Striking a Balance with Sophisticated Vocabulary

Ambitious vocabulary is one of the most misunderstood parts of writing preparation. Pupils learn a list of long words, drop them into a story, and the writing gets worse rather than better.

The test we use when marking is simple. Does the word do a job that a plainer word could not do? If yes, keep it. If no, cut it.

'Sprinted' is a better word than 'ran' because it tells the reader about speed and urgency. 'Perambulated' is not a better word than 'walked', because it only tells the reader that the writer owns a thesaurus.

Examiners reward precision. A short, exact verb will always score better than a long, approximate one.

Isolated words are forgotten within a fortnight. Words learned in small families stay. Group four or five words around a feeling: for dread, try uneasy, wary, hollow, brittle, still.

When a pupil needs to write a tense scene, they reach for the family rather than a random word from page three of a list.

A useful discipline for Years 5 and 6: allow yourself one deliberately ambitious word in each paragraph, and make everything around it plain. The contrast is what makes the word land.

Pack four ambitious words into one sentence and the reader notices the effort, not the effect.

In our evaluations, misused ambitious vocabulary is flagged with the plainer alternative alongside it, so the pupil can see the trade directly. Words used well are underlined and named, because pupils repeat what gets noticed.