ENGLISH VOCABULARY ?!?!?!

[treystorm]

hey guys,

i want to know how important a good vocabulary is to a piece in 3&4?
also how can i improve mine?

thanks

[MonsieurHulot]

hey guys,

i want to know how important a good vocabulary is to a piece in 3&4?
also how can i improve mine?

thanks

An advanced vocabulary is quite important, both to show your erudition and to express complex ideas. Your ideas are the main focus, your vocabulary should support it. The examiners look favourably upon pieces with a wide range of appropriately used words.
To develop your vocabulary you should read a lot and look up every word you don't know. Some people like to write the words down, but I find that a bit time consuming as I can usually remember a word's definition after the first time. Doing this while reading novels will build up an extensive vocabulary, however if time is an issue then I suggest you read some of the myriad of essays poster here on AN. You will be exposed to a range of words that are appropriate for essays.

[jazza97]

very important.  Makes you stand out from the crowd.  What is more important, however, is concise, logical and sharp writing.

The best way to improve is to read.  Don't just sit there and memorize big words because if you do this you will end up using the word in its wrong context.  Read newspapers-THE AGE, THE AUSTRALIAN, critical essays of your texts and novels.  I think reading for enjoyment really does improve your vocab as you subconsciously recognize the clear, descriptive and energetic tones that spark your imagination which will benefit your writing.

[treystorm]

thank you guys,

one more thing....
 
how many essays should i be doing through out the year?

i am planning on doing 50 each for the two texts i chose to do in the exam and for the Analytical response.
i am planning on doing 20 each for the other two texts that ill have to do a SAC on.

what do you guys think?

[dilks]

Make sure you have decent ideas before you start writing your first practise essays, otherwise the essays will be trash, and the enterprise will be turn out to be a total waste of time. Once you know something worthwhile you can consolidate that knowledge by writing an essay.

[Fantasia94]

Personally, I think a wide vocabulary is very important. I believe that it could potentially be the difference between an A and an A+. I believe that I received an A as opposed to an A+ on the Engl exam because my vocabulary isn't very broad and very sophisticated as I do constantly speak a second language at home. This therefore somehow costed me in my English exam despite my inclusion of the quite complex ideas.

[Stick]

I find that I tend to use the same word over and over in my essays, so I always write with a thesaurus next to me. You'll literally develop a mental bank of alternate words if your pieces start to sound a bit repetitive.

[FlorianK]

hey guys,

i want to know how important a good vocabulary is to a piece in 3&4?
also how can i improve mine?

thanks

I don't know how important it is, but I always didn't like writing essays for English and therefore did badly. Then I started using a thesaurus to look up nearly every single word and extended my vocab by a great, which entailed me having fun writing essays and 'throwing around with big words' and henceforth the qualitiy of my essays increased.

[vashappenin]

Many people are against its use, but do you think it helps to use a thesaurus whule writing essays or will it make us too dependent on them?

[totaled]

You don't need a great vocabulary to do well in english though! Obviously it helps, but it's not required (I certainly didn't have a great vocab..)
If you write a lot of essays, you'll find that you use certain words well in certain paragraphs, or in describing certain characters/themes, and after a while these words automatically come to you when you write.

So when your examiner reads your essay and is quite impressed by the large/sophisticated language/words that you use, they don't have to know that it's the same group/list of words that you use in every essay

[Stick]

Many people are against its use, but do you think it helps to use a thesaurus whule writing essays or will it make us too dependent on them?

I've found that I still use it quite often, but never for the same words, so I guess that means I'm building a larger mental bank.

[MonsieurHulot]

I've found that I still use it quite often, but never for the same words, so I guess that means I'm building a larger mental bank.

I haven't used a thesaurus to extend my vocabulary; however, as shown above, there are other for whom it has worked well. The problem I have is that a thesaurus doesn't give you any information other that the fact that it's a synonym for the word you're looking up. Words have more than one meaning, and the subtle nuances can help or hinder your expression of meaning. For example, if I look up the word extricate in my thesaurus, it comes up with, among other words, disencumber. To extricate means to remove [oneself] from a situation. To disencumber means to get rid of a burden. As there is a subtle difference that the thesaurus does not allude to, you can't be sure that you're using the perfect word for the situation. That's why I think that reading widely, to encounter the words in context, is a better way of enriching one's vocabulary.

[Stick]

I use a dictionary as well because I once made a similar mistake as described above.

[Sickle]

In English, you focus on having good ideas and expressing them clearly and concisely.
A bigger vocab can be good as long as you have full mastery over all the words in your inventory. The questions you should pose to yourself when writing essays is - 'How can I make this clearer?', 'How can I make this shorter?' and 'Does this sound better if I use different words?'
The upside of a bigger vocabulary is that you will be able to express more ideas more effectively. A simple example: 'Macbeth, the tragic hero after which the play was named...' vs 'Macbeth, the eponymous tragic hero..'
A bigger vocabulary can be your downfall if you can't fully master the words you are using. So by all means learn more words and how to apply them while you're in study-mode, but when doing exams, always opt for the words you understand better to prevent yourself from sounding like a show-off idiot.

How many essays you should write:
To me, essay practice is for practicing to express your ideas effectively. It's for developing technique if you don't already have any.
There are two components that you need for a high-scoring exam essay.
1. Awesome ideas
2. Awesome technique for expressing them.
If your technique is already top-notch, there isn't much point to writing too many essays, unless you're keeping yourself from getting rusty. Instead you should focus on accumulating ideas.
Examiners want to see that your active mind is breeding interesting, original concepts. They get pretty bored after reading the same thing a billion times. Good ideas that make them think will stand out to them.
That said, no one's technique is really 100% perfect at the start of VCE, so aim to write at least 1 essay a week with the intention of challenging yourself with using different formats and different vocabulary each time.
By the time you reach the last part of semester 2, you should have a comfortable 'set' of sentence-structures and a good enough vocabulary that you can call your own set of tools.

Happy English-ing