Learn Cool Words
A few years ago, I was teaching English at a university in Nagoya and wanted a way to make learning new words more interesting for my students. One way to do that was to make simple illustrations of our vocabulary terms. These postcards could then be used in activities and materials or to decorate the room.
None of them were meant to last, but since my students responded to them very well, I kept making them. Eventually, I adapted many of them into a collection of 100 common words with uncommon points of interest.
What's in the book?
It was important to present words that were useful and memorable, so I broke the book in to 10 sections of 10 words with a quiz at the end of each section. Each page contains illustrations, definitions, example sentences, and any important points related to the terms.
For example, English speakers often use overly formal words when we are being funny or sarcastic. This can be confusing for learners, so one section helped explain those words with examples like imbibe, pugilist, and thespian.
Other sections focused on words that even native speakers make mistakes with like affect and effect or emigrate and immigrate.
The 3rd Edition
The nice thing about self publishing is that I have the opportunity to go back and change things whenever I like, so as my illustrations have improved, so has this book.
That being said, I made it a point to keep the simplicity of black and white (mostly) line drawings and the same look and feel as the original book, just a bit nicer.
