If you want to sound natural when speaking English, it's really helpful to learn whole phrases, not just single words! Studying vocabulary lists of single words is common in language learning. However, by just learning the word by itself and without context or usage, there is no way to know HOW to use in naturally in a sentence. This can lead to strange or unnatural sounding sentences. Here is an example…
Let's say you already know the coat. Maybe you even memorized a lot of similar clothing words like hat, scarf, gloves, etc. But do you know how to make phrases in a natural way using the word 'coat'?
Imagine the situation of being at a restaurant with a friend. The meal is over and the bill is paid. Your friend says she will visit the restroom before leaving. You want to do something helpful related to your coats. What would you say?
If you only know the word coat, you might translate the rest of the phrase directly from Japanese and say ..
"OK, I will take our coats".
This is an unnatural phrase. To use coat in this example, one would say …
"Ok, I will get our coats".
Here are some other useful phases using the word coat…
Why don't you take off your coat?
Can I help you on with your coat?
So as you can see, these sentences use coat with special verbs and helper words as well. So if you goal is to lean natural English, my advice is it avoid single vocabulary words and instead try to learn the whole phrase!
