There are sadly few effective short-cuts to developing a wide vocabulary.
AQA Exam Board
If I had to name one important thing that I have noticed since beginning tutoring, it is that children and teens often have a very limited vocabulary.
This is significant because it impacts reading comprehension and enjoyment as well as their own written and spoken expression.
If students could make just one change to what they are doing, improving their vocabulary through wide reading may make the biggest difference. The English exams require a lot of writing and you cannot just regurgitate the words in the text as you talk about it; students often use the word from their quote to explain the quote. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t work!
It is also very hard to appreciate the layers of meaning of a piece of writing if you don’t understand the words used. Yes, you could Google them, but then what? We need to do something with the words we encounter, so I published a vocabulary notebook on Amazon.
I recommend using this, or any small notebook, to record new and interesting words and their definitions. Students can then refer back to these words as they write, or whenever they have a moment, and start to absorb them naturally and regularly replenish their vocabulary.
As one of the largest examining boards said, ‘There are sadly few effective short-cuts to developing a wide vocabulary’.