Carolyn Ruffles is the author of The Girl in the Scrapbook, Who to Trust, and the The Vanishing Encore.
I'm so honored to have been featured in this fabulous author's newsletter.
If you don't know Carolyn Ruffles, I suggest you get her book right now and read it: it's free to buy on Kindle now -- see below.
This is what Carolyn Ruffles has written about my book:
Languages & Life Lessons: Amazon.co.uk: Rava, Afarin: 9798479965753: Books
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf
Once you learn a word you weren't familiar with, don't be surprised if you start noticing it everywhere. Read the chapter titled "Persisting Questions" in Languages & Life Lessons.
When we learn a new word, it is not enough to look at its definition in the dictionary. We need to learn how it is spelled and pronounced as well. We also need to know its usage, how it is used in a sentence. To do that, we need to know whether it's a noun or an adjective or a verb that can be conjugated; in other words, we need to know its part of speech. If we are to use the word correctly, a basic level of grammar knowledge is crucial.
What does it mean to know a word? Word knowledge has different levels.
Every word in our word bank has a place somewhere on our word knowledge spectrum. On one end, we know a word very well and feel comfortable using it in the spoken and written language, and on the other end, we don't know a word exists.
Between these two ends of the word knowledge spectrum are other levels: We might know a word exists but not be able to define it. We might be able to guess the meaning, especially in context. We might know what a word means when it's heard or read but not feel confident to use it because we don't know its pronunciation, spelling, or usage.
