Cliches in IELTS writing

Developing your vocabulary in IELTS writing.

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ielts vocabulary collocationsImproving your vocabulary for IELTS writing.

Updated: October 2023

I often mark IELTS essays and I tend to find the same words keep coming up in the writing, such as ‘a lot of’ / ‘humans’ / ‘nowadays’ / ‘like’. Actually, these are not wrong, and using these in your sentences would not be considered grammatically incorrect.

However, the IELTS examiner is checking to see if you can use a wide range of vocabulary especially collocations. If possible, try to avoid overusing these words to help get a better vocabulary score… See the post below for more details.

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8 things that could lower your IELTS writing score

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Things to avoid in IELTS essays.

Updated: Nov 19th, 2022

The essay writing section of IELTS is formal. This is the same for the academic writing task 1 reports, so you must use the right register. You could lose marks in vocabulary or grammar if you are writing informally, using idioms, or using memorised stock phrases.

In IELTS general writing task 1 you will sometimes get an ‘informal’ letter to write, so obviously in that specific case, you will write the letter in an informal register.

You may not lose a band score if you are doing just one of these things below but if you are making a combination of errors then it could be the cause of being stuck at band 6 or 6.5.

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Don`t copy text!