This series is published in the tuesday issues of Deccan Chronicle .
Do you have trouble concentrating when reading a novel ? Do you feel sleepy every time you open something to read ? If yes, then it most likely is because you are passing a word or words which you have not understood or have misunderstood.The trick is to look up words which you don’t understand in a good dictionary.
The first thing to do is to understand the word as it applies in the context in which you are reading . After that you must clear all the meanings of the word for future use – the same word might appear in a different context.
Making sentences with idioms is also fun. An idiom is an expression that cannot be taken literally For example, “The actor brought the house down”. This doesn’t mean that he demolished a house.What it means is that he acted so well it made people applaud loudly.
You could also have a thesaurus (a word-book) handy to look for synonyms or antonyms. Try visualthesaurus.com for a visual representation of the connections between words or purchase a textbook version from your bookshop.
If you would like a further understanding of a word why not get a book of etymology(which tells you from which word or words the word you are looking for has originated historically). For example extraordinary comes from Middle English extraordinarie,from Latin extraordinarius.
Happy discovering!
Mano 