Advanced Vocabulary List (Postgraduate Level)
Nouns
Acquisition: The process of gaining possession or mastery of something.
Automatization: The process of making a task automatic, requiring little conscious thought.
Heuristic: A mental shortcut or practical method that is not guaranteed to be perfect, but is sufficient for reaching an immediate goal.
Metacognition: The awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.
Neuroplasticity: The brain's ability to change and adapt throughout life by forming new neural connections.
Precision: The quality of being exact, accurate, and meticulous.
Proficiency: A high degree of competence or skill; expertise.
Synergy: The interaction of elements that, when combined, produce a total effect greater than the sum of the individual elements.
Virtuosity: Great skill in music or another artistic pursuit, but applicable to any skill performed with masterful ability.
Verbs
To Automatize: To make a process automatic.
To Cultivate: To try to develop and improve something.
To Internalize: To make attitudes, beliefs, or skills fully part of one's own understanding.
To Optimize: To make the best or most effective use of a situation or resource.
To Synthesize: To combine different ideas, influences, or pieces of information into a coherent whole.
To Transcend: To go beyond the limits of ordinary experience or capability.
Adjectives
Ambidextrous: Literally, able to use both hands equally well; figuratively, very skillful and versatile.
Cognitive: Relating to mental processes such as perception, memory, and judgment.
Efficacious: Effective and producing the desired result.
Epistemological: Relating to the theory of knowledge, particularly its methods, validity, and scope.
Intuitive: Based on what feels to be true without conscious reasoning; understood immediately.
Paradigmatic: Serving as a typical example or a clear model.
Tacit: Understood or implied without being directly stated, as in tacit knowledge gained through experience.
Useful Phrases and Conceptual Terms
Cognitive load: The total amount of mental effort being used in working memory.
Deliberate practice: A highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.
Kinesthetic intelligence: The ability to use one's body with great skill and to handle objects deftly.
Learning curve: The rate of a person's progress in gaining experience or new skills.
Mental model: An internal representation of how something works in the real world.
Second-order effect: The indirect, less obvious consequences of an action or decision.
Tacit knowledge: Personal, context-specific knowledge that is difficult to formalize or communicate.
Transtheoretical model: A model of behavior change that assesses an individual's readiness to act on a new, healthier behavior.