Building up your own library

This is your vocabulary page. It helps you build up your knowledge of English words and phrases and use them with fun and confidence. This page is not trying to replace your English textbook. It is an additional resource to help you stock up on words, phrases and sentence structures.

Words are not something to be afraid of. Learning a handful of new words each week does not take a lot of effort, and that small handful can soon become a big pile.

Welcome to your own personal word bank. It's there for you to dip into as and when you feel like it. Enjoy!

How it works

Each week, the Young Post Vocabulary page takes a topic or word as its starting point, introduces new phrases and usages that you might not know or have thought of, and gets you using them naturally and in the right context.

By concentrating on one idea each week, the page won't overload your brain with too much information. Slowly and steadily is the way to do it.

Everyday English

One of the great things about having a vocabulary page in a newspaper is it's always up to date. The English in the Vocabulary page is modern and useful. The examples and exercises are designed to help you talk to and deal with people who see English as a modern communication tool and not an academic subject learned from a textbook. Modern, cool English rules on this page.

File it

Do you recycle your Young Post a couple of days after you've read it? Don't put the Vocabulary page into the recycling bin.

Keep it in a special file or folder so you can look at it whenever you want. If you keep all your Vocabulary pages, you will soon be the proud owner of a very useful English language resource.

Using the page

1 If you look at the page, you will see it is presented in small pieces. Don't spend hours trying to cram the whole lot into your brain. Work through the page bit by bit.

2 Do one small section today, another one tomorrow and the next one next week if that's the way you want to work.

You could do the last section before the middle section - and work at your own speed. Do one section on your way home from school. Spend five minutes doing another before your dinner. It's up to you.

3 The page can be used for self-study or in the classroom. A couple of friends can use it together or you can use it on your own. But remember English is there to be spoken, so it's always a good idea to read all the material on the page out loud. Practise the dialogues with a friend or on your own. Read out all the sentences. Get used to the sound of your voice speaking English.

4 Don't worry people will think you are crazy if you talk to yourself. If you talk to yourself, you are not going to get any back-chat. Back-chat? What's that? You will find out in an upcoming Vocabulary page.