In recent years, many busy professionals have begun listening to tape-recorded books while commuting or driving to and from appointments. That’s certainly better than reading two books a year—the average for American college-educated adults—or reading no books at all. Listening to a book on tape is also convenient and can save you valuable time. However, when it comes to vocabulary building, audio books won’t help you very much. It’s too easy to concentrate just on getting the gist of what’s being said and to ignore the words you don’t know. On top of that, you may be hearing mispronunciations and absorbing them without realizing it.

What it comes down to is this: If you currently read fewer than six books a year—one every two months—then you need to rediscover the wonderful world of books and make recreational reading a part of your life. (Note that I used the word recreational. I’m talking about reading for fun as well as for self-improvement.)

Here’s how you can start: Read your local newspaper’s book reviews or subscribe to a magazine or out-of-town paper that reviews books. Not only will that help you find books you will enjoy, but the reviews themselves are often an excellent source of expressive words.

Another way to get yourself on a regular schedule of reading is to join a book club, where you are obligated to order a certain number of books each year. That can be an incentive to finish the books you start and also to read more widely.

The next time you order a book or browse in a bookstore, be daring. Let your curiosity get the best of you. Try something on a subject that you don’t know much about but that piques your interest. (Is the verb to pique familiar to you? It’s pronounced like peek and means to prick, stimulate.) If you have trouble making that leap, how about reading a biography of someone you respect or admire? Also, let’s not forget the value of fine fiction. Ask a friend or someone in the office to recommend a good novel. If you like it, try reading other books by the same author.

Now, I should caution you that when it comes to fiction, I don’t put much stock in thrillers, romances, westerns, and war novels. With the exception of mysteries, which are generally written by better-than-average writers for a higher-caliber audience, most genre or category fiction provides plenty of diversion but little edification (ED-i-fi-KAY-shin). Look it up now if it’s unfamiliar. What, no dictionary handy? Tsk, tsk.

These days there are few popular novelists who truly know their craft. I’ll never forget the time I heard a radio interview with a best-selling author of westerns. When the interviewer asked him to explain a few unusual words from the book, the author gave the wrong definitions. What can you expect to learn from reading a book by someone like that?

Finally, I encourage you to take advantage of the public library. Becoming a regular patron of your local library is the simplest and least expensive way to broaden your knowledge of the world. When was the last time you checked out a book? If you can’t remember, then you’re overdue for a visit. Go down and get reacquainted with the Dewey Decimal System. And if you have kids, take them with you and introduce them to the children’s section. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making the quest for new words, good books, and useful knowledge an integral part of your personal and professional life.

So now that I’ve told you what to read, let me say a few things about how to read. Here are five principles to follow.

Principle 1: Read outside of your specialty or area of expertise

It may sound strange, but most of what you read should not be directly related to your work. By all means, keep up with what’s going on in your profession, but don’t limit your reading to subjects you already know well.

Are you familiar with Tom Peters? Peters is the author of, among other books, the best-selling management guide On Excellence; he also writes a syndicated column with the same title. In one of those columns he discussed his strategies for making “learning in the workplace” a “continuous exercise,” strategies he felt would work even for those whose schedules are “crammed from dawn till dusk.”

Peters concurs with me in recommending that you avoid reading too much in areas where you are “already reasonably well versed.” “The most effective professionals,” he says, “know their own turf cold, to be sure. But their special added value, for clients and colleagues, is their ability to draw upon analogous ideas from disparate fields to form analyses about problems closer to home.”

Not only does Peters make an important point, but in making it he also uses two fine words: analogous, which we discussed as word 48 of Level 2, and disparate (DIS-puh-rit). As you now know, analogous means similar, comparable, alike in certain ways. Do you know what disparate means? As you probably deduced from the quotation, disparate means different, distinct, having incompatible elements or natures. Occasionally you will hear educated people pronounce the word dis-PAR-it, with the accent on the second syllable. This relatively recent variant has made its way into the dictionaries and is now standard. Careful speakers, however, use the traditional and preferred pronunciation, which places the stress on the first syllable.

Principle 2: Go for variety

Remember the old saying, Variety is the spice of life? To paraphrase that adage (AD-ij), variety is also the spice of reading. With each book you read, try a different subject, or choose a subject you want to know more about and make a three- or fourbook study of it. Alternating between nonfiction and fiction is also a good way to keep things interesting. And remember, in selecting your reading material, don’t let yourself be manipulated by other people’s tastes. You don’t have to have all the bestsellers or all the classics on your shelf. You’re not reading to keep up with the Joneses; you’re reading to become a more informed, articulate, and successful person.

Principle 3: Read what you enjoy

This is very important. You won’t learn much from a book you force yourself to read. If something doesn’t hold your interest, put it down and read something else. Reading shouldn’t be a chore. It should be a pleasure.

Principle 4: Read with a dictionary

If your dictionary is in the other room, it’s too easy to get lazy and say the heck with it. When your dictionary’s right beside you, you can look up an unfamiliar word immediately. You don’t have to lug your dictionary around wherever you go, either. Every educated person should own at least two dictionaries—not the paperback variety, either, mind you; too many of the words you’ll look up won’t be in there. One dictionary should be on your desk at the office, or wherever you do most of your writing and paperwork. The other dictionary should be at home, within reach of the books and magazines you are currently reading.

As you read, underline or highlight words you don’t know and words you aren’t entirely sure of and look them up. If you can’t or don’t want to mark up the text, or if you don’t care to interrupt the flow of your reading, simply jot down any unfamiliar words on a bookmark or a slip of paper—along with the page number— and look them up at the end of your reading session. Don’t forget to write down the number of the page on which the word appears so you can find the word again and study how it is used in context.

I don’t work for any dictionary publishers, and I’m not trying to sell you a bill of goods here. I can vouch from experience and unequivocally guarantee that promptly checking the dictionary definition of unfamiliar words will greatly improve your reading comprehension and do wonders for your vocabulary. (By the way, did you pronounce unequivocally correctly? See Level 2, word 28.)

Principle 5: Don’t cheat yourself

You should never “read around” words you don’t know or that you think you can figure out from context. Bypassing a word you think you know because you’ve seen it once or twice before, or because you can figure out what the sentence means, is a bad habit—one that in the long run can be detrimental to your vocabulary.

Unfortunately, most people read around difficult words without realizing it. I have even had the disturbing experience of meeting people who express pride that they can discern the general meaning of a passage without knowing the precise meanings of the words it contains. That, I’m afraid, is a delusion.

Being able to read around words is not a sign of intelligence; it is a sign of laziness. Furthermore, the consequences of guessing what a word means can be quite serious. First, you cheat yourself out of a precise knowledge of the language, and second, because the margin for error is so great, more often than not you will make the wrong guess. You know what you are doing then? Building a vocabulary filled with incorrect definitions! That kind of vocabulary leads straight to bad usage and embarrassment. So you see what I mean when I say that reading around words is nothing but a colossal waste of time.

Also, the words you read around are often the words at the border of your vocabulary, the ones you are most receptive to learning and the ones you most need to check in a dictionary right away. They are the words you could pick up rapidly with a minimum of effort. However, if you skip over them, they remain locked forever in your passive vocabulary. Then you never extend the boundary of your vocabulary and pave the way for learning more difficult words.

So that’s why I say don’t cheat yourself when it comes to using the dictionary to abet your vocabulary development. If you have the slightest doubt about what a word means, or how the writer used it, look it up. If you find that the definition you had in mind is the correct one, that’s cause for celebration. You have just added a new word, or a new definition of a familiar word, to your permanent active vocabulary.

Now, before we move on to Level 3, I’d like to take a moment to tell you about two special techniques you can use to continue building your vocabulary after you’ve completed the Verbal Advantage program. They require a modest investment of your time and energy, but they are extremely effective.

You’re probably familiar with the first technique, the classic “flashcard method.” It’s as simple as it sounds. All you do is write every new word you find in reading or hear in conversation on an index card. On one side write the word, and on the other side write the dictionary definition. (You should also note how the word is pronounced, and perhaps include a sample phrase or sentence that illustrates how the word is used.) Carry as many of these word cards with you as is convenient, and take them out and test yourself several times a day for a few days, until you have memorized the meanings of all the words and feel comfortable with them. Then file the cards for future reference, and start in on a new batch.

My father used the flashcard method while attending the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, probably the most prestigious and exclusive conservatory in the country. He knew that the trade-off for training ten hours a day to become a top-flight professional musician was missing out on a well-rounded, liberal arts college education. To make up for it, he took summer classes at the University of Chicago, read widely on his own, kept a record of any unfamiliar words he came across, and tested himself rigorously with the flashcards. Entirely on his own he acquired an excellent vocabulary, which undoubtedly was an important factor in his later becoming the principal harpist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York City, a position he held for thirtyeight years until his retirement in the 1980s.

Perhaps intuitively my father understood that a powerful vocabulary will help you achieve more in life—even if your career doesn’t appear to require strong verbal skills. In short, I believe my father is living proof of Johnson O’Connor’s theory that whatever your occupation, the level of your vocabulary is closely linked to the level of your professional success.

Now for the second vocabulary-building technique, which I call the “personal dictionary.” With this method, you simply record all the new words you come across on a legal pad or in a notebook. If you have a computer, you can start a personal dictionary file, which is easy to update and keep in alphabetical order.

You can arrange your personal dictionary in any number of ways. You can show the words you’ve learned each month, show the words you’ve learned from each book you’ve read, or show which words you’ve learned from conversing with friends and business associates. However you choose to organize it, your personal dictionary is your individual record of progress, a measure of how much you’ve read, heard, and absorbed.

To sum up what we have discussed so far: Carefully reading and reviewing each level of Verbal Advantage, in the proper order, will put your vocabulary development into high gear. But if you want to keep your verbal skills humming along smoothly after you finish the program, you need to read more, use your dictionary, keep track of the words you learn, and review them frequently.

And with that unambiguous tirade, we come to the end of Level 2. Be sure to review this level so you’ll be fully prepared to take on the more challenging words ahead. And while you’re at it, maybe you should also find your dictionary and give it a thorough dusting. It wouldn’t hurt to start consulting it while you’re reading the rest of the Verbal Advantage program.