Learning Vocabulary the fun and easy way

I think my entire family has no affinity for languages. In the PSLE, all my three kids had scored A* for Mathematics and Science, but only A for English and A for Chinese (with the exception of Lim Min, who had scored an A* for Chinese). Even now at high schools, languages have always been their Achilles' heels.

For me, whenever I am reading newspapers, books or Internet news, I will have my iPad beside me so that I can check the meaning of any unfamiliar words from Dictionary.com. It is quite common that I will forget the meaning of certain words that I have come across before, and have to recheck the meaning, again and again.

Early this month, I chanced upon 'Vocabulary Cartoons' on Amazon and bought the following books.




Including shipping and handling charges, I paid a total of US$31.62 (about S$40) for both books. I made the order on 9 Feb and received the books on 22 Feb.

In Vocabulary Cartoons, word associations and visual images are provided to make learning easy and entertaining. There is an old Chinese proverb, 百闻不如一见, meaning "a picture is worth a thousand words". Good mnemonic images (the more bizarre and ridiculous, the better) can be retained for a long time in our memory. Years from now, whenever we see a word from the books, odds are the cartoon of that word will appear in our mind's eye in a flash.

Below is a sample page:
My kids and I are now reading the books. Hopefully, after going through both books, our English vocabulary will improve by leaps and bounds. :)