When writing essays, students often find it difficult to find the right words to express their ideas because they lack enough vocabulary to do so. In order to deal with this, some students try to memorize words out of a dictionary day by day, which is a completely terrible way of doing this – they’ll memorize a bunch of words starting with ‘A’, but when they start memorizing the ‘B’s, they forget everything they tried to learn earlier!
The truth is, vocabulary and grammar are the foundations of strong essay writing. Without them, even the most insightful arguments can get lost in vague or awkward phrasing. Instead, you need to be tactical about what words to learn, and how you go about learning them by setting achievable goals
Mastering vocab
As you might have been told a million times, the most obvious way of learning vocab is just by reading more books. What books should you be reading, though? Well, just read the assigned booklist ahead of time. If you’ve already done that, then move on to see the recommended fiction list that all school libraries will have.
Now, let’s be honest – you’re not going to read random books just to gain vocab. (In fact, you might not even read your assigned texts!) If that’s the case, you can still gain vocab through different means, like playing word games like Wordle, Scrabble, or Words With Friends. All of these are valid ways of exposing yourself to new words you might not typically come across, without having to feel like you’re actually studying.
What’s the most important thing to keep in mind is that whatever way you choose to expose yourself to more words, it’s going to all be useless if you don’t try to retain it. Make sure you have a word list that you gradually update over time and refer back to. This will ensure that whatever new words you find aren’t just lost in the ether.
Using new words
Learning new words is one thing, but actually using them is another. There’s always a bit of fear when using new vocab, as you might feel like you’re being judged, or you might get it wrong. Don’t be scared! It’s better to try than to forget everything you’ve spent all that time learning. Here’s a few situations you can try to use them in:
- Class Discussions – Intentionally slip 2-3 new words into your contributions (e.g., “The author’s diatribe against society epitomizes…”).
- Group Chats – Drop a sophisticated word humorously (e.g., “This cafeteria food is unpalatable“).
- Journaling – Describe your day with 1-2 new words (e.g., “The incessant rain exacerbated my mood”).
- Gaming – Use complex words in multiplayer chats (e.g., “Your strategy is unfathomable“)
How do I deal with grammar?
Grammar is a bit of a nightmare for many students, as they think it’s impossible or overly confusing to learn everything. The trick here is to NOT learn everything – you only have to learn the things that students get confused about the most. This involves the following:
- Tense consistency
- Subject-verb agreement
- Singular/plural consistency
- Apostrophe use
These four are by far the most common causes for grammatical errors. So long as you learn these, you should be able to fix most, if not all, of your issues. There are endless resources that you can use to develop these, many of which are completely free and can be found online. However, to truly cement your understanding, you need to actively identify these errors in practice, by training yourself to scan for what issues you’ve consistently had.
Another common thing students do that sabotage themselves is to rely too much on spellchecking programs when doing their work. If you just tick off a bunch of corrections without knowing why they’re wrong, you’ll never get it right in the future! Take your time to think about why it’s showing up as incorrect and you won’t have to deal with it again!
Learning the All Round Way:
Expand your word bank, refine grammar skills, and enhance writing precision for top marks in IGCSE English. If you find yourself needing more guidance on specific texts or how to enhance your analytical skills, we invite you to connect with us at All Round Education Academy. Our dedicated team is here to support you in achieving your academic goals. For more information, please contact us at tuition@allround-edu.com or +852 6348 8744.