Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Muet Candidates, Enrich Your Vocabulary!

University Standard of Vocabulary 
The MUET candidates-to-be should shore up in their command of English. They need to have a University-going standard of vocabulary, suitable for 'U' undergrads. This is especially true for the Pre-University students. Many of them, in certain areas and localities, are so poor in terms of vocabulary.


There could be candidates who are English teachers but they have to take MUET because they want to do a degree in TESL, then their vocabulary can be considered to be strong or adequate. Candidates may also be made up of working adults, university or college students and ordinary or highly-positioned government servants in Putrajaya.  They need to do the MUET for various different reasons.


Why Should there be "Good Vocabulary"?
Good vocabulary is essential for all the papers in MUET. Be they Listening, Speaking, Reading or Writing. Sometimes the candidates vocabulary is so poor that they cannot understand the MUET questions.  As a result they tend to give to a totally wrong answer or give no answer at all.


There have been cases where students are so lacking in their vocabulary that it is impossible to do some decent work of, i.e. reading, in class. Sometimes, more than forty percent of the words in a single paragraph should get their meanings explained because students do not understand their meanings, at times a higher percentage has to be explained!


To have a decent vocabulary in their arsenal, the students should have been reading English materials such as newspapers, magazines, journals, novels, reports, etc.  The reading habit should have been nurtured years ago, right from the very start of their pre-school education.  Practice in the various aspects of language, i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing should have been the norm.

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