The Most Useful Words in English
Do you want to improve your English, but have limited time to do it? Maybe I can help!
Language learning requires a lot of study & practice. But just 10 minutes each day is much more valuable than 2 hours every week! You don’t need to spend hours each day to improve. (In fact, that is more challenging for your brain). I think too many teachers and textbooks teach impractical, useless English. How can I say that?
Two weeks ago, I went to a University bookstore to find an English Teaching Book for tutoring a middle school student from China. Several books had titles like: “The 500 Most Useful English Words.” I looked through them and found ridiculous word choices, like “bewilderment.” This word, (which means the condition of being confused), is a completely impractical word. You will not hear it in the News or in daily conversation, nor will you will find it in most articles, books, or newspapers. It is a nice word, but memorizing it would be a waste of time for someone just beginning to learn English.
So I decided to create my own list of: “The Most Useful Words in English.” I have divided the list into categories, including Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, etc. The list I am currently working on is: “Verbs“. My Oxford English Dictionary says that a Verb is: “a word used to describe an action, state, or occurence”. Verbs are really useful words because once you know some pronouns like: “I, you, we, he, she, or they”, you can add a verb and make a sentence.
This list will grow, change, and evolve (I invite & appreciate your suggestions), but it has to start somewhere. It is not perfect or complete, but it is practical. Here are the first 10 Useful English verbs.
1. Abandon (Don’t abandon hope, we will find chocolate very soon if we keep looking!)
2. Accept (I cannot accept this gift, you are too generous. Please keep it.)
3. Adapt (Humans and animals adapt to their environment to survive.)
4. Add/Increase (I hope you will add me as a friend on Facebook.) (Please increase my salary.)
5. Admit (Okay, I admit that I didn’t shower today).
6. Adopt (In the future, would you like to adopt 2 or 7 children?)
7. Agree (This movie is terrible, don’t you agree?)
8. Allow/Let/Permit (Allow me to speak honestly with you.) (Let me go!) (You’re not permitted to go in that room.)
9. Analyze/Examine (You don’t need to analyze these documents; they are useless.) (I examined it thoroughly.)
10. Answer (You didn’t answer my question.)
Note that I have put very closely related words together, like Add/Increase. The meaning of both words is slightly different, but are mostly very similar and thus can be treated as two words with the same meaning when first learning them. I recommend you learn the meaning of each word in your first language and practice using them in YOUR OWN English sentence.
Enjoy Learning New Words!
-A.Z.