How to improve your English vocabulary for work

Updated 28 October 2026 · By Menyin Chang, who makes Headword

Short answer. Learn fewer words, and use each one. Pick words you would actually say at work, learn each with its tone and the words it goes with, then produce it: type it, say it aloud, write your own sentence. Test yourself instead of rereading, and come back to the word just before you would forget it.

This guide is for people who already work in English. Your grammar is fine and people understand you, but you reach for the same plain words: do, get, say, very important. The goal is not a bigger list of words you recognize. It is a handful more words you actually use.

1. Choose words you will use, not words that impress

Rare words make bad first targets: you will meet them once a year. The words that change how you sound at work sit in the middle: common enough in emails, reports and meetings, but not ones you produce yet. Reiterate instead of say again. Ascertain instead of find out. Rectify instead of fix. For scale: reading comfortably in English takes roughly 8,000 to 9,000 word families (Nation, 2006).

2. Learn each word with its register and its partners

Knowing what a word means is half of knowing it. The other half is where it fits. Commence is right in a contract and odd in a chat message; kick off is the opposite. And words travel with partners: you conduct a survey, you raise a concern, you meet a deadline. Learn the pair, not the word alone, and you will not produce a sentence that is correct and still sounds foreign.

3. Produce it: type it, say it, write a sentence

Words you generate are remembered better than words you read: the generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Words you say aloud are remembered better than words you read silently: the production effect (MacLeod et al., 2010). So the useful exercises are the ones where the word comes out of you: complete a sentence by typing it, spell it from its sound, say it aloud, and finally write one sentence of your own about your own work.

4. Test yourself instead of rereading

Rereading a list feels productive and teaches little. Trying to recall the word, and checking, teaches far more (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). Cover the word and recall it from its meaning; when you miss, look, then try again tomorrow.

5. Come back just before you forget

Spacing reviews out beats cramming them together, across hundreds of experiments (Cepeda et al., 2006). A spaced-repetition app does the scheduling for you: a word you know well comes back in weeks, a word you missed comes back tomorrow.

6. Use it at work within a day

A word you have used once in a real email is a word you will use again. Pick one new word a day and put it in one message, one meeting, one document before the day ends.

Mistakes Spanish speakers make at work

Some errors come straight from Spanish and sound wrong to native speakers even when every word is English:

Instead of	Say	Why
I have a doubt about the budget.	I have a question about the budget.	A doubt is not believing something; a question wants an answer.
I assisted the meeting.	I attended the meeting.	To assist is to help.
We realized a survey.	We conducted a survey.	To realize is to understand.
Can you explain me the process?	Can you explain the process to me?	You explain something to someone.
This is sensible information.	This is sensitive information.	Sensible means reasonable.
Can you borrow me your charger?	Can you lend me your charger?	You borrow from someone; you lend to them.

Doing it with Headword

Headword is an iPhone app built on this method. It brings one useful word a day, chosen from the middle band and shown as a full dictionary entry with its register, examples, IPA pronunciation and a recorded voice, and the words it usually goes with. Practice then makes you produce it, with questions that get harder as the word gets stronger, and Review brings it back on a spaced-repetition schedule. The daily word is free. Headword on the App Store.

Sources

Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1).
Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6).
MacLeod, C. M., et al. (2010). The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3).
Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865).
Cepeda, N. J., et al. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3).