Vocabulary
The words you need whenever the topic is news, advertising or influence. With a practice exercise.
IELTS vocabulary for media and advertising covers two subjects that examiners treat as one. Both appear regularly in Task 2, in Section 4 listening on how audiences are influenced, and in speaking questions about news, advertisements and social media.
The words below are grouped the way examiners would expect you to use them. Learning ten at a time and putting each one into a sentence about what you read or watch works far better than reading the whole list once.
The words
Six groups. Learn one group at a time rather than the whole page.
The press — newspapers and the journalists who write for them.
Broadcast media — television and radio.
Print media — anything published on paper.
A tabloid — a paper focused on celebrity and sensational stories.
A broadsheet — a paper with longer, more serious reporting.
A journalist — someone who researches and writes the news.
A correspondent — a reporter based somewhere specific, such as a foreign country.
An editor — the person who decides what is published.
Coverage — the amount of attention a story receives.
A source — the person or document a story is based on.
News is uncountable and takes a singular verb: the news was surprising. There is no a news; say a news story or a piece of news.
Media is plural in origin but is now normally treated as singular in general use, as in the media has been criticised. Either agreement is accepted in IELTS, but be consistent within a piece.
Bias — presenting one side more favourably than another.
Sensationalism — making a story more shocking than the facts justify.
Misinformation — false information spread without intent to deceive.
Disinformation — false information spread deliberately.
Censorship — official control over what may be published.
An advertisement, shortened to advert or ad — a paid message promoting something.
A campaign — a planned series of advertisements.
A slogan — a short memorable phrase used to sell.
A target audience — the group an advertisement is aimed at.
Brand awareness — how widely a name is recognised.
An endorsement — a well-known person publicly recommending a product.
Product placement — showing a product inside a film or programme.
Sponsorship — paying to have your name attached to an event.
A misleading claim — one that is technically true but creates a false impression.
Pester power — advertising to children so they press their parents to buy.
Method
Six ways these words earn marks rather than just filling space.
Disinformation is not a longer word for lies. It names deliberate deception, which is exactly the distinction a Band 7 answer is expected to make.
Advertise, advertisement, advertiser, advertising. Note that advertising is uncountable and advertisement is countable, which trips up a great many candidates.
You run a campaign, launch a product, cover a story, break the news and raise awareness. Wrong pairings are noticed even when both words are real.
News, advertising, information, publicity and coverage are all uncountable. The news is, not the news are, is a small point that examiners register immediately.
Should advertising to children be banned? Is the news less trustworthy than it was? Do celebrities have too much influence? These recur, and the vocabulary above answers all three.
Pester power and product placement are useful when the question calls for them and awkward when it does not. Relevance is part of Lexical Resource too.
Practice
Choose the word that fits each sentence.
Read the whole sentence before you choose. Several options will be real words, and often more than one will nearly fit.
The test is precision: which word means exactly what the sentence needs?
1A newspaper that concentrates on celebrity and sensational stories is a ______.
A tabloid. A broadsheet carries longer and more serious reporting. The terms began as descriptions of page size but now describe the style of the paper.
2Choose the correct sentence.
The news was. News is uncountable and takes a singular verb despite the final s. If you need a countable form, use a news story or a piece of news.
3False information spread deliberately in order to deceive is ______.
Disinformation. Misinformation is also false, but it is passed on by people who believe it is true. The difference is intention, and using the right one shows precision.
4A well-known person publicly recommending a product is giving an ______.
An endorsement. Product placement means the product simply appears inside a film or programme, with nobody recommending it directly.
5Official control over what newspapers and broadcasters may publish is called ______.
Censorship. Bias is a slant in how a story is told, which can happen without anyone being prevented from publishing anything.
6Advertisers ______ a campaign aimed at their ______.
Run / target audience. Run a campaign is the standard collocation. Brand awareness is the result an advertiser hopes for, not the group of people they aim at.
That is a collocation problem rather than a vocabulary one, and it is very hard to spot in your own writing because every word looks correct on its own.
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
Recognising a word in a multiple choice is not the same as producing it accurately under time in an essay.
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Yes. Advertising, the trustworthiness of news and the influence of social media all appear in Task 2, and the topic comes up in speaking Part 3 as well.
It is plural in origin but now normally treated as singular in general use. Both agreements are accepted in IELTS, so choose one and stay with it.
Both are false. Misinformation is spread by people who believe it; disinformation is spread deliberately to deceive.
Ad is informal and belongs in speaking. In Task 2 use advertisement, or advertising when you mean the activity as a whole.
Yes. Lexical Resource assesses precision as well as range, so an ambitious word used slightly wrongly scores lower than a simple word used correctly.
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Technique takes most candidates to about Band 6.5. Past that, the limit is usually the range of language you can use accurately, and knowing where you stand is the first step.
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