Widening your English vocabulary before Chevening

Our guide to widening your vocabulary range and finding useful, less common or specialised vocabulary to help you sharpen your English skills in preparation for your Chevening application, your Chevening year, or any English language assessments you might be required to do for your UK university application.

Improving your vocab range is all about being able to correctly use the right words and expressions to communicate your ideas clearly, and being able to use some topic-specific vocabulary where appropriate.

Where to find new vocabulary

The single best way to improve your vocabulary is by reading. Yes, you can find long lists of ‘Academic word lists’ online, but that is much less effective than reading online newspaper or magazines and seeing the language used in context. Reading broadly will help you to improve your vocab range, writing style, and collocation. That is not something you can learn from a word list, but it is something you can learn by reading a good English-language newspaper online.

If you’re not keen on reading articles, you can also use online videos to learn. Websites like TED-Ed have lots of short, academic videos on topics like health, education, technology and the environment, all with subtitles and practice activities.

Perhaps the most important thing is to find the sources that are right for you. You’re much more likely to keep reading or watching if you’re genuinely interested in or enjoy something.

How to learn and remember new vocabulary

  • Be selective. Don’t try to learn too much at one time. When you find expressions that you think are useful, record them in a notebook or on your phone.
  • Always record new words in context, not on their own. This will help you to remember and will also help you use them correctly in future.
  • Use new vocabulary as soon as possible. This will help solidify the new vocabulary in your mind.
  • Use spaced repetition. It’s not enough to use new vocabulary once then move on, and it’s not good to repeat it over and over again in one day. Use it as soon as you can, then again the next day, then a few days later and so on until you remember it easily.

Strategies for unfamiliar vocabulary

Here are our tips for when you come across unfamiliar English vocabulary, whether that’s in your academic reading while in the UK or if you are preparing for an English language assessment as part of your UK university application.

  • Don’t stop. If there’s a word you don’t know, don’t stop reading immediately. The meaning of the difficult word might become clearer – so keep going!
  • Have a guess. Look at the context. Is the word positive or negative. Use your own knowledge if you can. If the text is about chemistry, perhaps the unfamiliar word is a chemical of some sort? Use whatever information you have.
  • Use your knowledge of grammar. How does the word begin or end? Does it have a typical negative prefix (un-, im-, non-, etc)? Does it look like an adjective (for example ‘-able’) or an adverb (‘-ly’)? Have a guess.

You can find more English vocabulary practice exercises on the British Council LearnEnglish website.*

*Please note this is an external website and resource, the Chevening Secretariat is not responsible for its contents. 

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