Vocabulary
Ten methods, and the one most candidates get wrong. With a practice exercise.
Learning how to learn IELTS vocabulary matters more than any single word list, because vocabulary is what limits most candidates above Band 6.5. Technique will take you a long way; after that, the constraint is the language you can use accurately.
The methods below take longer per word than making a list, and that is the point. Words learned quickly are forgotten quickly, and words learned in isolation are the ones that come out in the wrong place under pressure.
The methods
Six methods. The third is the one research supports most strongly.
Long lists sound efficient and are not. Words become mixed up with each other. Take ten, use them until you are confident, then take ten more.
A pocket notebook or the notes app on your phone. Organise it with columns: the word, its word family, and a sentence. Keep it with you rather than at home.
This is the most effective single method. Make the sentence true about your own life, because personal sentences are remembered and invented ones are not.
Educate, education, educational, educator. Learning four forms takes barely longer than one and gives you far more to write with.
Words travel in pairs. You cut emissions, raise awareness, sit an exam. A word without its usual partners is only half learned.
A learner's dictionary shows you the pairings and an example sentence, not just the meaning. A translation gives you the meaning and none of the usage.
Method
Six habits worth abandoning.
Useful at lower levels, and increasingly misleading as you improve. Words rarely match exactly between languages, and you lose the small differences that matter.
Impressive rare words score nothing if they never fit the question. Common topic vocabulary used accurately is worth far more.
Knowing suggest is not enough. You need to know that it is followed by that plus a clause, and not by an infinitive, or the word will produce an error every time you use it.
Prepared phrases dropped into an answer they do not fit are obvious to examiners and lower your band on Task Response.
Meeting a word and not writing it down means meeting it again as if for the first time. Two minutes of recording saves the whole encounter.
Words need to be met several times over weeks. Reviewing your list once a week is worth more than adding to it daily.
Practice
Decisions about how to study.
You have six weeks before your test and about forty minutes a day for vocabulary.
Each question below is a choice between two study habits.
1How many new words should you take at once?
Ten. Longer lists cause words to become confused with each other, and confused words are worse than unknown ones because they produce errors.
2Which is the most effective way to record a new word?
The word, its family and a personal sentence. A word in context is remembered far better than a word in isolation, and personal sentences are remembered best of all.
3You learn the word suggest. What else do you need to know?
The grammar that follows it. Suggest is followed by that plus a clause. Without that, the word produces an error every time you use it.
4Is translating every new word a good method?
Useful early, misleading later. Words rarely match exactly between languages, and as your English improves the small differences start to matter.
5Which is better use of forty minutes?
Reviewing and using. Words need to be met several times across weeks. Adding faster than you revise produces a long list of words you cannot actually use.
That is usually a method problem rather than an effort problem, and it is worth changing early because vocabulary takes longer to build than any other part of the test.
The complete IELTS course on IELTStestONLINE has video lessons on every question type, many more exercises like this one, and your own support tutor you can ask when an answer does not make sense. Take a look at the complete course
Knowing the methods is straightforward. Knowing whether your vocabulary is actually at the level you need is not.
IELTStestONLINE keeps every score you get in one place, gives you an estimated band as you work, and assesses your writing and speaking against the four criteria so you can see where you stand before test day. See what full membership includes
There is no official number. What matters is that the words you use are accurate and appropriate, so a smaller vocabulary used precisely beats a larger one used loosely.
They work for meaning, but not for usage. Add the pairings and a sentence, otherwise you learn what a word means without learning how to use it.
Longer than technique. Most candidates see a clear difference after six to eight weeks of daily work, which is why vocabulary should be started early.
Both, together. Reading gives you words in context; recording and reviewing them is what makes them stay.
They are useful for the Academic module, but only alongside topic vocabulary. A word you cannot fit into an answer earns nothing.
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It is also the thing that decides most bands above 6.5. Knowing whether yours is the limitation, or whether something else is, is worth finding out early.
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