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Expand Your Vocabulary

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moerl:
I'm trying to find software that will help me expand my vocabulary by helping me learn words. A simple Google search using 'search words' turned up some pretty good results.

Particularly these two stand out:


* Learn Words
* Wordhacker
I'm in college, which means I read a lot. Being that English is my third language, I still find a ton of words I simply don't know about when reading much of the academic material I have to master. I find it tedious to read a book with a book dictionary next to me to look up any word I don't know on the spot, not because I'm too lazy to do it but because 1. it disrupts the flow of reading and 2. it makes the reading take many times longer.

I used to use similar software to what I'm looking for when I took French in school years ago and must say that it works very well. Think of index cards for learning, except in the form of software. The two programs above are good examples of what I'm looking for. I'm wondering what else is out there and that's what this post is about. I was hoping some of you may know more on this topic, in which case I would highly appreciate you pointing me in the right direction/s. Of course freeware is always good, but if a program really stands out from the crowd I wouldn't mind paying for it as the sum I pay will turn out to be negligible compared to what the product I get will give me in return in the long run.
What I do now when reading a book is to have paper and a pen with me at all times. Whenever I come across a word I don't know the meaning of, I simply write it down on the paper. After a while I end up with large lists of great words that I don't know the meaning of. I plan to take these words and create my own word lists so as to learn these specific words along with others the program might already come with. What I'm trying to say is that the solution I'm looking for should have some way of allowing the user to create his/her own word lists and definitions.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

moerl:
I found a good one!! I haven't installed it yet but download.com likes it more then Wordhacker and LearnWords isn't anywhere to be found on download.com. I haven't found any reviews of LearnWords. Anyway, Interlex is FREE and supposed to be great. I need to check it out :)

mouser:
i wouldn't necesarily trust download.com but interlex looks very nice.

Webpage : http://www.vocab.co.uk/

moerl:
Yeah I know.. it's made by/affiliated with CNET... I suppose that's why I ask here :)

I haven't installed Interlex yet. I hope it will allow me to look at English-English word vocabs. I don't mean to learn a foreign language, I mean to expand my ENGLISH vocab.

rgopal:
I came across this website

GrapeWave

It seems to be prepared for gre and sat vocabulary learning purpose. But I found helpful in keeping track of which ones I know and which ones I don't. Any used this for vocabulary preparation?

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