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Hello, MyEC members! How’s your 2017 so far? I hope everything is fantastic and you’re still fond of Englishclub.  For this month, I would like to introduce to all of you our new writing challenge about ‘lexical sets’. Are you familiar with this vocabulary term? If not, let’s learn this topic together shall we?

A lexical set is a group of words which are all about the same topic and which all belong to the same part of speech. The group of words consists of nouns, gerunds, verbs, adverbs, or even adjectives. (BBC Learning English)

We should remember that lexical sets have the same function and form. Let’s have some examples so you could better understand this topic.

If we want to talk about a lexical set of ‘drinks’ or ‘beverages’, we would think about- tea, coffee, soda, water and juice. It’s a group of drinks, right? More importantly, they (the words) are all nouns and belong to the same topic (drinks). Here’s another lexical set about household chores- cleaning the windows, cooking a stew, sweeping the floor and washing the dishes. Have you noticed all these words end in –ing form and belong to the same type of activity in a home?

However, we cannot say a set is lexical if there’s one or more activities differentiate the other from the rest. For example, do you think is this a lexical set? Reading materials - books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, television. Obviously, this is not a lexical set. Although all of these words are nouns, television is not usually use as a reading material.

How about this one? See if you can spot an error to this lexical set - countries – France, Venezuela, Australia, Buenos Aires, Thailand, and United Arab Emirates. Hint; one of them is a city!

This is a very useful activity to improve our vocabulary. If you’ve understood the lesson, let’s make this more interesting by writing a short blog.

Your Task 

• Make your own set of lexical words. You may write them in a piece of paper to serve as your guide. Choose whether you want to use nouns, verbs, adjectives or even interjections. For example; Lexical set – Sports – basketball, tennis, golf, archery and chess.

• Here’s a more challenging part, from the list you’ve prepared, write a story or an article out of those words. Use those words in one or more paragraphs. Try to be creative and use your wild imagination.

• Highlight the words you’ve chosen as you write them in your sentences. This would make easier for us to check if you’re applying what you’ve learned.

Example:

I’m a sports fan, in fact I liked basketball. I dreamed of becoming a famous basketball star when I was a kid. I also like tennis. Unfortunately, I have a weak body so I opted and focused in playing chess.

• Challenge your friends to participate in this activity. Don’t forget to share the link of your blog below and use the title, ‘Writing Challenge: Lexical Set- Sports (or your preferred topic)'.

So, are you up for the challenge? Start making your own list and impress us with your writing skills. Good luck!

What’s your story?

Here's my writing challenge entry. :)