2026-06-26
9 分钟Today, I'm going to talk about vocabulary.
How do we best acquire vocabulary?
Words.
I've always felt that words are the key measure of where we are in a language, of our potential in the language.
How many words do we know?
But the bigger thing is how do we acquire the words?
If we have very few words, we cannot do much with the language.
If we have a wide vocabulary, we may need a lot of practice in speaking in order to become fluent speakers,
but we have a base.
We have the potential to become fluent speakers of the language.
So words are essential.
Now, of course, much has been written about learning words, teaching words.
When I started up Link 20 years ago, I bought all these books on how languages are taught,
how vocabulary is acquired, lots of good theory, which I will get into.
Here's another one.
Of course, lists of phrases and phrasal verbs and all kinds of things
that are very difficult to learn from if you don't see them in enough contexts.
And even when we talk about vocabulary, how should we count words?
If the word is simply a form of the word, like a plural of the verb, should that be counted?
Should it be counted separately when it is a different part of speech?