The type of word that you are learning may also affect how easy or difficult it is to remember. However, even words that start with the same letter or have the same consonant cluster can be confusing. Many students confuse “bought and brought” or “lose and loose” or “patients or patience” usually because they are spelt and pronounced in similar ways. I guess that makes sense as part of “remembering” a word is being able to speak it.Īnother factor is how similar the word is to other words you are learning. If you are learning a list of words that sound the same, then they can quite easily become confused. Words that are easy to pronounce are easier to remember. Well, there are a number of answers to that question. Why is that though? What is it that makes some words stick in our heads more easily than others? You will find that you will be able to recognise far more words than you can actually produce, which is why the language you can understand in the reading exam is of a much higher level than that which you can produce in speaking or writing. It is absolutely natural for language learners to have a wider passive vocabulary than active one.
However, what is the best way to learn new lexis? And how much can you realistically learn in one month, or two, or six? That is what Nick and I will be discussing on this week’s podcast! Join us as we combine our experience teaching with the results of academic research to make learning vocabulary for IELTS as easy for you as we can.īelow, you can find a summary of the episode, which includes all of the links to useful materials and the times of each part of the discussion (so you can go directly to the part you want to listen to) ? Well, then you should definitely include some vocabulary acquisition as part of your IELTS preparation. What if you find you get tongue-tied when trying to discuss the abstract topics in Speaking Part 3 because there are gaps in your vocabulary?.What if you cannot follow the listening or reading passages because you cannot understand key words in the question?.What if you do not have enough topic specific vocabulary to discuss the essay topics in depth?.
However, what if lexis really is a problem area for you?
In fact, for many students that work with us at My IELTS Classroom, the focus is more on learning to control existing vocabulary than expanding it with new words (and if this sounds like you, you can read this blog postabout common mistakes with lexical resource). If you asked my students what area they should focus on to improve their score, almost all would say lexis, and yet in my experience, vocabulary is rarely, if ever, their true problem area. I have always found it interesting that many students are fixated on learning vocabulary for IELTS.