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This blog post comes from a question we received in our private Facebook group IELTS speaking and writing support.  Feel free to join.  The question was

“Can you give me some advanced vocabulary for IELTS writing?”

One of the examiners had this to say.

No. Stop. Learning from word lists is the worst way to learn a language, especially for IELTS. Why?

Because English is very very highly collocated. You cannot just interchange words for others in English as it will more than likely be wrong. Let’s take an example. If you look for synonyms of give, you get

• render; provide; furnish

Now, you cannot just interchange give with these words because these words are highly collocated.

You can say

“My dad gave me 10 dollars” but you cannot use any of these other words here.

This is what stops a lot of people getting into Band 7.0 in their IELTS speaking and writing because they try to use synonyms to try and show they have a big vocabulary but in the wrong way and this is an error.

To get into Band 7.0 in IELTS writing/speaking, you need to be producing the majority of what you say/write accurately.

So, what can you do?

Stop worrying about using synonyms. In IELTS, it is all about clarity, accuracy, and communication. If you can answer the examiner’s questions in the speaking exam in an extended way, then you are at Band 7.0 level. You don’t need to use fancy vocabulary; you just need to be able to communicate and talk about a range of topics. If you cannot do this then your English is not yet good enough and you need to go back to General English classes.

Also, just because you use opine instead of think means absolutely nothing when you can’t use articles properly.

Forget word lists and learning synonyms; they won’t help you.

This is really good advice and we see lots of people make this mistake.  Get in touch if you would like to either;

do an IELTS speaking test

do a full IELTS writing exam

We will get you where you need to be far quicker.