Vocabulary: How important is it?

[lexitu]

Agree with Russ and werdna and Shinny and m@tty and almost everyone. There needs to be an emphasis on appropriate use of vocabulary. It annoys me to see people finding a way to fit a "good" or "hard" word into a sentence just for the sake of it. The sophistication of a word is achieved through its perfect articulation of an idea within a sentence because it is more specific than another word or string of words. Might I remind people that sophistication comes from the Greek word for wisdom and does not simply mean adding unnecessary and confusing complexity. Having a broad vocabulary can also mean more efficient writing because you can use fewer words to convey an idea. Furthermore, variation in word usage (even in simple words) makes for good writing because it does not tire the reader and gives vibrancy to the piece.

[sheepgomoo]

its good to use some stronger vocab to make your essays sound pro.

This is the wrong mentality to take into VCE English - students sometimes concentrate too much on making their essays sound pro... just because an essay has twenty long words in it, doesn't mean it's a 'pro' essay.. more emphasis needs to be placed on the proper study of themes, character analysis and so on.

But I do admit I have used 'sophisticated' language in my essays, though very sparingly.

what i should've said, is what Russ said ^. Of course the quality of the essay itself is very important, but sometimes stronger vocab can bring up the quality of the essay and help explain concepts easier, if its used appropriately.

lol this post is useless i just copied what russ said; ignore me :B

[LOVEPHYSICS]

It's really difficult to judge your vocab unless you post your essays up in VN. Then perhaps, we could see the level of your vocab and whether it needs improving. A lot of people tends to underestimate their own vocabulary, and although a good vocab is helpful in VCE English, its not gonna get your scores up by much. So unless you do that, just forget vocab for now, and focus metalanguage. Focus and remember words that allow you express or analyse an idea, and to hell with the satisfying feeling of having a 10 letter word every sentence in your essay.

That said, Good Luck to you studies.