How to Help Students Improve Word ChoiceBy Dr. Monica BomengenDr. Monica Bomengen is Director of Education Services and Support for SIATech Any high school teacher who assigns papers and essays knows the tendency of students to be lazy in their selection of words when expressing themselves in writing. How many times have you groaned when reading “good,” “really,” and other vague, repetitive words in your students’ writing? Or cringed when you see a student writer make a valiant effort to pepper an essay with every word on the weekly vocabulary list, only half of which are used correctly? These well-meaning writers turn adjectives into verbs with impunity and abuse the adverb past all reasonable expectations; I remember to this day the student in my classroom twenty years ago who wrote, “You really gotta be careful with fragile things like glass figurines because they are really breakable.” True story.
Word choice and vocabulary are important aspects of writing for any audience, particularly so in academic writing. An examination of almost any K-12 state writing rubric will show that “Word Choice” is usually provided its own separate category, right along with “Organization” and “Conventions.” For example, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) essay rubric identifies top writers as exhibiting “skillful use of language, using a varied, accurate, and apt vocabulary.” The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s and the International Reading Association (IRA)’s “ReadWriteThink©” rubric describes highly skilled writers as employing “effective and engaging use of word choice.” Conversly, weak writers on the SAT are identified as displaying “very little facility in the use of language, using very limited vocabulary or incorrect word choice.” NCTE and IRA describe weak writers as “careless or inaccurate,” even “trite, vague, or flat” in their selection of words.
It is word choice, arguably more than any other characteristic, which expresses the writer’s voice and makes writing interesting (or boring) to the reader. An understanding of one’s audience should define the writer’s selection of words. Nonetheless, all teachers are familiar with the essay that is peppered with “vocabulary words,” some of which are used less than correctly. We want our students to avoid the appearance of dropping words into an essay indiscriminately in an effort to make it look more academic than it actually is.
I like to employ the analogy of riding a horse when assessing a writer’s word choices in an essay. A skilled writer is able to use language with ease, much as an experienced equestrian can guide a horse from a walk to a trot to a canter to a gallop. This sort of essay is a pleasure to read. Less capable writers are like inexperienced riders, who launch into a trot right away and may even lose control of the horse, letting it run away with them. The least skilled writers lurch forward and saw at the reins, causing frustration to their horses, which stop and start, never easing into a gait by the end of the short ride.
There are some techniques that teachers can use to help their students develop their skill in selecting and using words effectively in writing. Focused Correction Areas (FCAs), identified by John Collins, can assist students in pinpointing and refining word selection. This technique can be incorporated into peer editing. Employing FCAs allows students to “concentrate on improving only a handful of skills at any one time and never feel overwhelmed by having to think about too many things when creating a piece of work.” The teacher makes the writing assignment, which may be to generate a rough draft or to refine and edit an existing draft, but only scores three specific areas at a time. When students are placed in peer editing groups and provided detailed instruction on how to edit a specific area such as word choice, the focus is far more effective than simply putting them into groups and directing them to “edit each other’s work.”
Visual cues provided by colored highlighters, both in peer editing and in the posting of anchor papers for reference in the classroom, are another excellent method of directing students’ attention to the importance of word choice. When editing for the word choice FCA, students can use colored highlighters to note words that they recommend be examined and possibly changed. This technique appeals both to kinesthetic and visual learners. The teacher can also use highlighters when marking student papers, perhaps highlighting strong word choices in bright green, marking in bright yellow those words that need to be reconsidered. This marking technique literally draws the writer’s attention to the specific word when reading over the teacher’s comments. Finally, the teacher can download anchor papers from the state department of education website, enlarge them, highlight strong word choices on each essay, laminate them, and post them in the classroom for reference. Students will see instantly that the higher scoring anchor papers have several words highlighted (not to mention longer paragraphs). This is a powerful reminder of what the expectations are for writing.
Finally, teachers can have students imitate writers who have unique voices. Imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery; it is an effective way to improve one’s own writing. This technique provides the opportunity to link assignments to current events and popular culture: an essay written by Anna Quindlen is far different from one written by Homer Simpson. The imitation assignment takes the idea of “compare and contrast” and gives it a dose of steroids.
Whatever technique a teacher selects, helping students improve their word choice in writing will give them a leg up in their composition skills. Finding interesting, specific ways to focus students’ attention on the concept will not only improve their vocabularies, but it will also streamline their writing. References
Collins, John. (2007). Collins writing program: Focus correction areas. Retrieved January 17, 2009, from http://www.collinsed.com/focus_correction_areas.htm. “How the essay is scored.” The College Board. (2009). Retrieved January 17, 2009, from http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/about/sat/essay_scoring.html. ReadWriteThink. (2009). Writing rubric 9-12. Retrieved January 17, 2009, from http://www.readwritethink.org/. Dr. Monica Bomengen is Director of Education Services and Support for SIATech. A National Board Certified Teacher (Early Adolescence/English Language Arts), she has taught English to students from seventh grade through college. Dr. Bomengen has published writing tips for teachers in the National Council of Teachers of English’s Class Notes. She is also an experienced scorer for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Essay and scores high school writing six times per year for the College Board. |
