Topic: Vocabulary (3)

10-second review: Step 2 in increasing vocabulary is to use a good vocabulary text.

Title: “Building Word Knowledge.” Raymond Stopper. Teaching English, How To…. Xlibris. 2004.

What Is the Best Vocabulary Text on the Market?

As far as a vocabulary textbook is concerned, I have never found a better one in grades 9-12 than Norman Lewis’s Word Power Made Easy. You will find it on Amazon.com along with a lot of glowing praise from people who have used it. Want to learn hundreds of words, maybe even a thousand, in an enjoyable manner? Try Word Power Made Easy. Many of the words Lewis teaches appeared regularly on the vocabulary-laden versions of the SAT. These are words that are interesting as ideas.

Lewis teaches hundreds of words by stressing the interesting ideas they represent, by relating them through etymology or word origins, and by using brief objective tests to review their meanings several times in each chapter with review tests throughout the book.

Here’s a list of chapters from the table of contents of the book:

“How to Talk about Personality Types.” Basic words: egoist, egotist, altruist, introvert, extrovert, ambivert, misanthrope, misogynist, misogamist, ascetic.

“How to Talk about Doctors.” Basic words: internist, gynecologist, obstetrician, pediatrician, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, orthopedist, cardiologist, neurologist, psychiatrist.

“How to Talk about Practitioners.” Basic words: psychologist, psychoanalyst, orthodontist, optometrist, optician, osteopath, chiropractor, podiatrist, graphologist, gerontologist.

“How to Talk about Science and Scientists.” Basic words: anthropologist, astronomer, geologist, biologist, botanist, zoologist, entomologist, philologist, semanticist, sociologist.

“How to Talk about Liars.” Basic words: notorious, consummate, incorrigible, inveterate, congenital, chronic, pathological, unconscionable, glib, egregious.

“How to Talk about Actions.” Basic words: disparaging, equivocating, titillate, adulate, proscribing, obviate, militates, maligning, condone, placate.

“How to Talk about Speech Habits.” Basic words: taciturn, laconic, inarticulate, garrulous, banal, verbose, voluble, cogent, vociferous, loquacious.

“How to Insult Your Enemies.” Basic words: martinet, sycophant, dilettante, virago, chauvinist, monomaniac, iconoclast, atheist, lecher, hypochondriac.

“How to Flatter Your Friends.” Basic words: convivial, indefatigable, ingenuous, perspicacious, magnanimous, versatile, stoical, intrepid, scintillating, urbane.

“How to Talk about Common Phenomena and Occurrences.” Basic words: penury, vicarious ephemeral, euphemisms, badinage, bovine, nostalgia, cacophonous, carnivorous, clandestine.

“How to Talk about What Goes On.” Basic words: to enervate, to castigate, to self-abnegate, to recapitulate, to vegetate, to simulate, to intimate, to alleviate, to commiserate, to vacillate.

“How to Talk about a Variety of Personal Characteristics.” Basic words: obsequious, querulous, supercilious, obstreperous, impecunious, chivalrous, innocuous, bibulous, cadaverous, dolorous.

There are a lot of interesting words in that list of chapters. And they are only the beginning. Tomorrow, I will show you how Lewis teaches them. RayS.