If vocabulary for your IELTS is something that you are concerned about or want to know more about, then you should read this post.
I see lots of comments and receive lots of questions about how to improve vocabulary. I'm not surprised, English vocabulary is quite a huge thing.
There are over 171,000 words, and the Oxford Dictionary (which runs to 20 volumes). So clearly, to learn every word in English would be impossible. I am always surprised at how many new words I come across, and I deal with English all day, every day. Therefore, the question is - where to begin with learning and expanding your vocabulary? This is important because one of the things that improves your score is your ability to demonstrate a wide range of vocabulary in both your speaking and your writing. Indeed, a whole band descriptor is dedicated to this.
What you may not always think about is that in order to understand the reading well, and to an extent, listening too, you need to have a good knowledge of vocabulary.
I have written several posts on my website ( https://ieltslearningtips.com/ielts-articles ) and also posted videos on my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzylbG6WN1apeRjtbLq8mqA) giving tips and advice on how to improve your vocabulary.
- The first thing to do is to look for those posts, read them carefully, and use some of the techniques that I suggest.
- The second way to improve vocabulary can be found in the IELTS reading passages. These are a great source of vocabulary - check out words you don’t know – you may meet them again.
If you learn those words, then you'll find that the next time you encounter that particular topic, you'll already have some of the vocabulary under your belt. For example, if the topic is animals, you'll find words like carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, habitat, prey. All of these words will come up in most everything about animals in reading or listening and you can use them in writing and speaking too.
Using the IELTS reading passages doesn't mean you need to look up every single word you don’t know that would be very boring, and it will really stop you trying to figure out the meaning from the words you do know. Just look up words that really stop you from understanding or stop you from answering the questions. Look up those words and find out what they mean, and they will help you with your reading development as well as all the other skills.
- The third thing to do is to read.
Reading will help your vocabulary because you'll come across new words a lot. By meeting the same words several times, you'll learn words in common usage and this will help you with the reading and your writing. So read anything and everything. Read what you enjoy reading; it might be blog posts, or magazine articles, journals to do with your field or your profession, or it could be just stuff on Facebook (but do be careful because not everything is well written there). It's better to stick with things that are done by professional authors so that you know it is the right kind of vocabulary for your IELTS exam. Having said that, texts like graphic novels are quite fun and I would just read anything at all that you enjoy - just make sure it's well written.
- This is my final point about what to do to improve your vocabulary.
Once you learn new words, it’s hard to remember them unless you use them. So, the important thing is, to try and use new words straight away. Try them in your speaking practice. If you can, put it into a sentence the next time you're practising speaking or you're speaking to somebody in English. Or you could put them into your next piece of writing.
If you have a teacher to check your speaking and writing, then they will tell you whether you've used the words correctly. If you are not working with a teacher (which you should be if you want a high band), then find somewhere where you can post that writing online, in a group or a forum so that people can check it for you and give you advice. Such as IELTS Champions Club.
Even if you spend ten minutes a day reading an article or a blog post, do that regularly. Finally try and use the words that you've learned so that you don't forget them. You don't need a lot of vocabulary for your writing but you do need to use it all appropriately.
Once you have a good bank of different types of vocabulary that you can use in any task, then just keep reusing and reusing so that when you get into the exam, you've almost got the vocabulary that you're going to use in your tasks. I'm not talking about ‘topic words’. I mean other words like linking words or gerunds, adverbs and adjectives the ones you can use in almost any kind of task two or task one. By using them over and over, you won't forget them.
This means that when it comes to the exam, you'll know exactly which words are going to be useful for a particular task. And for speaking, then the very best way of doing that is to just practise, the more you practise, the more vocabulary you'll be able to incorporate into your speaking tasks. Then, when you come to the exam, you won't be fishing around for words. They'll just come automatically into your mind as you answer the questions.
All of this vocabulary work can be a part of your IELTS preparation, and it's important that you manage everything so you have time for all the different skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking, vocabulary, punctuation, pronunciation and grammar.
If you need help pulling all that together, then I'd love to speak to you to show you how to incorporate all of those factors, all of those parts of English. We can talk about exactly how to go about that.
Just click the link below and choose the best time for you.