Falling English Criterion

As the SAT exam approaches, many of my friends are already engaging in the process of memorising extensive vocabulary in preparation for the exam the following year; something very commendable of them. However as I do not plan to take the exam (like it or not, I am a teenage 16 year-old boy, and I do get lazy) but plan to stick with the IB progress through and through and reach the university I want from there. However, this does mean that my vocabulary fails to ameliorate and may even depreciate to a standard even lower than I thought possible. In that sense I have failed to fully utilise the purpose of this blog, which is to use high register vocabulary as much as possible to enable it to become my everyday normal language. Of course, I do excogitate my use of syntax to be higher than that of what is considered to be the norm. However what is one without the other? I do have to improve my vocabulary, at least for the sake of speaking rather than for academic excellence.

With teachers adding more and more homework as IB continues on, it is tough for one to spend time on extending your vocabulary if there is no grade to show improvement in it. The cost of me doing that would be a lot! I would not have time to do homework, study and most importantly... play games.

Nevertheless I do try to read as much as possible. After four weeks, I have just finished Arthur Conan Doyle's first work on Sherlock Holmes, entitled "A study in Scarlet". Arthur Conan Doyle's vocabulary tends to stagnate as he starts using the same vocabulary in all his works. In this case it works perfectly for me because it means that I am able to see the word multiple times and the repetition allows me to subconciously memorise the word without any conscious effort whatsoever. The problem would be now to use that word that I have memorised, which is where the blog comes in.




Unfortunately, there is not a lot of time on my hands right now and even writing a blog with the voluminous words I plan to use is very time consuming, so I guess taking it step at a time will work for me.

For all those caught up in your studies, don't forget to do a little extra to learn not only to get the grade you want, but to learn for the sake of learning. In other words, don't forget to learn for fun.

Cheers,
Matthew Tan

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