通过阅读增加词汇量，这可能是个比较符合语言学习规律的方法。尤其对于有一定英语基础的人适用。对生词不要先想它的中文对应，根据上下文猜测出处它表达的东西，在脑中形成一个想象；通过不断的刺激/回应，使这个想象固定下来，今后在在这个语境中遇到这个词，这个想象的图像潜意识的出现了。

Vocabulary comes from Reading
Size and Complexity
There are simply too many words to teach and learn one at a time. Estimates of adult vocabulary size range from about 40,000 (Lorge & Chall, 1963) to 156,000 words (Seashore & Eckerson 1940), and it has been claimed that elementary school children acquire from eight (Nagy and Herman 1987) to more than 14 (Miller 1977) words per day.

Not only are there many words to acquire, there are also subtle and complex properties of words that competent users have acquired. Quite often, the meaning of a word is not nearly adequately represented by a synonym. As Finegan (1999) points out, words that appear to have the same meaning refer to slightly different concepts or are used in slightly different ways (e.g. the difference between "vagrant" and "homeless.")

Also, when we acquire a word we acquire considerable knowledge about its grammatical properties. English speakers, for example, can freely add "un" to many adjectives, e.g. producing "unhappy" from "happy," and but cannot do the same with "sad." Professional grammarians have struggled to properly describe the generalizations underlying such phenomena, and they are rarely taught. Vocabulary teaching methods typically focus on teaching simple synonyms, and thus give only part of the meaning of the word, and none of its social meanings or grammatical properties.

Competence without Instruction
People with large vocabularies and good writing ability do not generally claim to have developed them through study. Smith and Supanich (1984) tested 456 company presidents and reported that they had significantly larger vocabulary scores than a comparison group of adults did. When asked if they had made an effort to increase their vocabulary since leaving school, 54.5 percent said they had. When asked what they did to increase their vocabulary, however, about half of the 54.5 percent mentioned reading. Only 14 percent of those who tried to increase their vocabulary (3 percent of the total group) mentioned the use of vocabulary books.

Light Reading and Vocabulary Growth
Research by Hayes and Ahrens (1988) suggests that lighter reading can play an important role in helping readers move to more demanding texts. According to their findings, it is highly unlikely that much educated vocabulary comes from conversation or television.

Hayes and Ahrens found that the frequency of less-common words in ordinary conversation, whether adult-to-child or adult-to-adult, was much lower than in even the "lightest" reading. About 95% of the words used in conversation and television are from the most frequent 5000.