If you want to do well in the IELTS speaking test, then you need to have a great vocabulary and that means knowing lots of different words and phrases. But which ones will impress the examiners? That’s what we’ll discuss in this article.
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The Truth About Vocabulary in IELTS
First of all, it should be understood that there are no magic words that will help you to get a great score for IELTS. For every situation, you just need to use the right word. That means knowing a word’s meaning as well as its usage in a grammatical sense. It also helps to know subtle meanings, such as whether it’s generally positive or negative.
Useful Sentence Starters
However, it can be useful to have a stock of words and phrases that address common question types, topics, or things you simply want to talk about. For example, you might want to learn some useful ways to start sentences.
- Well, that’s a difficult question but I suppose…
- I’m not really sure, but my gut instinct is that…
- I hadn’t thought about that before, but now you mention it…
These three sentence beginnings are very useful because they can be applied to many different questions in IELTS. Basically, they all indicate that a question was difficult and perhaps caught you slightly by surprise. By memorising these and using them, you can avoid a long pause at the beginning of your answer. It’s useful to start with something like this and then your brain can continue the rest of the answer.
Other Memorised Introductions
This doesn’t all have to relate to difficult questions, though. You can also have other memorised introductions to start you off. For example:
- This is something I’ve often wondered about.
- People often think about this and personally I believe…
- Well, that’s quite a common topic nowadays.
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These sorts of phrases can be used to naturally begin an answer. As long as it is appropriate and you expand upon it fully, it should be fine. Also, don’t repeat them. You can’t use the same one multiple times in a single test.
Personal Interests in IELTS Speaking
IELTS tests can also be manipulated to bring in your personal interests. This is particularly true for the first section. Let’s say you really love poetry. The topic of poetry is quite rare, but the wider topic of books is very common and of course the topic of hobbies is even more common than that. In such cases, you can take the big topic and direct it towards your preferred topic. For example:
Example: Talking About Poetry
- EXAMINER: Do you have any hobbies?
- CANDIDATE: Yes, I really love reading and writing poetry. I got into it when I was a child and I’ve been a fan ever since. I really like rhyming poetry, which I know some people think of as old-fashioned, but for me the classic ballads are more impressive than modern free verse.
This illustrates how easy it is to take a broad topic and direct it towards your favourite area and this is important for two reasons:
- You’ll probably have many things to say.
- You’ll probably have a large stock of familiar phrases to use.
If you really do love poetry, then you’ll know rare words such as:
- verse
- sonnet
- ballad
- stanza
- rhyme
- cadence
- bard
Now, what is the benefit of this? Of course, the average IELTS candidate does not need these words and would not be expected to know them, but if you do know them then it would impress the examiner to hear them because they are so uncommon.
Example: Talking About Photography
Again, poetry is just one example. We could do the same with photography.
- EXAMINER: How do you normally spend your weekends?
- CANDIDATE: Well, I’m a huge fan of photography, so every chance I get I do out and find interesting things to shoot. I’ll set up my tripod and pick out a suitable lens, then fiddle with the dials to see what interesting shots I can get. Composition is fascinating to me, so I like to move around and find just the right spot.
Using Topic-Specific Vocabulary
Notice how easy it is to move from the broad topic of “weekend” to the specifics of photography! If this was something that really interested you, and you had a wide vocabulary comprised of words you really understood and knew how to use accurately, then it would be an easy way to impress the examiner. You could no doubt include some of the following:
- Aperture
- Shutter speed
- Zoom lens
- Configuration
- Depth of field
- Automatic focus
You can do this with anything that interests you: rugby, computer games, maths, mechanics, animals, etc.
Preparing for Common Part 3 Topics
People often make the mistake of thinking that they need to know every word or a certain list of important words but the reality is that you can get by with a fairly wide vocabulary and then dazzle the examiner with topic-specific terms when they arise. You can’t always manage to cram them into your answer, but you can certainly try to move the conversation in that direction.
You can also think about common topics and then think about very likely questions. Even in Part 3, which is hard to predict, there are certain areas that keep arising, such as education, age, and gender. You can’t memorise whole answers but you can certainly learn useful terms.
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The topic of old age quite often comes up in this part of the test, so you might want to learn how to discuss this and to do so accurately and tactfully. Here are some useful terms to learn:
- Retirement
- Pension
- Care home
- Carer
- Geriatric
- Social security
You can of course think about longer expressions if you believe they could be adapted to multiple answers:
- The elderly face many challenges, of course, and any advanced society needs to address the problems these people face, such as receiving healthcare or paying their heating bill.
Final Thoughts
This is a great sentence because it could fit into dozens of possible answers! The use of “the elderly” is a particularly good piece of vocabulary because this is a word that most IELTS candidates struggle with. Knowing useful terms to accurately refer to real-world problems such as paying a heating bill is also very handy. If you struggle for the right word or use unclear terms, then you will not get a good score for Lexical Resource
