How do you increase your vocabulary if you’re living in a non-English speaking country? 

       Expose yourself as much as possible to the language you’re learning. So when you’re watching movies, watch movies and TV that you would enjoy in your own language then challenge the subtitles. There are three ways to do it: 

1.   Listen in English and read the subtitles in your native language 

2.   Listen in your native language and read the English subtitles 

3.   Listen in English and read English subtitles 

Other ways to expose yourself to the English language include: 

• Finding podcasts in your own language and then finding an equivalent in English 
• Finding a speaking buddy through chat apps but doing so in a safe way 

       You should try and find the English equivalent of anything you read in your own language to make learning more interesting for you 

        Find news blasts that are published by your local newspaper. This is helpful for language learners. 

“These are short and sharp new stories, often just one sentence per story. It’s relevant news to their context, it helped them understand, and they could look at the pictures and understand what’s happening and it increase their vocab. 

“So quite often it’s short and sharp but you don’t have to spend hours reading it.” 

        Integrate learning into your schedule and make it personal.  Then, you get to a point where you can understand but you don’t have the vocabulary to reply. Now you’ve got your phone. You can use Google translate.

“You can find songs you like and use websites where you listen to a song and type in the lyrics.”

“While you’re waiting for the bus or while you’re travelling or waiting for friend these are all pockets of time for you to learn.”

        Make lists and stick them at places around your house that you look at all the time. 

“You can often stick at your TV when the ads are on and I don’t want to watch the ads, I can look at the words.”

       Are you a visual, auditory of kinesthetic learner? If you’re a visual learner and you’re trying to learn phrasal verbs, have a visual representation so you can remember the words easily. You can group the words by the head word or by situations.

“Another way is to classify phrasal verbs by the grammatical structure –one, two prepositions, separable or inseparable.”

       Language learners have fun and not to give up.

“FAIL(stands for) first attempt in learning.”

 

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/