An amazing book to grasp a understanding of formation of words through etymology. Easy to understand; written in a lucid manner. Helps in developing vocabulary effectively. Makes an attitude towards understanding , and being receptive toward new words. Any book reading beginner should definitely Start with this book.

Essential for building a better vocabulary base.
Tips to read this book more efficiently.
1. Just be honest with this book do every exercise. If you really want to improve yourself.
2. This book consists of 47 sessions do only one session a day even if you have time don't do extra chapters just revise that session.
3. Before you started doing sessions just go through the pronunciation chapter at the starting of this book . After this whenever you see a word with its pronunciation just read & try to understand it and say it aloud, after 3-4 time you will be comfortable with that word.
4. Don't get disappointed after test result , If your score is below average than you have chosen a right book to improve yourself.
5. Just believe in this process & just give this book 47 days of your life. Believe me, It's worth it.
5.one you completed its 47 sessions just revise it on daily basis. Now there are difficult words in the end of this book just read it and give the test. There are 87 test , give 1-2 test a day and keep building your vocab everyday.

Thankyou

Originally reviewed at my blog:
http://jrlovesbooks.blogspot.in/2013/...

I didn’t have any exposure to vocabulary building books before I decided to pick Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis. Why I decided to pick this book is a reason very simple. I saw it in the best sellers list on Flipkart every time I checked the said page on the site. I wanted to see what was so good about the book that made it sell in a bigger quantity than Paulo Coelho’s books (For me he is the author everybody should read. Anyway, we’d discuss that some other time).

To be honest, this was one of the longest books i have read. I am not that used to reading books very big in size. A seven hundred page book is often a mammoth for me. But this was the book that keeps you completely gripped. It leaves you awestruck with the ability of the author to make you learn new words and with your own self learning them.

I always wondered what vocabulary building books would be like. Probably a lot of preaching and a bazillion words in a list that you are supposed to memorise kind of thing was what my imagination suggested. But Word Power Made Easy was nothing at all like that.

Norman Lewis interacts with you. He tells you stories, the histories, jokes with you, is sarcastic of several things, supporting many, and giving you wonderfully superb pieces of advice that you love to take. It is no preaching. It is a friendly relationship with the reader and making him learn many, many useful things.

The idea that Norman Lewis upholds in the entire book is “No Learning Words. But Learning the Ideas Behind the Words.” It is quite hard to guess what exactly he means by that initially, but as you leaf through the masterpiece, you realise that it is the ideas that you need to build your vocabulary, not a list of words.

Norman Lewis exposes to us the world we would never have given a thought about, normally. If there’s a word we use, how did it come to existence, and from where. Lewis tells us the stories behind innumerable words which are hard to forget. You might have a faulty memory about remembering words, but the idea stays with you and so does the word.

I still remember many stories about the words that Norman Lewis tells us, and it still brings back the scintillating memories that I’d get while reading them.

This ‘idea behind the word’ is Norman Lewis’ weapon to make you remember the words you have never heard of before. And the idea of the ideas simply rocks. Also, the way he puts them, is exceptionally witty and it compels you to fall in love with Lewis’ sense of humour. I haven’t smiled as much reading any book as I have smiled while reading this one.

Trust me, it is a treat to read this book.

One of my favourite ones is this, from the segment: How to Talk about Various Speech Habits:

Saying little – meaning much

There is an anecdote about Calvin Coolidge, who, when he was the president of USA, was often called (though probably not to his face) ‘Silent Cal’.
A Young newspaper woman was sitting next to him at a banquet, so the story goes, and turned to him mischievously.
“Mr. Coolidge,” she said, “I have a bet with my editor that I can get you to say more than two words to me this evening.”
“You lose,” Coolidge rejoined simply.

The adjective: laconic.


I would highly recommend this to everybody who loves words or wants to add to his vocabulary. This is certainly the best book you would find of its kinds out there.

Inundated with the gratitude for such a wonderful book, which not only increases my vocabulary, meanwhile introduced me to plethora of ideas. The way I am looking at the English words has already shifted to new level. WORDS ARE JUST SYMBOL OF IDEAS, damn true. You won't regret once you start. For the past four months, it has become my ritual to do one session each morning. Day started with the session, has been always a wonderful one. Surely, I will miss my morning ritual. Who knows, I will start anew again. Such a overwhelming emotion towards it.

Below is a short extract from Joseph Brodsky's commencement speech to the graduates of University of Michigan in 1988.


"Try to build and treat your vocabulary the way you are to treat your checking account. Pay every attention to it and try to increase your earnings. The purpose here is not to boost your bedroom eloquence or your professional success — although those, too, can be consequences — nor is it to turn you into parlor sophisticates. The purpose is to enable you to articulate yourselves as fully and precisely as possible; in a word, the purpose is your balance. For the accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis."


Brodsky's suggestion was to buy a dictionary and learn new words every day. I remember how I was compelled by the idea of learning new words when I read it, but I couldn't comprehend at that point how one can do it with a dictionary. So I've just gave up on the idea.


Word Power Made Easy is not a dictionary. Every word is given in a group of the other closely related words. The relationship is based on word etymology. Once you know a few words with the same root you can easily build associations and remember most of them. The other important aspect is that each new word is not just a synonym, it's another idea, concept, another way of thinking and articulating your thoughts.


Norman Lewis (the author) promises "When you have finished working with this book, you will no longer be the same person. You can’t be. If you honestly read every page, if you do every exercise, if you take every test, if you follow every principle, you will go through an intellectual experience that will effect a radical change in you. For if you systematically increase your vocabulary, you will also sharpen and enrich your thinking; push back your intellectual horizons; build your self-assurance; improve your facility in handling the English language and thereby your ability to express your thoughts effectively; and acquire a deeper understanding of the world in general and of yourself in particular."


I can confim this works. Go ahead and try it yourself.

It's a book of root word .... scientifically proved memory tricks to comprehend and remember those new learned words...auther genuinely tried an attempt to ingrain those new learned words to our subconscious mind by repetiting the words again and again.....he told us that people who considered to be achieved great heights have a rich source of vocabulary....and I got that

Now I know why everyone recommends this book. Absolutely helpful and a book to revisit every now and then.

Worthy book to improve the vocabulary

In a country where knowing English is considered not just simply a skill but a measure of your intelligence, your ability and your whole personality, I was lucky to have good English teachers in my life.

When I was in class five, Aman Sir had a unique style of teaching subjects. For English, we were taught English words for whatever we can see moving, non-moving, actions we usually do, adjectives we normally use etc. thousands of words. He was just making our word bank in our mind. For retention of these words in our pea sized brain, he used to take test like write 100 English words with meaning in 30 minutes and then increased the difficulty level of the game up to 400-500 words in 40 minutes. These words can be about anything and everything. I think that exercise alone makes me so comfortable in English that no one believed me in my class 6 of Navodaya, when I told them that I came from a Hindi speaking Public School. And I am still proud of holding a record for scoring 25 out of 25 marks in all six English class-tests in class 6.

That English and teaching of good teachers was enough for me to sail through school. But that was just about using words in written form and seldom I got chance to use them till my Interviews for Job Placement in final year of college.

In my first year of college, in 1st Semester break, I did one good thing which still paying me off. I invested my 90 rupees to buy one copy of Normal Lewis’s ‘Word Power Made Easy.’ I almost completed it in 15 days’ holiday. Actually this is not just a book for reading or learning words, It is not a book, it’s a workbook. It teaches you words with etymology making connections with you and words, making new words with that original word and then using prefixes and suffixes. Once chapter is over, there are several exercises to do, till those words ingrained in your mind as a permanent memory. It doesn’t simply give you meaning of some words, it simply gives you the formula from which you can derive your own words. After this book, I started seeing every word as an interesting question which can be solved with using one or other formula and if not exactly but I come close to meaning of many words without ever hearing them before.

Again after 3rd year of college, in summer break, to prepare for placement season, I gave that book to my younger brother Siddharth Katiyar and also gave him two new erasers to erase the pencil filled workbook which I filled in first year. Once it was completed, I repeat the same exercise to read and fill the workbook again. (Again with Pencil).In the times of words meaning at our fingertip, I still have this book in my library for reference and fun with words. (Just like Sheldon Cooper’s ‘fun with Flags’ sessions in sitcom ‘Big Bang theory)

You can be sure, that this is not like any vocab book, as it doesn’t load with you words and put onus of you to memorize them. It is a fun read. Norman Lewis interacts with you. He tells you stories, the histories, jokes with you, giving you wonderfully superb pieces of advice that you love to take. It is no preaching. It is a friendly relationship with the reader and making him learn many things.

This ‘idea behind the word’ is Norman Lewis’ weapon to make you remember the words you have never heard of before. And the idea of the ideas simply rocks. Also, the way he puts them, is exceptionally witty way

It's a treasure of knowledge about English vocabulary and improved my vocabulary exponentially.

One of the best textbooks I've ever read.

reading the book along with my 12 year old nephew was fun... it helped that we had no immediate goals or reasons to build a vocabulary and were simply pursuing a real interest in understanding the power of words...

the book is easy to read - the stories behind the words not just make it interesting but also provide the correlations to help recall... the structure of the book uses themes effectively to help build connections between groups of words and associate these with potential usage... and the roots help to discover new words...

it certainly did not feel as if we were building a vocabulary... it was like any other fun-activity we have pursued that has a degree of challenge, a dimension of learning, new insights, a sense of progress and a feeling of achievement... and that in 2 weeks we probably ended up with 500+ new words and even more so a natural curiosity to continue to search for new words is in itself remarkable!