The absolute majority of my students would improve their grades dramatically and benefit a lot more from their studies if only they acquired the habit of looking up the words they don’t know in a dictionary. If they at least consulted a dictionary to understand the titles of the texts we read, that already would be hugely helpful.
Parents, do your children a huge favor. Whenever you are watching the TV or a movie and hear a complicated word, tell your child, “Do you know what this word means? Let’s look it up in the dictionary!” Make consulting a dictionary a regular practice, a part of your kid’s intellectual hygiene. You teach children to brush their teeth and change their underwear, right? So teach them that a dictionary is also a regular part of a human being’s life, just like a tooth-brush.
The world belongs to people with good vocabularies. And the sooner you start building yours up, the better.
Clarissa's Blog 
All you have to do is Google the word and “definition” and the dictionary.com definition comes up. There’s really not much of an excuse.
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My parents totally did this growing up and I recently thanked my mom for it when she was visiting. Not only does it build a good vocabulary, it also models an attitude that knowledge is within our reach.
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