Expression issues

[Stick]

Alright, so this is an issue I've had with my English all along and having just returned from my parent-teacher interviews, it's something I still need help on. Basically, until fairly recently, there were problems with my essay writing in general, including the ideas themselves, but now several teachers have commented that the ideas and structure of the essays is nothing short of amazing - it's just the expression that's seriously letting me down. I mean, at this stage, my English teacher thinks a study score of 42 is a reasonable goal for me, but she was keen to add on that if I could fix up this issue that I should not be discounting 46+. It's yet to adversely impact on my SACs but in all the practice essays I've written thus far for my upcoming text response SAC, the wording has been a problem. I know that many of you have suggested reading my work out aloud and that's really helped with the fluency of my writing. The crux of my issue is really to do with synonyms - I tend to use the same sorts of words over and over in my responses. Furthermore, I take ages to write most of my essays since I have to try so hard to make the sentences sound right, only that when I do eventually put them down, they're still not any good. My teacher has advised to have a thesaurus next to me when I'm writing my essays (even for timed ones) just so that my vocabulary bank expands over time. Do you guys have any other suggestions that can help me out with my expression and in particular to get good quality sentences down quickly? I've written a heap of practice essays (and by hand) but the improvement appears to be very slow.

[Lolly]

What your teachers seem to be suggesting is great - definitely use a thesaurus.

Apart from that, keep a word bank.  I used to carry around a notebook for whenever I came across new words. Read other people's essays and pick up on new vocab and phrases and different ways of saying the same thing. Language and expression is learned through imitation.

Read books, Stick! Read for your pleasure. If not for pleasure, then read for the sake of your education. You'd be surprised on the words you might not have come across before and the terminology you can add to essays.

Oh, and annotate your school texts. Don't be anal about the resale price; the person who buys the book will probably be more appreciative of your wonderful insight . Underline key words that jump out at you, scrawl comments on the margin, highlight quotable passages. Key words and expressions I could use in essays often form in my head during these readings. (I'm doing this with The Quiet American just now ) Basically, your expression evolves from reading the text.

I would also suggest thinking carefully before you write an essay. I write far more notes on concepts and plans than actual essays.  Essays are more a distillation of ideas and phraseology.  The problem with essays is that you're aware that everything you write is going to be judged and this can often stunt expression. In your notes, however, you can experiment with your thoughts without this extra pressure. If you're finding it difficult to fully capture your expression, I would recommend free-writing and fully exploring your thought process first. Once you have some flow going, expression becomes easier as you learn to write in sync with what you are truly thinking, regardless of how it fits in a paragraph, or whether it aligns with the contention of your paragraph or whether you think your teacher agrees with you or not. You can sort that stuff out later. For now, just write without judgement.  Pick a prompt and just go with it.  Don't look at what you've written until you've got a couple of pages down.  You'll be surprised at how much your expression improves, or the turns of phrase you discover that you didn't think you were capable of. It is only in the next step that you cull all the unnecessary information,  decide which parts to keep and fit your ideas into a practice essay. Once you've done that you can just continue refining your ideas in practice essays.

 The rest is just practice, Stick, and I'm positively certain that you, of all people, are practicing. 

[brenden]

Just too pro ^.

[e^1]

This is some very good advice that even my teacher doesn't tell me. Recently I realised that in writing essays, having good ideas (and not just writing & structure) is very important which I'm very bad at.

Also, word banks has helped me with getting better vocabulary. Got at least 50 words, some for general uses and others for certain contexts. Like she said, doing some reading of books or articles help (if you prefer you can search the words up on the internet, although that can get tedious). Should note that English is my weakest of the five subjects.