The best purchase in my early life (although back then I still had to ask my mom for money), was an English-English dictionary. I had to order it at International Book Fair and wait weeks until it arrived. A monolingual dictionary teaches you how to explain words that you might not know at a given moment. And what I did at that time was, I spent hours and days randomly browsing through it, building up my vocab, guessing the meaning, and then cross-checking with a bilingual dictionary. Because of the sentiment alone, I will never throw away this precious little Longman's book.

Hi Ben, I would recommend the traditional index card system. Small cards 10x10cm, front page with the new word, on the back the meaning and a sentence but one leaves a gap for the new word. Thus your brain is challenged when looking at the sentence. When writing the cards speak out loud ! Reading, speaking and writing will help you to remember the new word. Always learn words in collocations. These help our brain to remember and we acquire real knowledge and not useless items.

Oh!!! I'm so happy to listen all these tips from you. I've been teaching Spanish the last two years and I always tell my students that trying to infer the meaning is super useful, and that dictionaries are better than translator... I think I'm doing it right 😁 I never thought of looking for the news, but I think it's a great idea 👍👍👍 And speaking about song lyrics, that's how I started to learn English 40 years ago, when there was no Spotify nor Internet at home 🙈 I used to try to guess the spelling of the words I heard and look for them in the dictionary. It was very good to learn new words (if my guessing was incorrect I learned even more). I hope this could help someone else. Thank you for your always helpful videos 🤗✨

Google Gemini Advanced AI - is also superb! My teacher...

It's great to see another video of yours.I've grown wary of chatGPT, although I definitely see the point that you are trying to show when it comes to the way this tool can come in handy. I'd also like to point out that , in my case, what works best is reading a lot from fictional texts (such as novels, poetry or plays) to journalistic texts. Albeit, I reckon that building sentences as soon as I pick up that word so that it can be part of my lexis.

Many thanks once again Ben 😊

some of those are definitely super useful tips I had no idea of... Thank you so much, Ben, you are, as always, to the point!

Hey! Thank you so much for these videos. I just passed my c1 exam at 14 years old only with your help :D

That's an old school American gramnar book from late 80s. That comes with no answers. Thanks Ben for your time. Always a pleasure to be here. Heard from Gideon of late ?

One of the (many) things I enjoy from your videos is that you always mention songs I know and like :-) cheers!

Thank you so much 👍

Very useful and detailed, as always. Thank you!

Hot tips as always....Ben you 're the Best!!!!!

thanks!!

IA is here to stay, I had my doubts about it, but after trying ELSA IA speaking I realized that IA is finally taking over... I'm not making free publicity, it's just a fact, I also use ANKI to work with flash cards, I think it's working for me. As always, thanks for the video Ben. Looking forward to another vocabulary video ;)

You can do a C2 exam for practice on the official Cambridge Web Site. World you say it comes close to the real thing in terms of difficulty?

hi ben what is the difference between phone dictionary and chat GPT ? merci

Hello Ben Thanks for your great tips What kind of vocab is difficult for me is flora and fauna fish,different kind of technical vocab like helix architecture and ships too :and when I add French examples of these I am at sea Maybe these are not important for CPE! Thanks again

Hi Ben, I was just right waiting here for your latest video and it was worth the time. For some time now I use AI for my pronounciation and to increase my fluency, Not only is it a big help, but it's also fun. I have to admit that I sometimes use Google for translation but sometimes there are to many options and which is the right one? Is it really right in this context? That can be really confusing. I did not now to use Google for news, I will it try it right away. So thanks again for this outstandig video. I stand by you, you're a fantastic teacher 🏆I hope Amy is fine Do you have a cat also? I saw your video (Cats have nothing on dogs), I love them both and I have a dog and a cat, too. Oh no I'm to chatty again 😂😂😂 I can be so annoying😳 Wish you a nice Sunday evening👋

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Watching Benidorm series will also help you learning some vocabulary. 😂