One of the core features of the compositions and readings that have been attached great significance to is the vocabulary the students use and learn. The majority of students use advanced vocabulary in their writing and learn from readings, yet, most of them are actually passive words which they often misuse in their writing tasks.In addition, the underlying mechanism that why many students prefer using passive words are not clearly known, although active words are the dominant of student's English proficiency. Therefore, this paper aims at exploring the phenomenon that why students prefer using passive words in their writing. The word Devastating has been carefully chosen as an example for investigation because of its polysemy.