How many times have you tried to search for a word to describe a situation, feeling or a person only to be lost for words? Sometimes not being able to find the correct word is due to forgetfulness whilst at other times it is because we do not have a word in our vocabulary to describe it.

Having a rich vocabulary has many advantages. It allows you to express clearly what you mean. If you know exactly what a word means you will be able to use it with ease and to great effect.

Listening to people umming, ahhing in their conversation or presentation puts people off. Constantly hearing “you know” as they talk begins to irritate at best and at worst people switch of and no longer listen.

To eliminate a dearth in your skills you need to develop your vocabulary as quickly and as thoroughly as you can.
Develop a love of words and explore as many word groups as you can. By studying words in groups your brain can make links and recall is easier.

Look up all the different words there are for the colours of the rainbow. This will not only increase the number of words you have for colours but you will become more aware of the colours in the world about you.

Study other groups of objects and be conversant as to their characteristics. Compile lists of emotions and then use them to correctly describe how you feel or how you perceive others feel.
Throughout your day you will sometimes come across words you don’t know the meaning of.

Make a note of them in a small notebook and look up their meanings as soon as possible. You may also hear words you love but have not used very often. Make a note of those too and see if they can be used in your every day conversation.

Please remember that the whole point of conversation is that it is a two may process. You should use vocabulary to express your thoughts and feelings not as an opportunity to make other people feel small because they do not understand you.

Put yourself in your diary for at least 15 minutes every day. Use this time to learn new words. Start with the words you have in your notebook.

Have a special journal for learning your new words.
Write the new word in the left hand column of the page. Look at it. Remember the shape of it. Now say it out loud. Whisper it and feel the word.

How do you feel when you say it? Look up the meaning in a dictionary and write the meaning in the right hand column. Read the meaning out too.

Now compose a sentence that is meaningful to you using that word and read the sentence out at least three times oy loud. Repeat this process with between 3 and 10 words a day. Do not rush the process. It is better to do a few words properly than to do loads of words and not thoroughly understand them.

Study groups of words that are related to the business you are in or the business you would like to be in. Use them in the same process as above. Many will have either the same prefix, beginning of a word, or suffix, a word ending.

Look these up in a dictionary and start to build further groups of words that are linked. You could even go one step further and turn these groups of words into games by using one of the freely available word search programmes available on the web.

Start by reading the list and repeating their meaning out loud. As you find each word put it into a sentence and say this out loud too. Use any method that helps to embed words into your vocabulary.

By reading a wide variety of books you will expose yourself to even more words. By not sticking to the same genre of books you will also challenge your thinking.

You will agree with the author and confirm your ideas or add more evidence to your thoughts, disagree- in which case you will formulate a counter argument, or be totally untouched by the words in which case you will realise how important it is to choose words carefully or accept that some written words are just banal.

Use the thesaurus facility when reading document or books on line and look up words. You can do this for commonplace words used as well as for words that you do not understand. By learning to love words you need never be bored whilst standing in queues or waiting for appointments.