I was working on IELTS reading with a student today. He’s actually very good at reading but I noticed he missed some answers because he didn’t understand the words in the passage. Often IELTS students can’t answer the questions in reading because they don’t have enough vocabulary. You must improve it and it is actually an easy thing to do ‘on-the-go’. If you have a mobile phone, you can spend a few minutes every day learning new words without having to sit at your desk, open a book or download a PDF!!
Here are 10 ways to do it.
- Learn 3 new words every day – choose 3 words (maybe from an IELTS reading or listening) make a note of them and try use them straight away! In one week (even if you take the weekend off) you’ll have learnt 15, in a month 60 – so easy 😊
- Keep new words in a notebook to revise (or use your mobile phone) – check them daily (on the bus, while you’re waiting for something or have a few spare minutes) how many did you remember?
- Choose one topic at a time – for example animals, can you, hand on heart, say that you know the English word for every animal? Think of all those you don’t know and look them up in your dictionary. Do the same for other topics.
- Play scrabble!- you’re allowed to use your dictionary!
- Read and translate – choose something in your own language and translate it into good English, oh, and please use your dictionary!! Get someone to check it.
- Find synonyms – write down a list of words you like to use and look up 3 synonyms for each in the thesaurus.
- Do crosswords –I love them! Use a dictionary to help you or do interactive ones online
- Listen to the radio and write down any words you don’t know – choose a short piece, you can approximate the spelling and then look them up in your dictionary.
- Learn words from your IELTS reading – make a list of the words that stopped you getting the right answer and look them up – words come up in IELTS again and again – they will be useful.
- Look around where you are now – do you know the words for everything you can see? – make a note of the ones you don’t in your own language and then use your dictionary to find out the English word. Do this whenever you have a few spare minutes. Too many words? Give yourself a limit of 6 or 10 etc.. each time.