IELTS Vocabulary: soar, rocket, plummet

In Thursday's lesson I suggested that you should avoid using words like soar, rocket and plummet when describing changes on a graph or chart. I explained that these words exaggerate too much, and that they are not 'academic'.

But someone asked this sensible question:

How can we get a high score for lexical resource (vocabulary) if we only use common words like 'increase', 'rise' and 'fall'?

The quick answer is that it's better to use 'less common vocabulary' for other aspects of your description. If you analyse this band 9 essay, you'll see that I used common words like rose, decreased, reaching and dropped to describe changes, but I managed to use 'less common vocabulary' for other aspects of my description e.g. global turnover, devices, namely, platform.

I'll explain more about how to get a high vocabulary score tomorrow.

Comments

[mirzo]

hello everyone. I got ielts last week. My exam marks is that
s 6
w 5.5
l 6.5
r 5
o 6
how can i get higher score. I can not beliefe myself to achieve better score

[Vishal]

Respected Simon sir,

Thanks for your tips and your generosity. Yesterday I got my result

L: 8.5
R: 6.5
S: 5.0
W: 6.0

I know in speaking I got very less band, might be due to my stammering and some genetic problem. How ever I am very happy with my result.

[Kamala]

Thanks, teacher.
Congratulaons, Vishal. Mirzo,do not be disappointment for your results, believe in yourself, you can do better. Good luck.

[seyedloghman]

Hi
Anyone who is looking speaking partner can add me on skype
skype id: seyedloghmansanjary

[LinhNguyen]

Hello Simon, I've just taken the IELTS test today, but I think I did it quite terribly.

The question of the Task 2 is: Do the disadvantages outweight the advantages?
I was supposed to write: "...I believe the policy offers more benefits than drawbacks."
However, I ran out of time so I just managed to write :"... I believe the policy is CORRECT"

Besides that, I think my answer for the Part 2 of the Speaking module was wrong. The question is something about the time you forgot something, and I talked about the time I was late for my exam because I mistaken the date(It was the first thing came to my head). Also, I was stopped by the interviewer before answering all the questions in the topic card.

You think how bad it will affect my score?

[hellcha]

Thank you, Simon, for answering my question.

If possible, could you give some tips as to how to learn English vocabulary effective. By 'effective', I mean to remember it for a long time and to be able to use it in writing and speaking.

I have been learning vocabulary by writing words with their examples and trying to learn all of them. However, that doesn't seem to be efficient and often, I feel like information overloaded. So do you use a specific tool or technique to learn vocabulary of other languages?

[vian]

Hello Simon
I would like to express my great admire in your site, it is very useful and have a huge information. I read it from beginning and printed it at a paper. I hope to meet you in the future and enrolled in your courses not for IELTS exam but to learn English language as a hoppy, my native language is Arabic.
I would to ask you can you please to provide me a site for download Cambridge IELTS books 1 to 8 with audios. I made hard search in the Internet but I cannot get it.

thank you for your cooperation

[Hi]

Today's writing task1.
A bar chart about spendings on different retail outlets in Australia in March 2009 and March 2011.

Task 2... Students should be fully responsible for paying their unversity expenses as their education benefits them more as an individual than to societies. (something like that)

Speaking
Part 1
Where u live
How long will u live there
What do u not like about the place where u live
Part 2
Describe a building in your town
Why was it built
What does it look like
Part 3
What do historical buildings reflect about a society or culture
People's attitude towards historical buildings
Types of houses in your homeland
Do you like shopping
Would you like to work as a shopkeeper

I hope, i will have my friends' wishes and prayers with me.

[Sjm]

Linh

Most examiners would understand you mean that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I hope you stated this opinion also in the introduction so this was clear

In speaking it is very difficult to be off topic so don't worry about that. Also the examiner has to stop you after 2 minutes and they don't care if you haven't answered those questions.

[LinhNguyen]

Thank you so much Sjm, I feel so much better

[uyen]

Thank you Simon.
Anyway, Can anybody here help me with this?
How I can use other phrase for the phrase "spend on"
Ex: People spend a lot money on petrol.
How can I rewrite this sentences?

[hellcha]

Hi uyen,

I think you could use the word 'use' or 'allocate'
E.g.: people use/allocate a lot of money for petrol

Or you could just simply use the passive voice.

A good alternative is to use the nominalization technique. For example, you could write
Petrol expense/expenditure/spending is high

[Li]

Dear Simon,

I saw soar in a ONS report and rocket in BBC news several times.

Do you mean not to use these words in IELTS test, but to use them in other writings is still fine?

The other question is that should we avoid to use words marked with formal in learner's dictionary? Are they too exaggerate?

Thank you very much for your help.

Sincerely

Li

[Fida]

Hi Simon,
Do you have any offer/opportunity/support to have check student's writing and score on it, please?
Thanks in advance.

[Rohit]

Hi Simon Sir,
I do registration for IELTS exam. My exam date 10th December, 2016. I am a weak student. Specially reading section. What should i do.i need overall band score 7. Not below 6 at any band. Please give me some advice.It's is my first and final chance for exam; because my economical condition is not good.Thanks in advance.