of theoretical interest for a beginner learning this language. Perhaps the main principle for the reasonable organization of your studies, especially at the initial stage, is the economy of words. You need to learn to memorize as few words as possible, but do it as best as possible.

Let us emphasize that our approach is directly opposite to the guiding principle of “suggestopedia”, with its emphasis on the abundance of words presented to the student. As you know, in accordance with its canons, a beginner needs to be literally “showered with words.” It is best to give him or her 200 new words every day.

Is there any doubt that any normal person will forget all those numerous words with which he was “showered” using this, so to speak, method - and most likely very soon, in just a few days.

Don't chase too much

It will be much better if at the end of a certain stage of study you know 500 or 1000 words very well than 3000 - but poorly. Don’t let yourself be led into a dead end by teachers who will assure you that you need to first learn a certain number of words in order to “get into the swing of things.” Only you yourself can and must decide whether the vocabulary you have mastered is sufficient for your goals and interests.

Language learning experience shows that about 400 well-chosen words can cover up to 90 percent of the vocabulary you need for everyday communication purposes. In order to read, you will need more words, but many of them are only passive. Therefore, with knowledge of 1500 words, you can already understand fairly meaningful texts.

It is better to master the words that are most necessary and important to you than to constantly rush to learn new ones. “He who pursues too much risks missing everything,” says a Swedish proverb. “If you chase two hares, you won’t catch either,” the Russian proverb answers.

Vocabulary in oral speech

Very roughly speaking, about 40 well-chosen, high-frequency words will cover about 50% of word usage in everyday speech in any language;

200 words will cover about 80%;
300 words - approximately 85%;
400 words will cover about 90%;
Well, 800-1000 words are about 95% of what would need to be said or heard in the most ordinary situation.

Thus, the right vocabulary helps you understand quite a lot with very little effort spent on cramming.

Example: if a total of 1000 words are spoken in an everyday conversation, then 500 of them, that is, 50%, will be covered by the 40 most common high-frequency words.

We emphasize that these percentages, of course, are not the result of exact calculations. They simply give the most general idea of how many words it will take to feel confident when entering into a simple dialogue with a native speaker. In any case, there is no doubt that by correctly choosing from 400 to 800 words and remembering them well, you can feel confident in a simple conversation, since they will cover almost 100% of those words that you cannot do without. Of course, under other, less favorable conditions, 400 words will cover only 80% of what you need to know - instead of 90 or 100%.

Reading vocabulary

When reading, having correctly chosen and well remembered about 80 of the most common, most frequent words, you will understand about 50% of a simple text;

200 words will cover approximately 60%;
300 words - 65%;
400 words - 70%;
800 words - approximately 80%;
1500 - 2000 words - about 90%;
3000 - 4000 - 95%;
and 8,000 words will cover almost 99 percent of the written text.

Example: if you have a text in front of you with a volume of approximately 10 thousand words (this is approximately 40 printed pages), then, having learned the most necessary 400 words in advance, you will understand about 7000 words that are used in this text.

Let us note again that the figures we give are only indicative. Depending on various additional conditions, 50 words will cover up to 50 percent of the written text, but in other cases you will need to learn at least 150 words to get the same result.

Vocabulary: from 400 to 100,000 words

400 - 500 words - active vocabulary for language proficiency at a basic (threshold) level.
800 - 1000 words - active vocabulary in order to explain yourself; or passive reading vocabulary at a basic level.
1500 - 2000 words - active vocabulary, which is quite enough to ensure everyday communication throughout the day; or passive vocabulary sufficient for confident reading.
3000 - 4000 words - in general, enough for almost fluent reading of newspapers or literature in the specialty.
About 8,000 words - provide complete communication for the average European. There is practically no need to know more words in order to communicate freely both orally and in writing, as well as read literature of any kind.
10,000-20,000 words - the active vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).
50,000-100,000 words - the passive vocabulary of an educated European (in their native language).

It should be noted that vocabulary alone does not ensure free communication. At the same time, having mastered 1,500 correctly chosen words, with some additional training, you will be able to communicate almost freely.

As for professional terms, they usually do not present any particular difficulties, since in most cases this is an international vocabulary that is quite easy to master.

When you already know about 1500 words, you can start reading at a fairly decent level. With passive knowledge of 3,000 to 4,000 words, you will be fluent in reading literature in your specialty, at least in those areas where you are confident. In conclusion, we note that, according to calculations carried out by linguists based on a number of languages, the average educated European actively uses about 20,000 words (and half of them are quite rare). In this case, the passive vocabulary is at least 50,000 words. But all this concerns the native language.

Basic vocabulary

In the pedagogical literature you can find the terminological combination “basic vocabulary”. From my point of view, at the maximum level the vocabulary is about 8000 words. It seems to me that it is hardly necessary to learn more words, except perhaps for some special purposes. Eight thousand words will be enough for full communication in any conditions.

When starting to learn a language, it would be wise to make do with shorter lists. Here are three levels that I have found in practice to provide a good guide for a beginner:

level A("basic vocabulary"):

400-500 words. They are enough to cover approximately 90% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 70% of simple written text;

level B(“minimum vocabulary”, “mini-level”):

800-1000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 80-85% of written text;

level B("average vocabulary", "medium level"):

1500-2000 words. They are enough to cover approximately 95-100% of all word usage in everyday oral communication or about 90% of written text.

An example of a good dictionary of basic vocabulary can be considered the dictionary published by E. Klett in Stuttgart, 1971, under the title "Grundwortschatz Deutsch" ("Basic vocabulary of the German language"). It contains 2,000 of the most essential words in each of a selected six languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

Eric W. Gunnemark, Swedish polyglot

“William Shakespeare’s dictionary, according to researchers, is 12,000 words. The dictionary of a black man from the cannibal tribe "Mumbo-Yumbo" is 300 words. Ellochka Shchukina easily and freely made do with thirty,” everyone is familiar with this quote from “The Twelve Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov. The satirists, and with them the readers, had a good laugh at the narrow-minded and undeveloped, but overly self-confident and arrogant Ellochka, all of whose interests, thoughts and emotions easily fit into thirty words. Meanwhile, when they start writing texts, many, without noticing it themselves, turn into the cannibal Ellochka. Whatever they want to write about, the same “Ho-ho!” comes out from the pen. and “Be rude, boy!” In this lesson we will talk about how to get rid of the problem of the cannibal Ellochka and expand your vocabulary. And in the next lesson we will learn how to learn to use it correctly.

Lexicon

Lexicon (dictionary, lexicon) is a set of words that a person understands and uses in his speech.

Vocabulary is usually divided into two types: active and passive.

Active vocabulary - these are the words that a person regularly uses in speech and writing.

Passive vocabulary - this set of words that a person knows and understands by hearing or reading, but does not use them himself. You can check your passive vocabulary on this site.

Typically, the volume of passive vocabulary exceeds the volume of active vocabulary several times. At the same time, the volumes of active and passive vocabulary are moving quantities: a person constantly learns new words and at the same time forgets or stops using words that he has already learned.

What should be the volume of active and passive vocabulary? Unexpectedly, it turned out that answering this question is quite difficult. Volume of the dictionary V.I. Dahl has two hundred thousand words, the academic dictionary of the modern Russian literary language - about one hundred and thirty thousand, the latest edition of Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary - seventy thousand words. Obviously, such meanings exceed the vocabulary of even the most erudite person. Unfortunately, there is no exact scientific data on what the average active and passive vocabulary of an adult educated person is. Estimates of active vocabulary range from five thousand to thirty-five thousand words. As for passive vocabulary, the range is from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand words. Most likely, the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. It is reasonable to assume that the active vocabulary of an adult reaches approximately fifteen thousand words (as is known, the active vocabulary of such a master of words as Pushkin was about twenty thousand words), and the passive vocabulary is forty to fifty thousand words (it is difficult to imagine an ordinary person who would know all the meanings of words from Ozhegov’s dictionary).

There is a simple way to roughly estimate the size of your passive vocabulary. Take an explanatory dictionary, for example, the same Ozhegov dictionary, open it on a random page, count how many of the defined words you know. Be honest with yourself: if a word seems familiar to you, but you don’t know its exact meaning, then you don’t need to count that word. Next, multiply this figure by the number of pages. Of course, you need to keep in mind that this result is approximate: you must assume that all pages contain the same number of articles, of which you know the same number of words. For the purity of the experiment, you can repeat these steps several times. However, you still won’t get an accurate result.

If you are too lazy to bother with the dictionary and calculations yourself, you can use our test.

Ways to expand your vocabulary

When writing texts, it is very important that the words used are as varied as possible. This, firstly, allows you to most accurately express your thoughts, and secondly, makes the perception of the text easier for the reader. There are several rules to help expand your vocabulary. They were designed primarily for people learning foreign languages, but can also be used effectively for native speakers.

Passive vocabulary

Read as much as possible. Reading- this is one of the main sources of new information, and, accordingly, new words. At the same time, try to choose literature of the highest possible level - it doesn’t matter whether we are talking about fiction, historical literature or journalism. The higher the level of the authors, the greater the chance that they use a variety of vocabulary, and most importantly, use words correctly. This way you will remember not only new words, but also the correct ways to use them.

Don't be afraid to appear ignorant. Many people feel extremely awkward when their interlocutor seems very educated, well-read and uses a lot of unfamiliar words. In such a situation, many are afraid of being branded ignorant, and therefore are embarrassed to ask about the meaning of this or that new word. Never do this. It's always better to ask about a word you don't know than to remain ignorant for the rest of your life. Don't expect to look this word up in the dictionary when you get home. You will simply forget it. If your interlocutor is really smart, your question will never seem funny to him.

Use a dictionary. It is useful to have a set of academic dictionaries and encyclopedias at home that you can refer to whenever necessary. Naturally, good dictionaries are not cheap, are often published in small editions and take up a lot of shelf space. Fortunately, with the development of the Internet, the problem of access to dictionaries has been solved. Nowadays you can find dictionaries and encyclopedias on almost any topic. The portals are quite convenient to use: slovari.yandex.ru and www.gramota.ru.

Active vocabulary

The tips above help expand primarily your passive vocabulary. However, the main topic of our lessons is effective writing. Therefore, the goal is not only to learn new words, but also to learn how to actively use them in writing. Here are a few exercises aimed at translating words from a passive vocabulary into an active one:

Notes method. You need to take cards, leaves or colored stickers. On one side you write the word you want to remember, on the other - its meaning, synonyms, examples of use. Such cards can be sorted out at home, in transport, at work. Fast, convenient and effective!

Notebook of synonyms. You can take a simple notebook or create an electronic document where you will write down words and a series of synonyms for them. For example, take the word result. A number of synonyms for it: consequence, consequence, trace, fruit, sum, total, conclusion, conclusion. It must be remembered that not only synonymous words can be added here, but also entire constructions: thus, so, from here we can conclude that we have come to the conclusion that, etc. You can also make notes in such a notebook about the nature of a particular word: obsolete, high, colloquial, pejorative. If you use an electronic document, then words on the same topic can be combined into separate blocks. In addition, such a notebook can also be supplemented with antonyms.

Thematic cards. They are convenient to use if you want to remember and translate several words related to a common theme into your active dictionary. Write them down on one card and stick them in a visible place. As a result, if you remember at least one word from the card, the rest will inevitably come to your mind.

Association method. Try to accompany the memorization of words with associations: figurative, color, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, motor. Having such an association will help you remember the right word much faster. Moreover, you can rhyme a word that is important to you into some short poem or insert it into a stupid and meaningless, but memorable statement.

Presentations and essays. We are accustomed to the fact that presentations and essays are school exercises, and, after finishing school, we can never return to them. Meanwhile, they help to significantly improve your writing skills and expand your active vocabulary. The presentations are suitable for a situation where you have read a text in which you came across many unfamiliar but useful words. Make a short written summary of this text using these key words and they will stay in your memory. As for essays, you don’t need to write long treatises; a short story of five sentences is enough, into which you insert new words.

Memory calendar. This is a repetition graph of the words you want to translate into the active dictionary. It is based on research into how human memory works. Scientists have long found out that after a week a person forgets eighty percent of all new information received. However, this percentage can be significantly reduced if you repeat the material at certain intervals. Then it goes into long-term active memory. For this purpose, the so-called rational repetition mode was developed. For convenience, here is a table:

First rep. Immediately after finishing reading
Second repetition. After half an hour
Third repetition. In one day
Fourth repetition. After two days
Fifth repetition. After three days
Sixth repetition. A week later
Seventh repetition. In two weeks
Eighth repetition. A month later
Ninth repetition. After two months

To achieve maximum effect, it is advisable not to deviate from the schedule. It is also best not to try to memorize a large array of words at once. It is better to divide words into small thematic groups and create your own repetition calendar for each group.

Crosswords, language games and puzzles. A great way to combine business with pleasure: practice learned words and play! Here are some of the most common language games: scrabble (in the Russian version - erudite, bald), anagrams, antiphrases, burime, metagrams, hat, contact.

Test your knowledge

If you want to test your knowledge on the topic of this lesson, you can take a short test consisting of several questions. For each question, only 1 option can be correct. After you select one of the options, the system automatically moves on to the next question. The points you receive are affected by the correctness of your answers and the time spent on completion. Please note that the questions are different each time and the options are mixed.

It is believed that at the dawn of human existence, speech was not much richer than that of some animals. If, for example, a chicken’s “language” has 10 simple signals, a baboon’s “language” has 18, then a primitive man, like a chimpanzee, had a “vocabulary” that barely exceeded 30 signals - cries.

As society developed, human speech was constantly enriched with new words. The Dictionary of the Modern Russian Language, published in 1956-1965 by the Academy of Sciences, contains 120,480 words in 17 volumes.

How quickly do children learn speech? If a child at the age of one year knows only three words, then six months later his vocabulary increases to 26-28 words. At four years old he already knows about 1000 words, and at six and a half years old he pronounces an average of 2 thousand words and understands the meaning of another 6 thousand.

Scientists have conducted research and calculated that in the works of the ancient Roman poet Horace there are 6084 different words; the English poet Milton has approximately 8 thousand words; in Homer's poems - about 9 thousand words; in the works of Shakespeare - 15 thousand words (according to other sources - up to 24 thousand words), in the works of Pushkin - 21 thousand words.

It is interesting to compare the number of words used by ordinary people with the dictionaries of great writers. According to psychologists, a 14-year-old teenager uses 9 thousand words, the average adult uses 11,700 words, and an educated person uses up to 13,500 words.

I wonder how many words a person says every day? It depends on temperament, profession and other conditions. Scientists still established an average figure: 30 thousand words. At the same time, a person speaks on average at a speed of 125-160 words per minute, and thinks in the same words twice as fast.

According to research, the recognized “talkers” are the French. Their average speech speed is 350 syllables per minute. The Japanese are behind them - 310 syllables and the Germans are not far behind - 250 syllables. Polynesia and Melanesia - an average of 50 syllables per minute.

The Finns are the most silent nation in the world. The Canadians follow. The most talkative and loud are the Italians, Brazilians and Mexicans.

Is it useful to talk? Useful - says American Professor Williams. People who don’t talk much are susceptible to various kinds of stress, as they do not give an outlet to the energy that has accumulated in them. As a result, they age prematurely.

And one more interesting data. Experts have calculated that each person speaks on average one hour a day. Over the course of a lifetime, this is approximately 2.5 years. If everything said by a person during his life is recorded on paper, the result will be a thousand volumes of 400 pages each.

For a long time, many people have thought that women speak more than men. But recently, scientists have tested and refuted this opinion, finding that, in general, both men and women pronounce the same number of words, which means they are equally talkative.

The richest and most beautiful Russian language allows people who speak it to express themselves in a variety of ways. Accuracy of formulation and beautiful speech depend on the vocabulary a person owns. The more words he uses, the more intellectually developed he is considered. Therefore, it becomes important to increase the number of words used.

Scientific vocabulary is called a lexicon, meaning words familiar to an individual, a group, or included in a language. It is conventionally divided into;

Active. The first group includes words used every day. They are included in both written and spoken language. A sign of an active vocabulary is free use that does not require additional effort.
Passive. Passive words include understandable words that appear in various sources, but are not used in speech, or are used but extremely rarely. They are used when necessary, but it takes effort to remember.
External. The external lexicon denotes unknown words related to specific areas of knowledge. These are professional terms, neologisms, etc. It is hardly possible to make clear boundaries between these groups. They are rather shaky and fluctuate in one direction or the other. With growing up and mental development, the vocabulary grows.

So, if a child going to first grade speaks two thousand words, then in the last grade this number already grows to five thousand. For those who study and develop further, the vocabulary reaches 10,000 words or more. Then most of them are classified as passive stock.

Erudite people sometimes speak even 50,000 words. But only a small part is used daily when communicating. The rest of the vocabulary is used only with intellectuals like him.

Exercises to expand your vocabulary

The following exercises are performed in written or oral form.

Nouns. They tell a short story using only nouns. "Day. Work. End. Exit. Door. Key. Entrance. Car. Key. Ignition" and so on.
Verbs. The same thing that was told using nouns is repeated, only with verbs.
Adjectives and adverbs. Then comes the turn of other parts of speech.
Alphabet. Come up with related words that sequentially begin with the letters of the alphabet in order. “Alena talks in the evening, walking to the treasured spruce tree, gesticulating and eloquently cherishing the cute tender dandelions. Pasha follows nearby, dragging a convenient chrome flashlight, often catching the nimble chirping with an extravagant humorous language.”
Monophone. They come up with their own speech, the words of which begin with the same letter. Each of them is connected to each other, even if the meaning suffers.

It is not easy to do each of the exercises. But words gradually move from a passive vocabulary to an active one and it is replenished.

Techniques for expanding your vocabulary without extra time

Developing vocabulary is essentially necessary for voicing your thoughts, intentions, analysis and conclusions. This skill is strengthened by practice and weakened by its absence. Therefore, in order to develop your speech, you should constantly communicate. The growth of vocabulary is ensured: by learning new words that we hear from our interlocutors; precise definitions when words are translated from a passive vocabulary to an active one.

Therefore, it is advisable to communicate with unlike people. These are friends, neighbors, fellow students, comrades in the gym. People meeting on the Internet on forums and social networking pages, fellow travelers and sellers also serve as an opportunity for communication and as a way to expand your speech.
Another effective way to replenish your vocabulary, which does not require special time, is listening to audio books. This is relevant when you have to spend a lot of time on the road, driving your car, ideal for auditory learners (for people who better perceive information by ear). A variety of books are sold in this format: novels, aphorisms, and philosophical teachings. By recording it on a flash drive, you can now not get bored in a traffic jam, but listen to a fascinating story. It is convenient to listen to audio books before bed.

Replenishing vocabulary with time allocation

The following activities will help increase your vocabulary.

Reading. Reading is a rich source of information. Books, newspapers, online publications, magazines - everywhere there are inexhaustible reserves of replenishing the vocabulary. It is advisable to devote an hour a day to this exciting activity. Sometimes it's good to say the words out loud.
Studying of foreign language. Do not limit your vocabulary to knowledge of one Russian language. Others are also useful to study. The more a person enriches his speech, the better connections are made, and it is easier to recall words from memory.
Games. There are interesting and exciting linguistic games: charades, puzzles and the like. When they guess them, they inevitably become interested in the words and meaning.
Diary. Another useful activity is keeping a diary. When it is impossible to take foreign language courses, they write for themselves. This is a good way to improve your vocabulary, since taking notes, you formulate thoughts that are in the emotional and motivating spheres.
Memorization. Memorization makes it possible to introduce new words into the active stock. This is done by retelling what is heard, memorizing verses and definitions. It is one of the most effective methods of acquiring new knowledge.

For this it is important:

include new words in speech every day;
use a notebook, entering intricate statements, words, phrases with clever expressions;
study the essence of new words by adding visualization techniques;
memorize poems, quotes, sayings, etc.

Improving your vocabulary requires conscious action. To achieve beautiful speech, constant training is required. Ignoring new words will not give them a chance to enter the active or passive vocabulary. It turns out that those who want to expand their vocabulary and enrich their language should make regular volitional efforts for this.