Basic. Five. Ahoy! Did ye heartly enjoy th' shore leave? On average, American students add 2,000–3,000 words a year to their reading vocabularies. This means that they learn from six to eight new words each day.

What does it mean to know a word? We usually mean knowing its definition. But knowing a word’s definition is not the same thing as being able to use that word in speech and writing. To know a word, students need to encounter it in context and see how its meaning relates to the words around it. For example, look at changes in meaning for the word gave, as it appears in different contexts:

Josh gave Nick five dollars.

Tyler gave Hannah a kiss. 

Not surprisingly, abstract words are more difficult to learn than are concrete words. Some words represent not just a new term, but a new concept. For example, a concept such as logarithm needs to be learned in the context of other mathematical concepts.

See you here.