hi my name is Rebecca and in today's
lesson I'm going to show you how to stop
using lazy English and start using
energetic English how do you do this
very easy for the next few minutes I'd
like you to participate in a little
experiment with me I'd like you to
pretend that you are a professor and
join me in checking these sentences on
the board so six students wrote these
sentences in an English exam and what
I'd like you to do is to help me to
decide which students which two students
should get the highest marks let's start
looking at the sentences number one
wrote it was a good lecture two it was
an interesting lecture three it was an
informative lecture out of these three
students which student do you think
should get the highest marks think about
it
well according to me it would be the
third student let's look at another set
of sentences number four Sarah wrote I
had a bad week student number five wrote
I had a tiring week and student number
six wrote I had an exhausting week again
but on your professors cap and tell me
which student do you think should get
the best marks which one
well according to me it would be student
number six now why did we I think you
probably chose the same ones as me why
did we choose student number three and
student number six why did we choose
these responses and why didn't we choose
one and four because one and four use
the words go
and bad and what I'd like you to learn
in this lesson is to use any words when
you're speaking or writing other than
good or bad why because good and bad are
overly used they're rather boring words
and they're not very descriptive words
they don't tell us anything specific
they're very vague they're very general
what I'd like you to do instead is to do
what these other students went on to do
which is to be more detailed more
specific more descriptive more energetic
more dynamic in your speaking and in
your writing this one change will make a
tremendous difference in the way that
you speak and definitely in the way that
you write this is a really important
lesson if you are planning to appear for
the TOEFL or the IELTS or the toy
example exam or even if you're just in
school and you're submitting assignments
and essays this one technique of getting
rid off the words good and bad and
replacing them with more interesting
words is going to give you a much higher
score next I'll show you exactly how you
can do this so now I'll show you how to
avoid using the lazy words good nice or
bad and start using more powerful words
instead all right you're going to go
from the basic to the intermediate to
the advanced level word or you could say
the more vague word general word to a
clear word to a more specific word okay
that's what you want to keep in mind
when you're coming up with your words
I've just given you some examples but
you can certainly come up with lots of
other examples let's look at some of
these a good meal
a tasty meal a delicious meal we had a
nice evening okay we had a fun evening
we had an enjoyable evening it was a
real
good meeting it was a useful meeting it
was a productive meeting you see how I'm
adding so much more information with the
more powerful vocabulary right more
detailed vocabulary we had a nice
holiday well what is nice nice is a very
general word if you want to stay general
you can still use a better word
so here I've given you an example we had
a pleasant holiday we had a relaxing
holiday okay so oh I'm sorry we had a
pleasant holiday or we had a delightful
holiday that's if you want to stay more
general if by nice holiday you meant
that it was really a quiet holiday then
say quiet a better word than quiet is we
had a relaxing holiday okay so you see
how you're being more specific because
when I say I had a nice holiday it
doesn't tell you very much just gives
you a very general impression let's
continue with using the word bad also
another very overused word it was a
really bad journey it was a difficult
journey it was a problematic journey
problematic means there were many
problems that you had or that you
encountered on the way during your
journey it was a such a bad experience
it was such a scary experience it was a
traumatic experience from the word
trauma okay now obviously the intensity
can also change so it depends what you
want to say but sometimes it's more
interesting when you change the
intensity as well I had such a bad day I
had a really hard day I had an extremely
stressful day okay you can see I'm
changing many words there that's a bad
song that's a sad song that's a
depressing song okay now here I changed
of course bad and sad don't mean the
same thing but I gave it a particular
meaning all right so in this case it was
bad for me because it was sad or even
better it was depressing all right you
could it could be a bad song for many
other reasons and the weather this
country has such bad weather sometimes
such cold weather such freezing weather
or Arctic weather all right
so this is an example of what you can do
to stop using lazy English and start
using more energetic English this is a
wonderful game you can play it by
yourself when you're on the bus or while
you're walking down the street or in the
subway look at people around you look at
places around you try to think of words
to describe them start with positive
things she looks good she looks pretty
she looks beautiful
he looking at K things like that or
about a place try to avoid good nice bad
even interesting is overly used to try
to find better and better words after a
little while it will become second
nature it will become second nature
means it will come to you more
automatically to use a more interesting
word a more dynamic word at a more
energetic word than simply saying good
or bad I've also done something for you
I've written a resource on our website
in vidcom where I've written a list of
words that you could use instead of
saying good or bad to describe a variety
of different things you can also go to
our website wwlp.com to do a quiz on
this subject so thanks very much for
watching good luck with your English
you