As I get to know my students well enough to be mischievous about their homework tasks, I have a little list of words which I ban from their writing.

There are six of them for GCSE English Language:

BIG . SMALL . HAPPY . SAD

GOOD . BAD

(There is a separate list for A-Level English Literature, by the way!)

Don’t get me wrong – they aren’t ‘bad‘ words. You will find me using them in everyday conversation. Possibly on this site. And bigger words? They aren’t necessarily better words.

But when you’re being assessed on the range and effectiveness of your vocabulary choices, the ability to select the right word at the right time can make a real difference.

So, I have a little vocabulary exercise I enjoy inflicting on students.

I give them 30 seconds to think of as many synonyms as they can for one of these words.

No Googling, no thesaurus, no help from me.

Just their brains.

The response is almost always the same: nervous laughter, a brief silence, occasionally a complaint that I’m putting them on the spot (which makes me giggle), and then a handful of suggestions.

Today’s student offering for ‘happy‘ was ecstatic …

A perfectly good start. A potentially excellent one.

Although, as we’ll discuss, not every synonym is necessarily interchangeable. There’s a difference between being happy, delighted, content, elated and ecstatic. The last of those, for example, suggests a much greater intensity of feeling.

Choosing between them requires a little thought. And practice.

Recognising a word when somebody else uses it isn’t quite the same as being able to retrieve it yourself when you need it. Vocabulary is a bit like a muscle: if you don’t exercise it, it’s unlikely to perform particularly well when you suddenly ask it to do something strenuous.

I want students to develop a wider vocabulary, certainly, but I’m not particularly interested in them simply learning a collection of impressive-sounding alternatives. Every year I come across students who seem to have ‘swallowed a thesaurus’. You possibly know someone like that, too … ?

Does it make them clearer? Does it make them sound ‘smarter’? Not necessarily.

What matters is that students understand the differences between words and can make deliberate choices about which ones to use.

Regular readers will know that if I can shoehorn a reference to Shakespeare into a post, I will jump at it. On this occasion, it’s one of my favourite facts. David Crystal, the eminent linguist and author, has discussed estimates of Shakespeare’s vocabulary at around 20,000 different words. That’s a substantial vocabulary, certainly, but what I find particularly interesting isn’t its size, or even the number of words he is credited with creating.

It’s what he was able to do with that bank of words.

Shakespeare understood the importance of choosing the right word, for the right reason, at the right time.

That’s precisely what I want my students to develop.

Because there’s another consideration here: examinations.

I often remind students that they have just one opportunity to demonstrate to a complete stranger everything they know how to do. That examiner doesn’t know what they’re capable of, what we’ve discussed in sessions, or how much work they’ve put in.

Examiners can only reward what they see on the page.

If a student repeatedly relies on the same handful of familiar words, they’re potentially limiting the extent to which they will demonstrate their abilities.

So, better to have those uncomfortable pauses for thought now, in the relative safety of a session or lesson, than discover you’ve run out of vocabulary when you’re sitting in the examination hall.

And it’s worth pointing out that the principle applies well beyond vocabulary. The same is true of punctuation, sentence structures, paragraphing and the deliberate use of language techniques: students need to be able to demonstrate what they can do, not simply recognise it when we discuss it in sessions.

A little challenge for you: pick one of our six offenders and give yourself 30 seconds. How many alternatives can you come up with? And, more importantly, do you know when you’d use each one?

Don’t just learn more words. Learn to make them work for you.

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