Vocabulary

Vocabulary Hack: Learn 30+ Verbs in 10 minutes!

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• published: 03 Oct 2015
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Want to turn your basic vocabulary into advanced English vocabulary? Learn this easy trick to master 30 verbs in just 10 minutes! You'll learn how to turn basic words into advanced vocabulary by using 'en' as a prefix or suffix. By using this hack to learn vocabulary, you will communicate faster, sound smarter, and speak more like a native English speaker. Click on this video to improve your vocabulary in minutes! Practice makes perfect. So when you're done, practice your vocabulary with our quiz at http://www.engvid.com/vocabulary-hack-learn-30-verbs-in-10-minutes/ ! Feel free to check out the resources at http://www.engvid.com/english-resources/ where you can find vocabulary list PDFs you can download to improve your English! TRANSCRIPT Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid, and I think you're really going to like this lesson. Why? Because I'm going to give you a vocabulary shortcut that will allow you to learn 30 new words in just a few minutes. How do we do that? Okay, well, what we're going to do is to follow a certain pattern that involves verbs, and this is the pattern. So, what we do is we add the letters "en" at the end of an adjective or at the end of a noun. I'll give you an example so you'll understand exactly. Okay? Now, let's take this adjective: "short". So, by adding "en", it becomes the verb "shorten". And what does it mean to shorten something? To make it more of whatever it was; in this case, to make it shorter. Right? Or, if we take this noun: "strength", and we add "en", it becomes the verb "strengthen". And to strengthen means to make something more strong, to make it stronger, to give it more strength. Okay? So, that's the pattern. All you need to do is to add "en" to the end of certain adjectives or nouns. Now, it doesn't work for every word in English, but it does work for lots of words, and that's why you see many words on the board, here. Okay? Let's go through them. Now, these words are divided a little bit. I made it that way so that you would see that there's different ways that we can classify the verbs. It might help you. So, first let's look at size. For example: "short" becomes "shorten". "Wide": "widen". "Deep": "deepen". Right? So all of these on the board now are verbs. Right? They started off either as adjectives or nouns, but we're converting them, we are changing them into verbs, and quite dynamic verbs. All right? So instead of saying: "She made her skirt shorter", we just say: "She shortened her skirt." Skirt, right? Okay? Instead of saying: "They made their driveway wider", we can just say: "They widened their driveway", and it sounds much better, whether you're writing, whether you're speaking. Okay? And certainly if you're doing an exam like the IELTS or the TOEFL. Okay? You can use these kind of vocabulary words. Now, also, the aspect of colour. For example: "She whitened her teeth." All right? "She darkened her hair.", "Her face reddened." All right? So, it works with certain colours; not every colour. We cannot add it to the word "green", for example. There is no "greenen", okay? But there is "redden", "darken", "whiten". What you could do is as I'm saying the words, try to repeat them after me, so you become more comfortable also pronouncing them. Now, also certain qualities. For example: "Harden", "soften", "thicken". Right? "She added flour to thicken the soup." All right? That's one way. And then, all kinds of other words, some of them you've heard and some of them you may be using already, but maybe not all of them. For example: to make something sweeter is to "sweeten". To make your skin, for example, more moist, less dry, is to "moisten". To make something looser is to "loosen". For example: "He loosened his tie." Okay? I know it sounds a little bit strange if you haven't heard these words before, but believe me, it works and it's really quite easy. Okay? Now, let's do a little bit of practice so that you get very, very comfortable with this. I will do these, and then you can do some of these with me. You'll see that it'll become much easier as we go along. So, for example, here we have: "exercise strength": "the exercise strengthened his muscles". Okay? "Condition worse": "Her condition worsened." Okay? Good. If you... If you get the hang of it, you can say it along with me. "Love deep": "Their love deepened." Okay? That means what? That means that their love became deeper. All right? Stronger, in other words. "Fruit ripe": "The fruit ripened." Now, in case you don't know that word, when a fruit becomes ripe, it becomes ready to eat. All right? So: "The fruit ripened."