IELTS vocabulary lesson Archives - Preparation for the IELTS Exam

IELTS Vocabulary: Adverbial phrases in speaking

December 4, 2023November 20, 2020 by Ray IELTS Focus

Comment adverbials and set phrases for a higher speaking score.

Updated: December 2023.

In the IELTS speaking exam you will be judged on the range and accuracy of your vocabulary, so having a wide range of expressions helps your score. Native speakers use comment adverbials a lot and it is common when speaking in a casual informal way (sometimes they can be formal).

Comment adverbials are a good way to show emphasis that something is surprising, true, disappointing, coincidental, unbelievable, fortunate, or unfortunate.

Key point: These are mainly used in speaking, but in IELTS writing they would look too informal.

What’s the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’?

October 9, 2023May 19, 2019 by Ray IELTS Focus

Using vocabulary precisely in IELTS is very important for getting a high score in lexical resource. Affect and effect are often used incorrectly even by native speakers!

Let’s look at the difference between these and how can they be used in a sentence accurately.

They are not exactly synonyms, they are homophones, which means they sound the same but are spelt differently. There are some exceptions when affect can be used as a verb or effect used as a noun, but generally speaking, these are the rules below:

Affect is a verb – Effect is a noun

Writing task 1 vocabulary: ‘number, total, amount, figure, accounted for’

October 9, 2023May 13, 2018 by Ray IELTS Focus

Important IELTS academic writing task 1 vocabulary.

Updated: Aug 2022

To get a high score in IELTS writing task 1 academic you need to have a good range of grammar and vocabulary. In this lesson, we will look at specific vocabulary that can be used in various ways. The words are: number, total, comprised, the proportion of, amounted to, accounted for, period and figure.

Try the exercises at the end of the lesson to test your knowledge then click the green buttons to see the answers. The key to learning is practice, so think about how you can apply this vocabulary to your academic task 1 reports, especially for graphs and trends.

Using collocations in IELTS

December 4, 2023August 2, 2017 by Ray IELTS Focus

Accurate use of collocations will help you get a high score.

Updated: December 2023

Some of the most important vocabulary needed for IELTS writing are collocations. These are needed for a higher score. Collocations are 2 or 3 words that commonly go together and sound just right to a native speaker. For some tips on building your vocabulary take a look at this blog post here. If you do not know how to use collocations, they will sound or look ‘wrong’ to a native speaker.

For example, ‘use money‘ sounds strange if you go shopping. The correct word is to ‘spend money‘, or if someone speaks in a loud way I can’t say he has a ‘big voice‘ I need to say he has a ‘loud voice’. Or maybe he has a ‘big mouth‘ to describe him as arrogant, not a ‘large mouth‘. When I want to relax in the evening I wouldn’t ‘look at a movie‘ I would ‘watch a movie‘…. and so on…