W 018 F

INTRODUCTION
The vocabulary of an essay reflects the writers' knowledge about the topic, and it emphasises the features of the theme. Specific words draw the readers' attention and make the text relevant to a subject. The expressions determine the style and the tone of the essay.

This research paper discusses whether the vocabulary contains words which specify the topic or not, and whether this is reflected in the marks or not in seven essays of the 1997 proficiency test at CPU.

METHOD
These essays were written by seven first year students at JPU at the end of their second semester in 1997. It was an obligatory test which examined various parts of the second language learners' knowledge. The test had four parts: a grammar multiple choice test, a listening comprehension test, a reading comprehension test and an essay writing test.

The essay writing part of the filter test had requirements: the length was limited at about 450 words of four or five paragraphs. The time for completing their work was two and a half hours. It had to focus on and define the chosen topic in the first paragraph, which had to be followed by the discussion. The writers had to pay attention not only to the paragraph and essay organisation but the usage of vocabulary and accuracy as well. The two cross- markers awarded the marks on the bases of these five categories.

I gathered three sources to my research: seven proficiency test essays (PTEs) selected from 80 papers (five of the essays were coded, two others' name were printed in the edition), the notes in the PTEs given by the cross- markers and a book which contained useful information about the PTEs. From this edition I got to know the details about cross marking: I found a question raised by the cross- markers which was relevant to my research: " Is the vocabulary specific to the topic? " ( Horváth 95).

The title of these seven essays was: "How to Survive a Hollywood Movie". The writers composed this title from a theme selection table. This way students could choose the title which appealed to them the best.

The total score of an essay was ten points and each group of the evaluation was worth two points. The candidates had to achieve five points in order to pass the exam. In spite of the fact that the topic was the same, different marks were given by the cross- markers: from three points to ten points. I especially focused on the vocabulary scores. One of the essays vocabulary got zero point, four of the essays got one point and two of them two points.
I selected phrases from each essay. These items could be related to Hollywood, to cinema, to films and to actors. After collecting these materials I tried to make connection between the quality and the quantity of words and the scores.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
I divided the essays into three groups according to the scores on vocabulary to be able to analyse them.

One essay was assessed zero from the point of view of vocabulary. It contained four phrases related to the title, to the vocabulary of Hollywood movie. These phrases were "film", "hall of the cinema", "hero" and "music" (72). They are the bases of this category: They constructed the backbone of the text in such a content.

I also found four phrases which referred to the other essential part of the title: survival. These were "eating", "drinking", "relaxing" and "listening to music" (72). The writer of this essay used these words more than once so repetitions could be observed because of the lack of the synonyms which is one of the causes of the low score.

Four essays got one point to the vocabulary usage. In these four papers three words were common: "film", "cinema" and "movie" (71, 8, 84, 33). Two of them used the words "audience" (71, 87), "popcorn" (33, 8) and "picture" (33, 87). There were items which appeared only in one essay, but they reflected the atmosphere of Hollywood and the ironic style of the writer as well. In the essay coded 87 such elements could be found: "Hollywood Monster", "cameraman", "plot", "cliché" and "movie techniques".

From these papers I listed more colorful vocabulary related to the survival topic than from the essay of the first group. They offered sophisticated strategies to those readers who wanted to get over such a film. Inviting a friend, gathering pieces of information about a star, eating, drinking, listening to music, auto- suggestion, being late and wearing sunglasses were the most often shared advice. The expressions indicated that the authors knew what they were talking about and, at the same time, they gave an ironic tone to the texts.

The third category consisted of two tenpoint essays by Bizse Ferenc and Bagi Ádám. This means that they were perfect in every respect. They used the items which appeared in the other essays as well. In addition, these two authors wrote more complex expressions like "masterpiece", "movie theatre", "image", "cinema goer", "super hero". They put down some adequate words related to the production and the screening of a film. "Dolby- stereo system", "project onto a screen", "spotlight", "sound effect" specify and identify the theme and the aim of the authors.

These two writers gave some sophisticated tricks to the reader to get out of the cinema alive. They proposed writing, developing thoughts and saving self- esteem in the course of the film. They called the readers' attention to the former precautions as well.

CONCLUSION
As I have compared the words related to the title of seven essays, I found that their lexis differed either in quality and quantity. My division (according to the given scores) has shown that the difference between them is reflected in the awarded marks, although the cross- markers had to take into consideration other words of the texts when they gave the points.