Vocabulary Power 3: Practicing Essential Words

The Vocabulary Power series may be used in the classroom, of course, but these three books also seem ideal for motivated intermediate or advanced ESL learners to use at home. Each of the 30 section of each text exposes a student to 10 new academic words in 10 different contexts, for a total of 300 words in all. The words are graduated in difficulty from the first to the third book, so there are 900 core words in the entire series. The words are first presented in an exercise that requires a learner to use context to comprehend their meaning, then match them to definitions, then answer multiple-choice questions that use the words, and then categorize them as parts of speech. Alternate meanings are presented next, followed by an exercise that asks students to use the words in sentences, followed by an exercise presenting collocations and idioms. Finally, the learner uses the words in readings, discussion, and writing. There are review tests every three chapters and a complete index. A separate answer key may be purchased for each book. Repeated exposure to new vocabulary is essential both for understanding and retention, so this program is effective as well as superbly designed. If a student works his or her way through the whole series, he or she will have acquired not only 900 high-freqency words essential to high school and college proficiency but also at least as many related words. As an ESL teacher with 25 years of teaching experience, I recommend it highly.

I teach English as a Second Language (ESL), and overall I like this vocabulary series. This series bases their vocabulary selection on the 2,000 most frequent word list (General Service List) and the Academic Word list. This is much more useful than other vocabulary books which just pick words that they think are important with no research to support their decisions. The exercises go in depth into each word covered by using not only definition and examples like most books, but also word family activities, collocation activities, and multiple contexts where the target ten words are used. The only downside of this book is that there are no vocabulary tests that go with the book. There are some quizzes at the end of each three units, but unless the teacher wants students to study these before the test, there are no supplemental quizzes or tests. Therefore, I am spending my Saturday evening developing vocabulary quizzes!

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