Vary Your Interests

Do something different from your daily routine: hunting, fishing, or blogging–any activity that isn’t part of your normal life—can become a great way to learn new words, as every niche has its own jargon and unique ways of communicating. Read books and magazines that are different from the ones you’re used to. Watch foreign-language movies. Take up new hobbies; hang out with different people.

Learn Common Roots and Word Etymology

Modern English represents a cornucopia of different languages. In fact, if you limited yourself to words with only specifically “English” origin, you would have a pretty small vocabulary.

You can also learn more about etymology, prefixes, and suffixes.

Just to pick an example, when you understand that the prefix “ortho” means straight or right, you start to find connections between seemingly unrelated words, such as orthodontist (a specialist who straightens teeth) and orthography (the correct, or straight, way of writing).

Understanding the logic behind words always pays off in terms of learning and recalling. Consider these examples: “breakfast” means “interrupt the night’s fast,” and “rainbow” means “bow or arc caused by rain.” While these meanings may be trivial to native English speakers, having such insights about words, foreign or otherwise, never fails to deepen your connection to them.

Maintain a Personal Lexicon

By keeping a personalized list of learned words, you’ll have a handy reference you can use to review these words later. It’s very likely you’ll want to go back and refresh your memory on recent words, so keeping them in your own list is much more efficient than going back to the dictionary every time.

Even if you never refer back to your lexicon again, writing words down at least once will greatly enhance your ability to commit them to your permanent memory. Another excellent learning aid is to write an original sentence containing the word — and using your lexicon to do that is a great way of enforcing this habit. You can also add many other details as you see fit, such as the date you first came across the word or maybe a sequential number to help you reach some word quota you define.

There are many ways you can keep your personal word list; each has its own advantages and disadvantages, so make sure to pick the format that works best for you. You may prefer to keep it as a simple text file in the computer, or in a regular paper notebook, or maybe as flash cards in a shoe box.

One option is a computer spreadsheet for its handy features such as searching, sorting, and filtering.

Follow a Process

To make vocabulary improvement a permanent habit in your everyday life, you should make it as habitual, automatic, and tightly integrated into your daily workflow as possible–otherwise you won’t do it when your days get too busy.

In that regard, one particularly useful concept is the one of maintaining a “Word Inbox.” By having a predefined place you use to capture the words you come across, you can process them much more efficiently.

Your process can be as simple as you wish—the key is to specify it beforehand and then follow it. By knowing exactly how and how often to process your inbox, you stay on top of your vocabulary improvement process, even when there are other pressing matters crying out for your attention.