Vocabulary
Fifteen words that cover the arts funding essay, the speaking card and the Section 4 lecture. With a practice exercise.
IELTS vocabulary for the arts is worth preparing because the topic arrives in a predictable shape: should governments spend public money on art and music, or on hospitals and roads. The same fifteen words answer that essay, the Part 2 card asking you to describe a painting, a film or a performance, and the Part 3 questions that follow it.
Most candidates already know the general words. What separates a Band 6 answer from a Band 7 one here is precision: knowing that art and the arts are not the same thing, and that you hold an exhibition but stage a production.
The words
Fifteen words in five groups, and the pairings that go with them.
The visual arts — painting, sculpture, photography and film.
The performing arts — theatre, dance, music and opera.
An exhibition — a public display of work, usually in a gallery or museum.
A masterpiece — the finest thing an artist produced.
Contemporary — made now, by living artists. It does not mean modern in the loose sense.
Aesthetic — to do with beauty and appearance rather than usefulness.
Craftsmanship — skill and care in making something by hand.
Acclaimed — widely praised by critics.
Commercialised — changed in order to sell, usually at the cost of quality.
A critique — a considered assessment, positive or negative.
Interpretation — what a viewer takes a work to mean.
Thought-provoking — makes you consider something in a new way.
Cultural heritage — the traditions, buildings and works passed down from the past.
Patronage — support given to artists by a person or an organisation.
A subsidy — public money paid to keep something running.
You hold an exhibition, stage a production, commission a work, appreciate the arts, cut funding, preserve heritage and provoke debate. These fixed pairings are what examiners notice at Band 7, far more than the individual words.
Method
Six points, and the second is where most answers lose accuracy.
You hold an exhibition and stage a production. Doing an exhibition and making a production are understandable but wrong, and both are marked as lexical errors.
Art usually means the visual arts, and it is uncountable. The arts covers all the creative fields together, including music, theatre and dance, and takes a plural verb. Funding questions almost always mean the arts.
Create, creation, creative, creativity. Perform, performance, performer. Moving between forms is what lets you make the same point twice without repeating the sentence shape.
Saying art is abstract. Saying a public sculpture, a community theatre or a school music programme turns a mentioned idea into a developed one, which is what Task Response rewards.
Beautiful, amazing and wonderful are correct but carry no information. Thought-provoking, acclaimed and skilfully made say something, and they are the register examiners expect.
Nobody checks whether the gallery you describe exists. What is assessed is the English, so spend your preparation on the words rather than on memorising artists and dates.
Practice
Choose the word or phrase that fits.
Several options in each question are real words used correctly elsewhere.
What is being tested is whether you know which word belongs in this particular sentence, and which words go together naturally in English.
1The gallery is ______ an exhibition of contemporary photography.
Holding. You hold or put on an exhibition. You stage a production and you commission a work. The other three verbs are real, but none of them goes with exhibition.
2A film that makes you consider an issue in a new way is ______.
Thought-provoking. Aesthetic is about how something looks, and contemporary only tells us when it was made. Neither says anything about its effect on you.
3The traditions, buildings and works passed down from the past are a country's ______.
Cultural heritage. A masterpiece is a single outstanding work, and craftsmanship is the skill used to make something. Neither covers what a country inherits as a whole.
4Which pair means different things?
Art and the arts. Art usually means the visual arts and is uncountable. The arts covers all the creative fields together, including music, theatre and dance. Task 2 funding questions almost always mean the second.
5Public money paid to keep a local theatre running is a ______.
Subsidy. A subsidy is public money. Patronage is support from a person or organisation, and a commission is a payment for a specific piece of work that has been ordered.
6Which is the natural pairing?
Commission a work. You also cut funding, stage a production, hold an exhibition and preserve heritage. Learning the pairings as pairs is what moves Lexical Resource above Band 6.
Almost every candidate does on this topic, because the words feel appropriate. They carry no information, so they add nothing to your Lexical Resource band no matter how many times you use them.
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Picking the right word from four options is a long way from producing it yourself, in an essay, with the clock running.
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Regularly, yes. The usual Task 2 form is whether governments should fund the arts rather than something more practical. It also appears in speaking Part 2, where you may be asked to describe a painting, a building, a film or a piece of music, and in Section 4 of the listening test.
Art usually means the visual arts and is uncountable, so you would not say an art. The arts is plural and covers all the creative fields together, including music, theatre and dance. Funding questions nearly always mean the arts.
No. You are assessed on your English, not on your knowledge of art history. A general example is enough, and it does not have to be verifiable.
Hold an exhibition, stage a production, commission a work and cut funding. Those four cover most of what a funding essay and a Part 2 description need.
Artwork is one word and is countable, so an artwork and three artworks are both correct. A piece of art and a work of art are also correct and slightly more formal.
Full membership
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