Improving Vocabulary

thesaurus

Dictionaries are used to find a definition. Thesauruses are used to find words that mean the same thing. These words are called synonyms. Thesauruses will also inform you of any antonyms.

Use a thesaurus to look up the word underlined in each sentence:

1. The kind girl helped her father.
2. The black of the night was frightening.
3. The happy baby smiled.

Try to explain why your word is better than the original.

simile

A simile is the comparison of one item with another. Usually the words ‘as’ or ‘like’ are used to bring the two ideas together.

For example:

_ The temperature was hot._

could become,

_ The temperature was hot l__ike the sun__._

However, be careful. You must make your simile effective. How could you make ‘The temperature was hot like the sun’ effective?

Think about when the sun is at its hottest: the desert, midday, summer etc.

Now, change the simile:

The temperature was hot like the midday, desert sun in midsummer.

metaphor

A metaphor is a comparison in which something is said to be something else:

1. The man ____was a cheetah__ racing down the track.__
2. The sound drummed ____on her head.
3. The vultures__ tore through the school canteen.__

Why use a metaphor?

1. You can make the ordinary strange and interesting, making your writing more exciting to read.
2. Your reader is forced to think and interpret when you show them something through the use of__ imagery__, rather than telling them literally.

onomatopoeia

This is when the word sounds like the word that it is representing.

Sound is the key sense that is described with onomatopoeia.

Think about: ____bang, ____crash ____and ____whoosh__. __

With each of these words, you can hear that sound.

alliteration

Alliteration is __repetition of a sound at the beginning __of a group of words.

An example might be:

The fierce fox fixated on the field mouse.

With alliteration, you must consider the hard sounds and the soft sounds in English.

Consider the sound produced:

Lovely vs collided

The _‘l’ s_ound is soft and gentle whereas the _‘c’ _sound is harsh and abrupt.

You must consider the __tone __that you are attempting to create.

personification

Personification is providing an inanimate object with animate features.

Consider a tree moving in the wind:

1. The leaves dancing
2. The trunk stood still and upright
3. The flowers waving

All of these are characteristics of humans, rather than of trees. They provide interesting imagery.

writing

Different Types of Word Classes

Noun__ - __an object, place or person

__Examples: __a ball, an idea, a child

Adjective__ - __adds detail to the noun

__Examples: __yellow, three, beautiful

Verb __- __a doing word

__Examples: __run, walk and eat

Adverb __- __tells the reader how the verb is being done

__Examples: __angrily, messily and quickly

The yellow ball rolled easily.

Look at the following sentence:

The quick rabbit ran fast.

Is this a good sentence?

How could you make it better?

The sentence does use all the major word classes. It even uses alliteration.

However, ‘quick’, ‘ran’ and ‘fast’ all have the same meaning.

Think about how you could change the sentence so that the adjective means something different to the verb, which means something different to the adverb,

The scared rabbit sprinted hopefully.

How is this sentence better?

This time, each word means something different and it adds a different dimension to the sentence.

peer / selfassessment

1. __Describe a haunted house. __

2. __Write 5 sentences. In each sentence, you must add a different language technique. __

3. Across all 5 sentences, you must use a range of adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs.

4. Once you have finished, you must label each technique and explain why it is effective.