Here are a few examples of mistakes TU students made in a writing assignment they had to do for their English courses:

• To enjoy the bike
• I did not prepare enough cash
• Communication will go better
• Moreover it could have advantageous to
• Work processes are separated by three phases
• …. have contributed much to the acquaintance of biomimicry

All the mistakes here are related to the choice of words. For example, you do not “enjoy the bike”. You can “enjoy a ride on your bike”, or “like riding your bike”, but it is not correct English to say “to enjoy the bike”.

When writing a report or paper, it is important to use correct and interesting language as this will make your reader want to read on. If you do not repeat yourself all the time, but can use many different words and expressions, which are also used correctly, your readers will appreciate this very much. For instance, instead of saying “communication will go better”, you can say “communication will improve”. Do you see how this makes it easier to read the text?

The examples above also contain mistakes that have to do with the combination of words. An example of this is "to prepare cash” (instead of to think about bringing cash). We will not discuss those kinds of problems in this module, however. The focal point is on expanding your vocabulary.

You need a paper workbook or a digital archive to make notes. Make sure the workbook or archive is structured in a way you like best: this can be either alphabetically, by parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc), or by topic. You may even think of other ways to organise your workbook. When you write down words, do not only write down the word and its translation as this will hardy help you remember a word.

You need to write down the word and the context (that is: the sentence) in which you found it, so that you notice that too: combinations of words are remembered more easily, and what good will it do if you remember a word, but cannot remember if it is followed by of, into, by or at?

To warm up, please do the following exercise:  The Longman Vocabulary Website.

When it comes to building your vocabulary, there is really only one thing to do: you need to expose yourself to as much English as possible (by the way: we could also have said “read and listen to as much English as possible”, but thought that “expose” sounded better, see how it works?). Theory claims that you need to see, hear, read and preferably use a word seven times to make it part of your active vocabulary, which is that part of your vocabulary that allows you to use the words, not just recognize them.

What we will try and do in this section is make you come across words more than once, so that you will remember and use them more easily, think about them, use them in different contexts (that is, not just in that one writing assignment but also when you give a presentation), and so on.

Luckily, Dutch students often have a good passive understanding of English. Hopefully, this goes for you, too. This will make it easier for you to learn to reproduce English effectively for giving presentations and writing papers.

The words you will probably need most are those of the Academic Word List, AWL. You can find them here: The Academic Word List.

The words you need to know are those from sublists 1-6. (Remember: ‘ knowing’ means being able to use them!). Below you will find several exercises to work with these lists. You need not do them in the order presented here, but make sure you do all of them, so that you are exposed (see, here’s that word again!) to new words as often as possible.

Exercises

To determine your start level, first test yourself: Levels tests on-line.

You can now do the exercises. Apart from doing the exercises you find there you can also do the following to practice even more:

Make a note of the words you do not know: write down the context (that is: the sentence) in which you found them, their translation and which word(s) are connected to them: the word instruction has words like to instruct, instructor, instructive connected to it.

Now try to rewrite the sentence in which you found the word, using one of the other word forms.

Example: The instruction he gave us was clear  ==> He instructed us clearly. (also see how clear changes to clearly!)