How to learn a word

                                                  

What does it really mean to know a word?

Many people believe they know a word if they can translate it in their own language. However, there is much more to any word then just translating its meaning. We are reminded of this every time we come across a word we thought we knew well in a completely unexpected context.

According to Penny Ur, a renowned English Language Teaching expert, to learn a word we need to know:

1. Form: pronunciation and spelling
2. Grammar
3. Collocation
4. Aspects of meaning (1): denotation, connotation, appropriateness
5. Aspects of meaning (2): meaning relationships
6. Word formation

Let us now consider every of these features and why we need to know them.

1. FORM: PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

The fact that we need to know this feature is certainly not a news to you. Without the knowledge of a word's pronunciation we cannot use the word in a conversation nor recognise it when we hear it, while without the knowledge of its spelling we cannot use it in a written English (especially not in a formal piece of writing).

There is, however, another thing to have in mind - compound words . These words consists of two or more words joined together which act as a single word, that is they convey a meaning together only. This means that we cannot leave out any of the words in a compound or change their order in it without changing or completely losing the meaning of that word. For example:

mother-in-law = the mother of your husband or wife (but mother-law or in-law-mother doesn't meaning anything)

city centre = centre city

* Sometimes the pronunciation itself may lead us to spell words wrongly, or the other way around, to pronounce words wrongly because of their spelling. This happens because we make analogies, i.e we notice certain patterns and try to apply them all the time. Unfortunately, this cannot be done consistently when it comes to languages because there are always some exceptions. I will list some words I have noticed to be problematic to students of English:

- in spite of (something): this idiom is often wrongly spelt as inspite of  because of its pronunciation
which makes the first two words sound as one

- awry: some people pronounce this word as ɔːri instead of əˈraɪ because aw is often pronounced as an open o sound /ɔː/

- gauge: knowing the usual correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation most people are tempted to pronounce this word gɔːdʒ rather than geɪdʒ because in many words (laud, gauze, gaudy etc.) the au is pronounced as ɔː
* this word can also be spelt as gage which helps remembering its pronunciation since it is in line with the usual spelling of the sounds in it


2. GRAMMAR

This means that we need to know main grammatical features of a word, especially when there is some grammatical rule about its usage which is not regularly listed in grammar textbooks. I will list some most important grammatical features in my opinion. I find them to be most important because they affect how words are used within a sentence (e.g. the gender of a noun won't affect what determiner we use or what verb the noun will agree with).

* What we need to know about a noun:
- is countable/uncountable or both depending on context
- used mainly as singular/plural
- has regular/irregular plural

* What we need to know about an adjective:
- can have both attributive (before noun) and predicative (after a linking verb) position or only one of them
- has regular/ irregular comparison or both types of regular comparison (if possible)
- what prepositions come after it (afraid of, keen on, sorry for/about etc.)
- if it has a restricted use

*What we need to know about an adverb:
- kind and its usual positions in a sentence
- its comparison (if possible)
- if it has a restricted use

* What we need to know about a verb:
- transitive/intransitive or both (can have an object or not)
- what prepositions can come after it (look for/after/up/at etc.)
- what structures can come after it (noun/gerund/infinitive or clause etc.)

These four groups of words belong to the so-called open-class words. These words are productive (can be used to form new words) and their distribution is not definable by grammar. Unlike them, prepositions, conjuctions, determiners, auxiliary verbs and pronouns belong to the closed class which is unproductive. There is a relatively small number of words in this class whose distribution is grammatically definable.


3. COLLOCATION

Collocations are simply put words that go together. There are different divisions of collocations and one of them is the division into grammatical (mainly noun/verb/adjective + preposition/grammatical structure) and lexical (mainly consists of nouns, adjective, verbs and adverbs) collocations. We need to learn which words collocate with the word we are learning in order to speak naturally-sounding English. Sometimes even grammatically correct sentences sound awkward to native speakers because we do not use the usual collocations. For example, if you say "I am going to clean my teeth" a native speaker will understand you perfectly and the sentence itself is grammatical, but it may sound a bit unusal/awkward because the usual collocation is "to brush teeth".

Here are some other examples:

- She wanted to pay him a compliment so she told him she liked his new haircut.
(to pay somebody a compliment)

Many Serbian speakers would be prone to say "She wanted to give him a ..." because to give a compliment is a collocation in Serbian.

- Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident. (not: witnesses of)

- It was always my dream to run my own business. (not: lead or conduct etc.)


4. ASPECTS OF MEANING (1)

DENOTATION & CONNOTATIONS

Denotation is often defined as the explicit or direct meaning(s) of  a word (or expression).
On the other hand, connotations refer to the cultural or emotional associations attached to the word.
For example:

- My boss gave me a very difficult task. (negative connotation: requires a lot of effort)
- My boss gave me a very challenging task. (positive connotation: difficult in an interesting way, testing your abilities)

- He was outwitted by his wily opponent. (negative: clever, but willing to be dishonest)
- He was outwitted by his shrewd opponent. (positive: clever, showing good judgement)

- He can be very obstinate when he wants to! (negative: not willing to change his opinions no matter what)
- He can be very determined when he wants to! (positive: not letting anything thwart his plans)


APPROPRIATENESS:

This means that we cannot use words in any context just because their meaning is suitable. For example, you do not use a very formal word in a very informal situation (talking to friends and family).

- Could you please extinguish the fire before you enter the house? (Wife speaking to her husband after a barbeque.)
- Could you please put the fire out before you enter the house? (informal, appropriate)

Although the word extinguish has the same meaning as put out it is a very formal word.
By the analogy you do not use very informal words in formal contexts (e.g. phrasal words etc.)

- Bernard Shaw was such a cool writer. (e.g. writing an essay as a part of your exam)
- Bernard Shaw was an exceptional writer. (formal, appropriate)

And for the end of this group of aspects of meaning my favourite line (from a learner of English):

This towel is just a harbinger of what I need. (saying it about a small towel since he wants a big one)

*harbinger = a sign that shows that something is going to happen, usually something bad.


5. ASPECTS OF MEANING (2)

The main categories of meaning relationship are:

1) synonyms : words or expressions which have the same or nearly the same meaning

- clever, smart, shrewd, bright, intelligent, sharp, brilliant

2) antonyms: words of opposite meaning

- rich-poor; old-new; good-bad, day-night

3) hyponyms: words with a particular meaning that is included in the meaning of a more general word
- lion, cat, mouse, giraffe, zebra are hyponyms of the word animal

4) co-hyponyms or co-ordinates: words which represent the same kind of thing

- lion, cat, mouse, giraffe and zebra are co-ordinates
- red, green, blue, black and white are co-ordinates

5) superordinate (hyperonym):general words (concepts) which cover more specific words

- animal is a superordinate of mouse, dog, zebra etc.
- colour is a superordinate of red, green, blue, violet etc.


6) WORD FORMATION

It is always useful to notice if the word has a specific ending or beginning (i.e. a particular suffixes or prefixes), if the word has the same form as some other words (e.g. nouns having the same form as verbs, or adverbs) or if it is a compound etc.

Quite productive word formation processes are: derivation (adding suffixes or prefixes), conversion, compounding, blending, clipping and others.

Derivation:

You need to notice the suffixes or prefixes attached to the word you are learning or try to guess possible ones. For example, patient (adj) has no suffixes or prefixes, but you know that there must be a word to describe someone who is not patient, there are several prefixes with a negative meaning which you may have noticed so far (-un, in, -dis etc.). If you look up for unpatient you will see that there is no such a word, while if you type inpatient a good dictionary will offer you a list of words with possible similar spellings and you will see that there is a word impatient (in+patient = impatient, assimilation process). You can also see that there is a noun patient with a very different meaning. Further, knowing that many adverbs are formed by adding -ly to an adjective you could easily find the words patiently and impatiently, and with a bit of luck or knowledge also the words patience and impatience. Thus knowing word formation processes means that you can easily expand your vocabulary list. You start with one word patient (adj) and find also: patient (N), patiently, impatient, impatiently, patience, impatience.

Conversion:
There are words which belong to different word classes yet have same forms. This is due to the word formation process known as conversion. All you need to do basically is check if the word you are learning belongs to some other word class too. For example, back can be an adjective, an adverb, a verb and a noun; pull can be a noun and a verb; upstairs can be a noun and an adverb and so on.

Compounding:

Compounds are combinations of two or more words (normally free roots): blackbird, merry-go-round, petrol tank, winter clothes, hearfelt etc. As you can see they can be written as one word (solid - blackbird, heartfelt), with a hyphen (hyphenated) or separately (open c. - winter clothes, flower pot). Sometimes it is very important to remember how they are written. For example, black bird will denote any bird whose feathers are black, while blackbird is a specific species of bird.

Clipping

These words have been formed by clipping a part of the previously existing word: ad from advertisement/advert, phone from telephone, flu from influenza, plane from airplane etc.
Thus knowing they come from these words you learn one more word, and if you look at them closely you will see that one is more formal than the other so you can choose the one that is most appropriate.

You can find more on these processes here as well http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/humanidades/azapata/materias/english_4/unit_1_types_of_words_and_word_formation_processes.pdf

This link is more suitable for advanced learners because it tackles a bigger number of word formation process and to a great depth.




                                                                       ***
I hope that you will check at least a few of these features next time you are learning new words. I know that it is often impossible to find time for all of them, but to check some of them takes much less time than it may seem. Good dictionaries offer many of them in one single entry. For example, if you look up for a noun, you will also see if it is countable/uncountable, mostly singular/plural, often its collocations in bold (or similar), sometimes synonyms and antonyms listed too, as well as the words of the same root etc.