Developing a Mature Style
Look at these two examples describing a village:
Example 1 :
The village is very pretty and very nice. The houses are not very big but they are beautiful. The village is surrounded by hills which give a very nice view of the area.
Example 2
The village is strikingly pretty and unspoilt. The houses, rising up from the harbour, are pale-coloured with painted shutters and made of stone. Pine-clad hills provide panoramic views of the area.
The vocabulary in Example 1 is limited to basic and definitely not up to IGCSE register.Examiners would simply cross it out! Example 2 makes use of a wide range of vocabulary making the description lively and interesting to read. Examiners would give it full marks for register.
USEFUL TIPS
There are many ways you can make your writing more mature:
1. Choose your adjectives with care and use them accurately. You don't really need a great many - just a few fresh and powerful ones. But please avoid using dull, boring, commonplace adjectives like : good, bad, nice, beautiful.
2. Remember that you can create adjectives by adding suffixes to nouns or adjectives : e.g. panoramic, colourful, quaint-sounding, picturesque, boyish, hopeless etc
3. You can make common adjectives more emphatic by using adverbs as intensifiers: e.g. strikingly pretty, exceptionally interesting, amazingly beautiful.
4. Adjective collocations, such as crystal clear, are another way of adding impact to your description. e.g. icy cold (adjective + adjective) , stone cold(noun + adjective)
5. Use relative clauses to link ideas - beginning with which / where / when / whose
6. Use comparisons : not as much as ... / far more interesting than ..../ much less exciting than ....
All the above techniques will help you to write more concisely - using fewer words to greater effect.
NOW YOUR TURN
Rewrite the following description in a more mature style:
The town developed around a marketplace. The marketplace is very, very old. It is the shape of a rectangle. In the town , the people live in the way that they used to live hundreds of years ago. They like visitors. They do not commit crimes. They will always help you. You do not need to be afraid of them.. They wear clothes that are very simple. They wear long, loose, white, cotton robes. The town has many very, very old buildings. The buildings were built in the 13th century. It also has many restaurants. You can eat nice food there. The food is from different cultures.
