Enhance Academic

Vocabulary advice

You need to use bigger words and more complex, well-structured and imaginative ideas in your work to demonstrate a depth of thought. Keeping a Vocabulary List of big words will help with this.

You should also keep an Ideas List of interesting things to write about. Contrasting and comparing one idea with another shows a depth of thought.

The aim is to collect words in your Vocabulary List that are slightly above your year level, so, in effect, they are more like first or second year university words. Words that teachers have heard of, of course and that clever people use. Words that are just a bit special.

It is great to developing an eye-catching vocabulary, but you cannot use words that get in the way of meaning. This will lessen your chances of getting a better mark than the other bright students you are competing against. But well used, eye-catching vocabulary is astounding and will certainly help get you to a magical 8, 9 or 10 average for the six markings of your three pieces of writing on the VCE English exam.

And don’t forget the extreme importance of not taking great risks in the assessment itself. The assessment is not the time to start using words if you are unsure of their meaning. Start practising using your fancy words as soon as possible; some weeks and months before so that you are confident that you know how to use them.

The idea of your Vocabulary List is not just to please your teacher, it is to improve your vocabulary. The list should contain words that you practise using in your life and in your VCE English writing, so you don't make mistakes with these words when you actually have the assessment.

Jessica Smith’s favourite useful words for senior English students

  • machinations: the processes or protocols that someone uses … scurrilous machinations; insidious machinations.
  • perspicacity, perspicacious: insightful
  • psyche: one’s mind-set. The author, through their characterisation of … provides an insight into the psyche of someone who …
  • cathartic: therapeutic. When you have a cathartic blab to your friends about your troubles you will feel better because you have got your troubles off your chest.
  • patriarchal (male-dominated) and misogynistic (woman-hating): both words are associated with the problem of sexism.
  • burgeoning, blooming, blossoming: more poetic words for 'beginning'. You will often find, when studying different texts, the need to write about how something is starting or beginning, and it just sounds more impressive if you can find fancy ways of saying things, so why not talk about the burgeoning and blooming aspects (of something to do with one of the texts).

For more vocabulary advice, go to the Enhance Shop for the study guide 'Build Your Vocabulary Now'

Don’t forget the extreme importance of not taking great risks in the assessment itself

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