Transcript Word Choice

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Word Choice
Impact Essay
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What’s important about Word
Choice?
 As
you read and listen to other people speak, you
cultivate a rich vocabulary of PRECISE and
COLORFUL words that let you say exactly what you
want.
 This
is the essence of good word choice!
 Every
new word increases your power!
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Tips for success…
Verbs
are the most important of all your
writers’ tools!!!!! They push the
sentence forward and give it
momentum …flail, poke, dazzle, squash,
pamper, swagger, vex, etc. (Learn to
develop a critical eye towards the
verbs in your work!!!!
Ask
yourself if the verbs are active,
powerful, full of energy and pizzazz?
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Next tip…Keep the vocabulary
natural!
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Never write to impress or you’ll end up with sentences like
this…
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“He cultivated his way into the kitchen.” or…
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“Our friendship was highly lucrative.”
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See what happened? In an attempt to use words that were
bigger, these writers forgot to make sure they MAKE SENSE.

A Thesaurus can be a good friend to a writer but only if used
with thought!
+ Next tip… your writing works best with
specific words, carefully chosen to create
a vivid picture in the readers’ mind.
 Play around with the words until they
sound good.
 Don’t
 Say
say, “The dog was big and mean.”
instead, “A hundred pounds of
snarling yellow fur launched itself from
the porch, straining at a rope thin as
spaghetti.”
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Next Tip…Brainstorm how else to
say it
 Put “tired” words
to rest…No more good,
sad, big…these are 6th grade words!!!!
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Now, we are going to read “Should
High School students work after
school?”
 Remember, when
you rate them, make sure to
give reason for why you rated it.
A
score of 5 is mastery (great word choice that
improvesa
A
score of 3 is developing (attempting but not
quite there yet!!!)
A
score of 1 is beginning and needs some work
on improving!!!!!
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What did you score it? Why?
 They
 Huh?
scored it1/2, beginning
Looks like someone got too cozy with a
thesaurus!!! Papers like this are wonderful
teaching tools. Students get a kick out of
recognizing and revising the incorrectly used
words, and the activity serves as a great
reminder for the importance of keeping
language natural.
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We are going to read, “In the
Basement”
 What
did you rate it and why?
 They
scored it a 5, strong.
 Striking
words and phrases leap out from
around every corner in this piece, adding
to the sense of impending dread and yes,
even to the occasionally hard to follow story
line. “Darkness swirled in the portal
below.”
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Last one…”Mr. Hal”
 What
did you rate it and why?
 They
rated it a 3, developing
 Every
once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to throw a
complex piece of writing at a well-sensed group of
scorers to see just how closely they are paying
attention. This paper clearly has problems with
conventions and fluency, so the reader has to look
closely to separate out word choice issues. What
do you see? “HE world” and “he” are repeated
quite frequently. For the most part, however, the
paper reads like a draft in which no attention has
been paid to refining the language, It’s okay, but
not exciting!