Some vocabulary to use to talk about traffic in your IELTS Speaking test

In your IELTS Speaking test, if you get asked to talk about the traffic where you live, why not impress the examiner by using a range of vocabulary. If you use some of the following words or phrases, you’ll show the examiner that you have enough vocabulary (including some less common vocabulary) to talk about this topic.

You could use the following vocabulary to describe how bad the traffic is: Read the full post »

Use some phrasal verbs in your IELTS Speaking test and you may get a higher band score

In your IELTS Speaking test, if the examiner asks you some questions about your family or childhood, do you think you would use any phrasal verbs in your answer? (For an explanation of what a phrasal verb is, have a look at our blog post ‘IELTS phrasal verbs that you need to know‘).

I’m asking you this question because to get a band score 7.0 or above for vocabulary in the IELTS Speaking test, you need to use some phrases that are very natural to native speakers of English (e.g. phrasal verbs).

For those of you who don’t use phrasal verbs in your speaking, here are five phrasal verbs connected to the common IELTS topics of family and childhood. Read the full post »

Here are five common IELTS phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are verbs like ‘work out’ that consist of a verb (e.g. ‘work’) and a preposition or an adverb (e.g. ‘out’) and that have a different meaning from the verb on its own. IELTS phrasal verbs, as I’ve called them, are phrasal verbs that are commonly used in the IELTS test, particularly in the IELTS Listening test, and are therefore important for you to know.

When you see or hear a phrasal verb, it’s important to remember that it may have a different meaning to when you saw or heard it before. The phrasal verb ‘work out’, for example, can mean ‘plan’, ‘calculate’ or ‘exercise’ depending on the situation in which it’s used.

Here are five IELTS phrasal verbs, i.e. phrasal verbs that have been used more than once in a single test or that have been used in more than one test. Read the full post »

Extend your IELTS vocabulary on the topic of work

If you get a text on the topic of work in the IELTS Reading test, it will be more difficult for you to understand if there’s a lot of vocabulary that you don’t understand. (If you’re taking the IELTS General Training test, you’ll definitely have two texts on the topic of work in Section 2 of the reading test).

With this in mind, here’s a list of vocabulary related to the topic of work taken from one of the texts I recommended you read in our post ‘Read like an IELTS band score 9.0 candidate‘.

In each case, check you understand what the word means or click on the word below for a dictionary definition, and then look at how the word is used in the example. Read the full post »

Hi

I’ve said before that as part of your IELTS preparation it’s important to improve your vocabulary related to common IELTS topics, and so today I’d like to highlight some vocabulary related to the topic of education.

As you may have seen in my post ‘Discuss both views…‘, you could be given an IELTS Writing Task 2 essay related to this topic, and it will help you get a higher IELTS band score if you use a range of vocabulary in your writing.

All of the words and examples below are from the example IELTS Writing Task 2 essay at the link above.

In each case, check you understand what the word means or click on the word below for a dictionary definition, and then look at how the word is used in the example sentence.

Verbs:

• teach (e.g. ‘…it is the responsibility of parents to teach their children how to become good members of society’)
• learn (e.g. ‘Children can learn how adults often contribute to their local communities…’)
• educate (e.g. ‘…both parents and schools have a role to play in educating children in this regard’)
• consolidate (e.g. ‘Having these lessons as part of a school curriculum can help consolidate the learning that happens at home…’)

Read the full post »