Assignment 3: Register

Oxford Dict.: Register- a variety of a language or a level of usage, as determined by degree of formality and choice of vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax, according to the communicative purpose, social context, and standing of the user.

In school, I didn't even know what register meant. Teachers didn't really seem to care about register, which is why we frequently used words like "hence" (extremely formal)  in the same texts as words like "and so" (less formal). In college, however, teachers focus on the correct use of formal and less formal words. I think if you want to use a language as a tool and therefore use it in a professional way, you should know the differences in formality. You should know that an email to a friend doesn't look like an email to your boss and you should know by which means you can achieve this kind of formality. Otherwise you might end up insulting people without you even knowing it.
In order to gain knowledge concerning formality, I always try to keep in mind whether a word is very formal, less formal or informal. In the glossaries we get from our teachers, words that are extremely formal or infomal are marked, which makes it way easier to remember which category a word belongs to. However, words don't always belong clearly to one category. Sometimes a word can be somewhere between two categories, and sometimes this even varies from country to country. "Fancy" for example, is considered as neutral in British English, whereas  in American English it's pretty formal.
Eventhough it is sometimes difficult to remember the different degrees of formality, I think it's something every student who wants to work with languages should get a feeling for.