– Read a lot: reading a lot helps you widen your vocabulary, and when you do that, it improves your reading, both in speed and in comprehension. This premise is essential.
– Consult dictionaries: It’s not about stopping your reading every time you find an unknown word or something whose meaning you don’t know, because this would make your reading slow and tedious. You must mark the word and continue reading, because most of the times, you’ll find the meaning in the context, without the need to use a dictionary. Nevertheless, once you’ve finished reading the paragraph or the text, you should use a dictionary to look up the words you found. Lastly, read the text again, and this time it won’t be difficult.
– Use the new words you learned: It’s important to get a full and real understanding of a word, using it in different contexts.
– Handle your synonyms and antonyms: you can use synonym and antonym dictionaries to widen your vocabulary.
– Solve crosswords, Swedish-style crosswords, etc.: With them, apart from being entertained, you’ll widen your vocabulary.
– Know the most common acronyms: This way, you won’t stop during your reading every time you find one. There are more every day: UN, NATO, NAFTA…