Choosing the right vocabulary for your writing is very important. It not only helps you build meaning and explain your ideas, but using effective vocabulary can also create and reinforce the organization of your writing as well as ensuring you have the intended academic tone.
Using Vocabulary to Build Links and Cohesion
There are four ways to improve the flow of your writing with vocabulary.
Repetition
As we learned in Lesson 5-5, we can repeat vocabulary in its exact form or in another form to give a sense of cohesion from sentence to sentence or paragraph to paragraph.
- Because technology has blurred the lines between our working and non-working lives, workers spend more time doing work outside the office than they ever have before.
Synonyms
Synonyms—words that have the same or similar meaning—can be used to rephrase and restate our ideas across our writing. They are also a critical part of paraphrasing.
- Some e-cigarette liquids currently on the market contain potentially harmful chemicals which may be dangerous to human health. During testing, two chemicals were found which raised concerns about possible damage to the throat and lungs of e-cigarette users.
Antonyms
Antonyms (or opposites) can be used to reinforce ideas in an interesting way because they allow the reader to engage with different aspects of the concepts you are writing about.
- Focusing too much on immediate, small tasks may prevent us from seeing the big picture or creating a long term vision for ourselves.
Categorization
Dividing and sorting ideas into categories allows the reader to better understand the concepts and ideas you are trying to communicate. There are two ways to do this.
Part-to-whole Relationships
In this relationship, one object or idea is a part of a larger group.
- Homelessness is one of the most difficult challenges facing the city government.
- Measles, which was nearly eradicated at the end of the 20th century, is a disease which is making a comeback in many parts of the world.
Part-to-part relationships
These relationships are between two objects or ideas that are both part of the same category.
- A survey identified over 1000 populations of invasive animals made up of 200 different species. Those populations can be found across ecosystems, from lakes, rivers and reefs to forests, grasslands and deserts. And all kinds of animals are represented, including mammals, birds, reptiles and insects.
The words highlighted in blue are all part of the same category (eco-systems) and the ones highlighted in green are all types of animals.