Mistakes with IELTS vocabulary in IELTS Writing and Speaking

Do you know the difference in meaning between the words ‘lose’ and ‘loose’?

What about ‘learn’ and ‘teach’, ‘rise’ and ‘raise’, or ‘care for’ and ‘care about’?

I’m asking you these questions because these are words that I’ve seen or heard many IELTS candidates get mixed up. Read the full post »

Here’s an IELTS vocabulary exercise to help you avoid a common vocabulary mistake in the IELTS Speaking test

I wrote the following IELTS vocabulary exercise to help you avoid a mistake that I often hear IELTS candidates make.

The mistake is to use the wrong form of a word when answering IELTS Speaking questions about personal qualities. A candidate may, for example, use a noun in a sentence (e.g. ‘confidence’) when they should use an adjective (e.g. ‘confident’).

All you have to do for this vocabulary exercise is complete the sentences below by choosing the correct form of the word in brackets for each gap. All the sentences are from the audio recording I recommended in my blog post ‘IELTS Speaking Part 3 question on the topic of leadership‘. (You can click on any of the words in brackets for a dictionary definition).

1. I guess a good leader has to be _______ (confident/confidence) enough in his or her own decision to choose a direction and just go for it and inspire _______ (confident/confidence) in the people who are following him or her. Read the full post »

Is the book Vocabulary for IELTS Advanced suitable for you?

I often get asked about whether I recommend any particular IELTS preparation books and so I thought I’d start posting some reviews. My first review is of the book Vocabulary for IELTS Advanced from Cambridge University Press.

What I like about Vocabulary for IELTS Advanced:

1. What I most like about this book is that it includes vocabulary on a variety of common IELTS topics, including study and work, travel and tourism, technology, crime and punishment, and government.
2. To keep you interested and to show you how the vocabulary can be used in the IELTS test, each of the 25 units includes a variety of vocabulary exercises and IELTS tasks. Read the full post »

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 »