Mature Treatment of Topic - A MUET Requirement

One of the requirements in MUET is that candidates have to show "mature treatment of topic" ...

Whether it be Speaking 800/2 or Reading 800/3 or Writing 800/3. This is directly related to your mastery of English - how much vocabulary do you have?

Does your vocabulary match the required standard (University/pre-University command of English)?
 

So, if your vocabulary is a form two student's standard how can you maneuver your way through the standard of English in MUET (pre-University & University standard)?  Well, what we get is a form two student's ideas - as your ideas are limited by the words that you have in your brains.  You have big ideas but you do not have the words for it.  Can you get it across to people the way that you want it to delivered - in that target language (in "university standard" English)?
This piece of thought is worthy of your attention.

Practice MORE - Listen more, speak more, read more & write more.

Vocabulary In Context

Contextual Clues This is the installment for the article posting I made sometime ago (Friday, June 18, 2010) on vocabulary in context where we can make an educated guess on the meaning of a new word. We do that by a strategy where we look for contextual clues that take us to the meaning of the word. Definition As Contextual Clues In this example the writer of an article or journal uses a strategy of giving the definition of the new word or phrase so that the reader will straightaway get the meaning of the new word. Example: "Everyone in the working world is a potential candidate for job burnout. It involves a long period of frustration with work, a loss of motivation that lingers, physical, mental and emotional exhaustion and poor health on the part of the employee." Can you pinpoint what is the new word or phrase in the excerpt quoted above? Yes, the phrase is job burnout. The writer uses the word 'involves' to introduce the meaning of that phrase. Therefore, when the employee has job burnout, he is frustrated, loses motivation; has physical, mental and emotional exhaustion with poor health. The writer knows that some people do not know the meaning of that phrase. So, he gives the definition of that phrase.

Oh, My Diction!

Master English, Beef Up Your Vocabulary! Reminiscing those halcyon days (-school days!)… Our English teacher encouraged us, students, to keep an exercise book where we could record all the new words.  The book was called the vocabulary book. I read a lot of books and recorded hundreds of new words.  I became a bookworm of sorts. More often than not, I found new words that I did not know.  I wrote down those words with their meanings, in context, in that vocabulary book.  Every day I read and re-read them in order to commit them to memory.  I made it some kind of a 'second hobby', sort of ... I found that that strategy to be very effective in mastering more English words. One of the effective ways to increase our mastery of English. It had stood the test of time and would always do so.  Take it from an old master (yeah, … I am a school master and I am old – tee-hee!), to try an old way – what they say, from the “old school”. In retrospect, a brief history of my school days:  I entered secondary school – a boarding school, in 1969.  That was way back, many years ago!  In that year, American Astronaut, Neil Armstrong became the first person in history to land on the moon.  Many of you, dear readers, were not born yet.  MUET? - Never heard of. New intakes, hardly thirteen-years old, had to undergo a spell of one year's immersion in a "remove" class - to master English.  Being from a Malay-medium primary school, we had to do that one year class.  It was the practice those days that, one who came from a Malay-medium primary school and wanted to study in an English secondary school, had to do one year of "remove" class. In that English immersion year I worked hard on my English, voraciously digesting books and magazines to read stories, read about space flights and other things and, many, many, new words.  Of course, I became more knowledgeable.  I used those new words, experimented with them in my essays and found overseas pen-pals to write them letters, sometimes sounding a bit "bombastic" - with new sophisticated words.  I continued that habit for many years onwards.  That vocabulary book method proved to be very effective and I am thankful to my English teacher, that particular one, who showed me the way. Mark Twain, the famous American writer, who 'created' Tom Sawyer, used to say, “If you find a new word – use it three times and it’s yours”.  There is a lot of truth in what he said.  The use of that humble vocabulary note-book had proven its effectiveness, to me - at least, in the effort  of mastering more English words, and thus strengthens my mastery of that language.  With that strategy one's English can improve by leaps and bounds, God Willing!  Try it yourselves – it surely works!

MUET Made Easy - Malaysia Students Blog

MUET Made Easy - Malaysia Students Blog

The writer had portrayed an overall picture of MUET through the experience that she had when she took the MUET papers. She had reminded the candidates to practice and to prepare well beforehand to get the desired results in the MUET examinations.

If your vocabulary is limited, getting a good band, i.e. bands 4-6 is not going to be as easy as it sounds in this article. One of the key factors to do well in MUET is to have a competently sufficient vocabulary! The vocabulary is of preuniversity standard. The standards can be found and discernible in articles that come out in The Star, The New Straits Times and other respectable journals and magazines.  So, your vocabulary should measure up to these standards.  Otherwise you would not be able to understand even  simple instructions in the MUET papers. You may have strong feelings that you understand but actually you have misunderstood. You might be grasping things out of context.

I hope all of you will be doing well in MUET and will be able to be accepted into universities and other institutions of higher learning. All the best to you!

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.