The one-sentence truth: “Good”, “bad”, “strong” and “important” are often placeholders for judgements you have not yet made precisely enough.
Analytical adjectives help JC2 students classify the exact quality of an argument, policy, piece of evidence or consequence. The goal is not to decorate nouns but to choose a criterion.
For argument strength
Compelling, credible, robust, defensible, tenuous, speculative, coherent, incomplete and unsubstantiated each diagnose a different quality.
For policy evaluation
Effective asks whether it works. Efficient asks at what resource cost. Equitable asks how burdens and benefits are distributed. Proportionate asks whether the response is excessive. Feasible asks whether it can be implemented. Sustainable asks whether it can persist without unacceptable depletion or cost.
For significance
Substantial, material, marginal, consequential, decisive, peripheral and salient help rank importance. Salient means noticeable; consequential means producing important effects. Do not confuse them.
For evidence
Evidence may be representative, corroborated, methodologically robust, anecdotal, inconclusive or indicative. These terms are more useful than “reliable” when you can explain why.
For ethics and governance
Legitimate, transparent, accountable, ethical, pragmatic, intrusive, arbitrary and discriminatory identify different evaluative dimensions. Legality and legitimacy, for example, are not identical.
Avoid adjective inflation
Do not turn every concern into “severe”, every benefit into “immense”, or every argument into “compelling”. Adjectives make commitments. If you write “decisive”, explain why the factor actually determines the outcome rather than merely contributes to it.
Before and after
Weak: “This is a very bad policy.”
Stronger: “The policy is administratively efficient but distributionally inequitable because the compliance burden falls disproportionately on lower-income households.”
One vague moral verdict becomes two explicit criteria.
Create adjective-criterion pairs
Train yourself to ask what criterion sits behind the adjective: effective → outcome; efficient → resources; equitable → distribution; legitimate → authority/process; credible → belief/evidence; proportionate → response versus harm; sustainable → durability.
Paper 2 connection
Evaluative adjectives often reveal tone and stance. “Naive”, “short-sighted”, “plausible”, “misguided” and “compelling” tell you how the writer positions an idea. Preserve that force when paraphrasing.
Seven-day drill
- Replace “good” and “bad” in an old essay.
- Build an argument-strength scale.
- Build a policy-criteria scale.
- Rank significance adjectives.
- Analyse tone adjectives in commentary.
- Justify every strong adjective you use.
- Write one paragraph using five adjectives tied to explicit criteria.
Continue the JC2 GP vocabulary system
Return to General Paper Vocabulary Year 2 (JC2) and Vocabulary for Junior College (JC1–JC2).
Final thought
The right adjective is a compressed evaluation. If you cannot explain the criterion behind it, the word is probably doing more posing than thinking.