Vocabulary and written expression

[davidle_10]

Does anyone have any tips on how i can improve these skills?

[davidle_10]

I've got a subscription of the age but i only read the sports section. I'll make sure i start reading the the news section.

[davidle_10]

Thankyou for advice, i'll remember to give you karma  .

[ice_blockie]

One thing that I found fun/very nerdy:

Read The Age with a highlighter and highlight words you don't know when you read them (or scan the page until you find one). Read the sentence a few times to get the meaning and then challenge yourself to use that word/phrase to describe one of your texts.

For example, I still remember earlier this year I read this about China in The Age:
"a regime that espouses subjugating the rights of the individual in favour of the masses as its core value."

Now if you have read 1984 (If you haven't its just about a totalitarian regime called "The Party" which watches people continuously and controls everything in life) you could use this:

"The Party espouses subjugating the rights of the individual in favour of the masses as its core value," or a little more creatively...

"The Party deliberately subjugates the rights of the individual to effectively control the minds and the actions of the masses. Such an action leads the protagonist of the novel, Winston, rendered almost powerless in his quest to rediscover his humanity..."

Just an idea of how you could improve your vocab and expression. Hope that helps.

[lynt.br]

Just keep in mind that your focus should be clear, precise writing rather than using large impressive-sounding words. A large vocabulary helps when you find yourself struggling to find the right word for a certain situation, however, this is really the extent of its usefulness.

When you look at high scoring essays, most of the time you will be able to understand every word they write - they deliberately avoid using big, obscure words because the purpose of an essay is to communicate ideas, not to confuse or annoy the reader. The skill involved is being able to use simple everyday words appropriately in an essay. This comes with practice.

I recommend when you write your essays, highlight segments that you like the sound of, or that the teacher liked. You can then reuse similar phrases in later essays (so long as they are appropriate). This helps speed up the writing process and means less time searching for the right words to use because you've already explained something similar before. Once you've written out the same argument 10 or so times in different essays, the process becomes more and more autonomous.

[davidle_10]

thanks for the advice