Helen Rapoport, a lecturer of English at Columbia College, has published Express to Impress, a workbook to help students achieve an effective vocabulary.  To sharpen their vocabulary skills, Rapoport’s students use the book’s mnemonic memory devices, graphic aids, and vocabulary exercises.  The verbal and visual associations help connect the information that the students are trying to learn with something they can relate to in their lives.

Rapoport and her colleagues in the College’s Academic Skills Center also spotlight vocabulary words in campus-wide e-mails to students, staff, and faculty.  On a weekly basis, she showcases words that her former reading students highlighted in their personal vocabulary notebooks. The Academic Skills Center has sponsored vocabulary events with bingo and word games customized from the vocabulary e-mails.  “Dr. Calley Hornbuckle and I work closely with the Academic Skills Center’s student tutors to help create a campus-wide culture in which we share our love of language,” said Rapoport.

She attributes her love of words to her mother, Irene Rudnick.  Rudnick’s former English professor, Dr. Havilah Babcock, published a vocabulary workbook, I Want a Word.  “When I was young, my mother regaled me with colorful stories about Dr. Babcock and his popular college vocabulary and semantics course. I would have to say that the word I still recall from my mom’s musings is “thank-you-ma’am” which is a bump or depression in a road that jolts a person riding over it.”

Rapoport has a legal and journalistic background as a public relations director, magazine reporter, legal counsel, newspaper editor, and freelance book reviewer.