IELTS Writing How to Improve Your Vocabulary Score
Hi, I’m Oli.
Welcome to Oxford Online English!
In this lesson, you can learn how to improve
your vocabulary score in IELTS writing.
Do you need an IELTS score of seven or higher?
Many people find it difficult to get scores
above band six or 6.5.
Often, this is because people have bad habits
or they don’t clearly understand how the
IELTS exam works.
If you’re preparing for IELTS, check out
our website: Oxford Online English dot com.
We have many free video and audio lessons,
as well as many professional teachers who
can help you prepare for your IELTS exam.
In this lesson, you’ll see some common mistakes
which IELTS students make which can hurt your
vocabulary score.
You’ll also see how you can change your
approach to the IELTS writing exam to get
a better score for vocabulary.
Before we start, I really, really recommend
you read the official IELTS score scheme from
the British Council, and see what it says
about vocabulary.
There’s a link underneath the video.
There’s a lot of confusion and bad advice
about IELTS, but actually, the score scheme
is quite simple.
Let’s start with the most important point.
There’s one really big mistake which many
IELTS students make with vocabulary: they
put words before ideas.
There are many videos and websites which promise
to teach you “100 essential IELTS words”,
or “300 words for band 8”, or whatever.
So, maybe you watch these videos, and you read
these vocabulary lists, and you try to learn them.
Then, you use the words and phrases in your
IELTS writing.
Sounds normal, right?
What’s the problem?
The problem is that natural communication
doesn’t work like that.
You don’t learn a word and think, “I’m
going to use this word in this conversation.”
IELTS is a test of your communication skills
in English.
Of course, you need a good vocabulary to communicate, but communication depends primarily
on ideas, not words.
Words express your ideas.
Using a word or a phrase without an idea behind
it is empty; it’s meaningless.
So, what can you do here?
First, spend more time thinking and planning
before you write, even in the exam.
Yes, I know you’re under a lot of time pressure,
but you need this.
If you don’t have a clear idea in your head,
you can’t write a clear answer.
Secondly, instead of learning lists of vocabulary
that you might not need, just learn the words,
phrases and collocations you need to express
your ideas.
Practice writing regularly, and learn vocabulary
by learning the words and phrases you need
when you need them.
However, this isn’t a practical point; it’s
about how you think.
If you think words come before ideas, you’ll
struggle with IELTS writing, especially task
two.
You need to put ideas first, words second.
In my experience, IELTS students are terrified
of repeating the same words and phrases in
their writing.
I made some videos where I wrote sample IELTS
answers, and a lot of comments said things
like, “You used the same word three times!
You suck!
We hate you!”
Okay, maybe they didn’t exactly say that;
I’m paraphrasing.
So, I’m going to be repetitive here. I’m going to say
something I’ve said many, many times before:
read the scoring scheme.
Go do it right now.
Read the descriptors for band seven.
What’s the first point?
You need to use vocabulary ‘with flexibility
and precision’.
Think about that word: ‘precision’.
That means you use the right word in the right
place to express your idea.
Here’s what a lot of students do when they
write:
One: they think, “Argh!
I can’t use the same word twice, or I’ll
get a lower score!”
Two: they try to find a ‘synonym’.
This is a problem, because there are very
few true synonyms in English.
Many words which you might think are synonyms
are not exactly the same.
Three: they use a word which is close to the
right meaning, but not exactly right.
Four: they get band six for vocabulary because
they aren’t using vocabulary with precision.
I see this all the time when teaching IELTS
writing.
So, what should you do?
First, read the score scheme again.
It doesn’t even mention repetition in the
vocabulary band descriptions, except for band
four, and I guarantee that 99.9% of you watching
this video would not get band four for vocabulary.
Next, if there’s a key idea in the task,
accept that you might need to refer to it
several times.
For example, the essay I wrote in our other
video was about communication, and many people
said that I used the word ‘communication’
too many times.
But here’s the thing: there’s no other
word which has the same meaning as ‘communication’.
If you’re writing an essay about communication,
you’ll need to repeat the word.
The same is true for many other things.
If you’re writing an essay about air pollution,
you’ll need to use the words ‘air pollution’.
You can’t avoid that, and it’s not a problem.
Many students here would try to use a different
phrase.
For example, instead of ‘air pollution’,
they might say ‘smog’, ‘exhaust fumes’,
‘impurities in the atmosphere’, or something
like that.
But, none of these have the same meaning as
‘air pollution’.
If you change the word, very often, you’re
changing the meaning.
If you don’t realise this, then your words
won’t fit your ideas, and then you get band
six maximum for vocabulary.
To be clear, if you’re repeating words and
phrases a lot, then that is a problem, but
probably not a vocabulary problem.
It could be that your ideas are repetitive,
or your structure is disorganized,
or that you don’t know how to use referencing
to avoid repetition.
However, these points affect your coherence
and cohesion score; they aren’t part of
your vocabulary score.
So, let’s review the most important points
from this section:
First, stop thinking about synonyms.
Choose the word or phrase which fits your
idea most precisely.
Second, accept that key words and phrases
will need to be repeated to some extent.
It’s not a problem to use the same phrase
more than once if it’s a central part of
the task.
Let’s look at our next point.
Here are some ideas we often see online, or
hear from our IELTS students:
“I need more academic vocabulary.”
“I need more advanced vocabulary.”
“I need more idiomatic vocabulary.”
This causes problems.
First, and I’ve said this so many times
that I’m boring myself, but it’s crucial
so I’ll say it again: read the scoring scheme.
Does it talk about ‘academic vocabulary’?
No.
Does it talk about ‘advanced vocabulary’?
No.
Why not?
Because those things don’t exist.
Serious linguists don’t talk about ‘advanced
vocabulary’, because it isn’t real.
Words are just words.
They have meanings, and you use them to express
your ideas.
That’s it.
One word is like another word.
It’s not complicated.
So, what’s the point here?
Many IELTS students use specific words or
phrases because they think that they’re
‘academic’ or ‘advanced’, and they
think that this will get a higher score.
However, if you do this, you’re putting
words before ideas, and that means you aren’t
using your vocabulary precisely, and that
means it’s very difficult to get band seven.
You do need to use some less common vocabulary
to get band seven or higher, but you also
need to use it well.
Learning a word or phrase won’t help unless
you really understand how to use it.
You need to understand exactly what a word
or phrase means.
You need to know how to use collocations with
the vocabulary you learn.
For example, if you’re writing a task two
essay about diet, you’ll need to know several
collocations with the word ‘diet’.
You also need control of register.
To get a high score for vocabulary, you need
to write in a consistent, appropriate style.
In general, IELTS students focus too much
on learning new words and phrases, and not
enough on using the words and phrases they
know accurately.
We’ll talk about how you can work on this
in the last section, but before that, we have
one more important point to cover.
One of the biggest differences between band
six and band seven in the IELTS writing exam
is the quantity of errors you can make.
At band six, you can make quite a lot of mistakes,
so long as your meaning is clear.
For band seven, you can make ‘occasional
errors’.
For band eight, you can make ‘rare errors’.
This is one of the major points which keeps
IELTS students at band six.
So, let’s think: what counts as a vocabulary
error?
There are four possibilities:
You use the wrong word or phrase.
You use an incorrect collocation.
For example, if you’re writing a task two
essay about healthy eating and diet, and you
say, ‘take a diet’, that would be a collocation
error.
You can ‘follow a diet,’ ‘eat a healthy
diet’, ‘have a good diet’, and many
others, but ‘take a diet’ isn’t possible.
You spell a word incorrectly.
You form a word incorrectly.
For example, if you want to make a noun from
the word ‘overweight’ and you write ‘overweightness’,
that would be a word formation error.
There’s no noun from the word ‘overweight’,
by the way; you need to use a phrase with
a gerund, like ‘being overweight’.
So, how can you reduce the number of errors
you make?
Here, you probably need feedback from a professional
teacher.
If you make multiple mistakes, then you won’t
be aware of a lot of the mistakes you’re
making.
Write essays or task one answers and look
at the mistakes you make.
Sort your errors into these four types: choice
of words, collocation, spelling or word formation.
If you’re making mistakes with one thing,
for example, with spelling, do some study to find out why you’re making these
mistakes and try to correct them.
Then, review your errors using a flashcard
app like Anki.
This is a long process and you need patience;
it will take a lot of work to reduce your
errors.
However, if you want band seven or higher,
it’s necessary.
Make flashcard questions with your errors,
and put the correct word or phrase as the
answer.
For example:
Question: overweightness
Answer: being overweight
Even better, make flashcards with full sentences
from your writing, like this:
Question: Overweightness is a major risk factor
for many diseases, including cardiovascular
disease and stroke.
Answer: Being overweight is a major risk factor
for many diseases, including cardiovascular
disease and stroke.
Okay, now let’s put all of this together
and make a plan for you to improve your IELTS
writing vocabulary score.
Learning vocabulary for IELTS is just learning
vocabulary.
You need to do the same things you would do
to improve your English vocabulary generally.
That means:
One: read regularly and widely.
Read as much as you can, read things from
different topics, written by different people,
from different sources.
Two: learn vocabulary in phrases, collocations
and sentences.
Learning a word in context is always more
effective than trying to learn individual
words.
For the IELTS writing exam, you also need
to write regularly.
You need to write practice answers and, ideally,
get feedback from a professional teacher.
Finally, you need to track and review your
vocabulary errors, as we said in the last section.
There’s one important point about improving
your vocabulary we haven’t mentioned.
You need time.
You need lots of time.
The average learner cannot change these things
in a few weeks, and even in 2-3 months you
can’t make a big difference.
Don’t waste your time learning lists of
‘essential IELTS words’ or ‘advanced
IELTS vocabulary’.
You won’t get a higher score by using a
word or phrase that you memorised and don’t
know how to use.
If you’re around band 5.5 to 6.5 and you
need a score of seven or above, you need to
do these things consistently over a long period
of time to improve.
You need to read, write, get feedback and
review your errors, and you need to keep doing
these things for months and months and months.
That’s how you get better.
Anyway, good luck if you have an IELTS exam
coming up soon, and thanks for watching!