3. Improve vocabulary and vocabulary use
Vocabulary makes a significant difference
to student writing - of that much, everyone
is clear. But many vocabulary strategies fo-
cus on teaching that ‘what’ of vocabulary
(i.e what are good words to use) rather
than the ‘how’ (how to use vocabulary ef-
fectively in writing). Consider these two
sentences:
• Max has frustration.
• Frustration overwhelms Max.
In studying the picture book Where The
Wild Things Are, students have been
taught the abstract noun ‘frustration’.
What they haven’t been taught, is how to
use this word. So though the student who
wrote the top sentence has used the vo-
cabulary they’ve been taught, their sen-
tence is not nearly as sophisticated as the
bottom one, where the student has put
some thought into how they’re using the
vocabulary. The strategies in this chapter
do just that - support students to think
about how they’re using vocabulary, not
just what they’re using.
Use strong, specific verbs
When teachers develop vocabulary lists for
units or word sets for vocabulary tasks,
they tend to generate words which are
nouns or adjectives. While using nouns
and adjectives is important, quality writing
benefits from frequent use of precise,
strong verbs. This piece of year 12 writing
below - an analysis of persuasive language
- was assessed in an exam as a ‘medium’
response.
When first drawn to this speech, readers are auto-
matically driven to focus on the visual images pro-
vided. One image has a globe sitting in someone’s
hands. This would indicate to readers what this
speech is about and that the message that the im-
age is giving is that the world is in your hands. This
would have a great affect on readers as they would
feel responsible and needed to help in the world.
The quote by Thomas Eisner that is given under the
image is also significant. By referring to biodiversity
as a ‘treasure’, readers are made to think that biodi-
versity is rare, that it cannot be replaced and that it
must be taken care of. Readers would also be im-
pacted that biodiversity’s diminishment is to be pre-
vented at all costs’, as it would appear that nothing
should stand in the way, which highlights the impor-
tance to readers. The other image given has a
much lighter affect on readers. ‘2010’ is imprinted
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4. with images to tell readers what makes up biodiver-
sity. With these images printed over ‘2010’, readers
would presume that something to do with biodiver-
sity is going to be done over this year.
This writing, on the other hand, was as-
sessed as an ‘upper range’ response:
The alarmist tone transforms into an attack on the
audience, not in a vicious way so as not to offend
the audience, but instead urges them to want to
take action. Lee contends that it is due to ‘our
thoughtless human actions’ that species are suffer-
ing, the ‘destruction of natural habitats, hunting,’
and the list continues. As it is ‘our’ fault that biodi-
versity is diminishing , the speaker declares that it
should be ‘us’ who reverse the trend, ‘We have no
excuse for inaction.’ The continued use of inclusive
language engages the audience and the speaker im-
plies that it is their problem and they must right
their wrong. Lee’s use of adjectives ‘wonderful’,
‘glossy’ and ‘inspiring’ all connote a glamorous,
easy and passive method of convincing others to
take action, and this is strongly contrasted when fol-
lowed by ‘real action’. Here, the speaker accuses
the conservationists and other influential people of
not doing what they are supposed to do, opening
their eyes to the reality of the situation. Lee de-
scribes talk at the conference as ‘platitudes,’ this
disapproving tone used to further reprimand the
audience, and Lee passes on guilt with the words,
a strong motivator for action.
In nearly every sentence of the medium re-
sponse, the student uses weak verb con-
structions (is giving - the verb ‘giving’
needs the help of ‘is’) or non-specific
verbs such as ‘has’ and versions of ‘to be’.
The better response typically uses a strong
(Lee describes - ‘describes’ stands on its
own, it doesn’t need the help of ‘is’), spe-
cific verb. The difference this verb use
makes to the quality of writing is instantly
obvious.
On the opposite page are further examples
of student writing - this time from year 6.
These students were required to write a bi-
ography about Australian bushranger Ned
Kelly. This biography on the top has been
assessed at a ‘satisfactory’ level the one at
the bottom as ‘above satisfactory’. Here
again we can see a difference in verb use.
The better piece of writing makes consis-
tent use of strong specific verbs, whereas
in the ‘satisfactory’ piece, the student, af-
ter a promising start, constructs a series of
sentences that use a weak verb construc-
tion.
Simply put, better writers use better verbs.
And this is a skill we can teach and that
can have a profound impact on student
writing. Here are a few activities that can
get students practising using verbs:
• Noun-verb match:
In this vocabulary activity we provide stu-
dents with a list of nouns and verbs. For ex-
ample, if we were in the Year 6 class where
students were writing about Ned Kelly, we
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6. might give them these words:
Nouns: Ned Kelly, Ellen Kelly, Troopers,
Prison, Escape, Family, Harry Power
Verbs: Hold, Arrest, Support, Taught, Pur-
sue
The task of students is to match a noun
with a verb it performs and then put them
into a sentence.
• Noun-verb-noun match
A variation of this above activity is to give
students a list of nouns which they need to
match into pairs because they are strongly
connected. If we gave students the nouns
below they might match ‘Ned Kelly’ and
‘crimes’ together.
Nouns: Ned Kelly, Ellen Kelly, Troopers,
Prison, Escape, Family, Harry Power, Po-
lice, Crime
We then give students a list of verbs. Stu-
dents need to pick out a verb that can go
with each noun pair and then construct a
sentence where one noun is performing
this verb to another noun. For instance, if
we gave the list of verbs below to stu-
dents, they might pick out the verb ‘com-
mit’ to go with ‘Ned Kelly’ and ‘crimes’.
Verbs: Hold, Arrest, Commit, Support,
Taught, Pursue, Dismiss
• Verb planning
The above activities work well with non-
fiction writing. Strong verb use is just as
much an attribute (in fact, perhaps more)
of fictional writing as it is of expository.
Where students write stories about charac-
ters who perform strong, specific verbs,
we get a better sense of the character and
are more engaged in the story. In the para-
graph from a Year 9 story below - the open-
ing to a horror story - every sentence con-
tains an active verb.
Students can plan for specific, strong verb
use when it comes to creative writing. In
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7. the planning stage, students need to con-
sider:
• Who is my character?
• What are they like?
• What specific verbs can they perform to
show what they’re like?
Students might start this activity by gener-
ate adjectives to describe their character
but then move on to identify verbs which
demonstrate these characteristics. For ex-
ample, we might develop a character who
we could describe as: lazy, arrogant and
greedy. Verbs to capture these attributes in
our writing might be: lounges, strides and
gobbles.
A planning tool students can use to help
them identify specific verbs is the ‘alterna-
tive to common verbs’ sheet which is at-
tached as a resource. This sheet lists the
most common verbs students use and
overuse in their writing: is, did, has, went,
thinks, said, use and got - and lists syno-
nyms for these words. This can be a start-
ing point for students to consider which
more specific verbs their character might
perform than these generic ones. Students
can pick out one or two verbs from each
box on the sheet that their character might
perform.
Verb planning doesn’t need to be re-
stricted to just the protagonist of a story.
Students can also consider elements of
the setting of their story - objects, weather,
animals - and the specific actions they
might perform.
• Verb edit
The verb edit is one of the simplest ways
for students to identify weak and generic
verb use in their writing and to improve it.
In a nutshell, students re-read a piece of
work and circle every instance of the verbs
‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’ or ‘were’. Students then
need to re-write at least three of the sen-
tences (you can raise or lower this number
depending on how much you want to chal-
lenge your students) which feature these
verbs so that they use a specific, active
verb.
Increase lexical density
Lexical density (a phrase that literally
means ‘words of thickness’) is about using
more words to label or describe a subject
or object noun in a sentence. The more
words used to describe the noun, the more
complex the idea, the better the writing. In
this sentence, there are two nouns - ‘dog’
and ‘cat’:
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8. The dog chased the cat.
Each noun is used on its own - there are
no other nouns or adjectives which de-
scribe the nouns in more detail. So this
very simple sentence has no lexical den-
sity. Let’s say we re-wrote the sentence as
this:
The neighbour’s large, terrifying dog
chased the cat.
Now we’ve got much more detail about
the noun ‘dog’ - there are some adjectives
describing it and another noun possessing
it. It’s a lexically dense sentence (kind of).
In better writing, stronger writers use more
words to describe and label the subjects
and objects of their sentences in order to
create more complex statements. In the ex-
ample on the next page - a Year 7 poetry
analysis - the student rarely uses a noun
on its own. Nearly all the nouns are cou-
pled with other words (often many other
words) to provide more detail. In the other
example, though - a Year 10 response to
Macbeth - the student often uses nouns
on their own or couples them with only
one or two other words. In terms of com-
plexity - the Year 7 piece trumps the Year
10 piece, mostly because the Year 7 piece
has superior lexical density.
So how do we teach this to students? One
way is to get students to build noun
phrases before they complete writing
tasks. We can give students a few nouns
and ask them to think about what words
could be used to add some detail to these
nouns. The easiest point to start at will be
for students to add adjectives. So if we
were in the Year 10 classroom where stu-
dents were writing about Macbeth, we
might simply ask students: What adjec-
tives can you put before the noun
‘witches’?
• The mysterious witches
• The creepy witches
Another easy thing for students to do is to
construct phrases where one noun pos-
sesses another. In Macbeth, all of these
nouns could own the witches:
Shakespeare, Macbeth, The play, The text
We give students an example:
Shakespeare’s witches...
Students then need to start a sentence of
their own where ‘witches’ is the subject
but something owns the witches.
From this point we begin to get into more
complex constructions. If we look again at
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9. 9
Year 7 Poetry Analysis
Year 10 Macbeth Response
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10. the Year 7 poetry example, we can see
that one effective way this students adds
detail to their nouns is by using an ‘of’ con-
struction: the painful truth of the poems,
ironic parody of the original poems, both of
these poems. This is one of the more ad-
vanced lexically dense constructions that
stronger writers use (see a Year 12 exam-
ple also), but it can still be taught. To go
back to our Year 10 Macbeth classroom,
we might say to students: What words
could you put before this phrase to have a
phrase that makes sense?
• of witches
Students might say:
• The group of witches
• The trio of witches
After that, they might get a bit stuck. So
we can scaffold them. Which of these
nouns, we can ask, might you put before
‘of witches’?
• Prediction, Anger, Symbolism, Fight, Inter-
pretation, Depiction
The task of students is then to write a se-
ries of sentences that begin with different
‘of witches’ noun groups. Most students,
from year levels 5 onwards, can complete
these types of activities. This next activity
in developing lexical density, though, is
more appropriate for senior students.
This activity uses a ‘word pyramid’ struc-
ture to help students create successively
more detailed and complex sentences
where they use more words to label the
subject of a sentence. Attached is a re-
source called ‘Word pyramid’ which pro-
vides a step by step set of instructions for
students to use a visual word pyramid to
create their longer and longer sentences.
As stimulus for the activity, students can
watch through the short video ‘Word
Crimes’ by Weird Al Yankovic here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0
H-vPoDc
This is a generic vocabulary/sentence con-
struction activity. Once students have used
this procedure for writing about ‘Word
Crimes’ the word pyramid can be adapted
to use words for any topic being studied.
Use prepositions to add detail
‘Add more detail’ is one of the most com-
mon feedback comments we might give to
middle and weaker writers. But what does
it mean? Is it simply about writing more
sentences at the end of a paragraph? Or is
it adding more ‘describing’ words? This
sentence here is fairly light on detail:
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