Vocabulary That Earns Marks, and Vocabulary That Does Not
Every student is told to use better vocabulary. Very few are told what better means, so they reach for longer.
Longer is not the same as better. The language descriptors ask for a range of vocabulary used accurately and to effect. A long word used wrongly does not sit in the vocabulary column — it lands in the accuracy one, and costs you there.
What goes wrong
“I was inundated with happiness.”
Ambitious, and wrong. Inundated means flooded, usually with something unwanted.
“My mother was livid when I forgot my water bottle.”
Livid means extremely angry. A forgotten water bottle does not earn it. The word is too big for the moment, and that mismatch is visible to a marker.
What works instead
Precision, not difficulty.
Vague: “He walked slowly to the front of the class.”
Precise: “He shuffled to the front of the class.”
Shuffled is not a hard word. It is the right one, and it replaces two words with one.
Verbs before adjectives
Students collect adjectives. Verbs do more work.
Adjective-heavy: “I was very nervous and my hands were shaky.”
Verb-led: “My hands would not stay still.”
Build a small word bank, not a big one
- Choose five feelings you write about often — fear, relief, guilt, anger, pride.
- For each, find three precise verbs. Not adjectives.
- Use each one in a sentence about something that really happened to you.
- If you cannot use it naturally, drop it. An unused word is not vocabulary.
Fifteen words you can use beat a hundred you have only read.
Read next
- Cohesion: The One Thing That Moves You Up a Language Band
- Tense Control: The Commonest Reason Scripts Sit at 11 or 12
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