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To do very well on your English test at school, you must first be able to read and understand the test questions, then write out your answers correctly where necessary. But the ability to read, understand and compose an English writing depends on your English vocabulary – which is the list of all the words known to you, and which therefore comes to you readily whenever they are suitable in speech or writing. As a primary or secondary school student in Nigeria, you should have an excellent English vocabulary, which makes it quite possible for you to excel on any English test at school. And the reliable way to build an excellent English vocabulary is to learn several useful English words every day. First of all, you need to get a proper dictionary and thesaurus for yourself, then open a special notebook for writing in relevant English words. Having taken these starting steps, you should always try your best to carry out the following activities every day.
1. Read lots of good writings: You should spend several hours to read meaningful books, starting with your school notebooks and textbooks. Besides, you should make time to read informative materials such as news articles, storybooks, novels, educative blogs, comic books, etc.
2. Make proper use of your dictionary and thesaurus: The dictionary is a book that gives a list of words in alphabetical order and explains their meanings, while the thesaurus is a book that gives a list of words with their synonyms and antonyms. These books – which may be in print or electronic form – are your primary tools if you want to expand your vocabulary every day. Always have these reference books nearby whenever you read, and promptly look up any strange or barely familiar word or phrase you come across. Better still, you should form the habit of studying these books in themselves.
3. Write in a minimum of ten(10) words: Make sure you enter at least ten(10) words in your vocabulary book every day. Write in the word, its meaning, pronunciation, synonym(s) and antonym(s). You should also form a correct sentence using each of your new words.
4. Study your new words: Writing down a word in a book does not mean the word is already in your vocabulary. You still need to study and learn such word, so that you can easily remember its meaning whenever it appears in a writing or, remember the word, its spelling and pronunciation whenever it is appropriate in your speech or writing.
5. Test yourself: Regular testing will help your memory of relevant words. For instance, you can test yourself this week based on the words you studied last week. If you take such vocabulary test severally, you would get to a point where all of the words are known to you like the back of your hand.
6. Practice purposeful writing: You should cultivate the habit of writing meaningful and correct sentences, paragraphs, poems, letters, short stories, anecdotes, etc. Similarly, you may keep a diary. But always make sure that such personal writings include certain words that you want to add to your vocabulary.
7. Involve people that are helpful: In order that you learn faster, you can involve any of your colleagues who has the same vocabulary goal as you. Also as a way of improving your writing ability, you can regularly ask a professional teacher or some other capable person to assess your writings.