English 101

Lecture Notes 11

Spring 2022

28 March

Lecture 11

1. Vocabulary Strategies

A. Vocabulary strategies are techniques you can use

when you encounter a word you don’t fully understand in

your reading.

B. It may slow your reading too much to stop and look

up every word you are not familiar with on your first

read-through of a text. So, use your judgment about

when and how to use these strategies.

C. Make sure you do eventually end up with a good

understanding of all the words in something you’ve

read, though!

D. Reading challenging texts is one of the best ways to

improve vocabulary. It is likely more effective for

this purpose than isolated vocabulary study (like

vocabulary workbooks)

E. A very general non-scientific guesstimate is that if

you are encountering 2-3 challenging words per page,

that text is probably in the sweet spot where

vocabulary growth occurs.