Building Active Vocabulary

[dakonglong]

In the past few months, I have increased my passive vocabulary pretty quickly by doing a lot of reading and listening. As a result, I now encounter fewer unknown words and my comprehension is improving. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for my speaking ability. I can communicate just fine, but the gap between my passive and active vocabulary seems to be growing. The issue becomes really apparent when I need a specific word that has few substitutes; I simply need that word and I need it immediately. It's in my brain somewhere, I just can't access it when I need it. Eventually, in conversation, my teacher will simply fill in the word for me and I will immediately have an "aha!" moment.

 

Oddly, if I go to look up the word in the dictionary based on the English definition, I will instantly recognize the word I was thinking of. Similarly, if I see the word in a sentence I can identify and read it with no issue. I simply cannot think of that word out of the blue.

 

So far, the only method I have found that helps with this is to write articles with the help of a dictionary. If I write a short article and get stuck on a word, I will look it up and then immediately use it. After that I seem more likely to remember it the next time around.

 

Are there any other tips people use to cope with this?

[markhavemann]

The story of my life... 

 

Have a look at this video by Matt vs Japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCESUUA0wL0

 

Not sure how to apply this to writing if that's your goal, but for me this is one of the only ways to actually do focused practice of output that makes sense.