Improve Your IELTS Essay Score With Relevant Vocabulary

IELTS Practice

May 28, 2018

Do you find IELTS Essay Writing Task the most daunting one?

Yes?

Well, IELTS Essay seems intimidating to most candidates as it involves describing a given topic at length (at least 250 words). The essay must represent a precise and clear idea on the given topic along with a proper structure, correct grammar and substantial & relevant vocabulary.

However, Vocabulary plays a vital role in framing a good quality essay. It contributes 25% of your total IELTS Essay Writing score. So, in order to fetch a high score in Task 2 (i.e. essay writing) of IELTS Test, you need to be well-versed with a wide range of Vocabulary.

"Why is Vocabulary so important in IELTS Essay?"

Generally, an essay is a story. When you sit to write an essay for IELTS Academic or General Writing module, basically you are writing a story. Your essay tells an examiner about your point of view or opinion and an answer to the essay question. Thus, you must not only choose your words carefully but also see to it that they are relevant to your essay. Use of relevant vocabulary in an essay makes it more authentic, captivating and optimized.

In order to optimize your essay, use of relevant vocabulary is essential.

But, before we plunge into what Relevant Vocabulary is all about, it is inevitable that you know to analyse the essay question.

The Very First Step to Writing an IELTS Essay - Analyse the Question

A variety of essays are asked in IELTS Writing Task 2. Some questions require you to write a descriptive essay wherein others ask you to provide your opinion. Some topics demand you to analyse the point and reach to a conclusion while there are some questions that just ask you to write a simple essay.

Different types of essay topics are covered from a wide range of subjects - business, communication, finance, government, tourism, art, family, technology and more. Thus, your vocabulary should not only be relevant but also be specific to the given subject.

Here is a list of different types of Vocabulary that can be used as per your essay topic.

Vocabulary for a Descriptive Essay

Reported Speech Vocabulary

Conjunctive Adverbs

Vocabulary for an Argumentative Essay

Jargon

To ensure that your Essay is optimized and convey only the story you want to tell, develop a proper understanding of all the above listed Vocabulary in detail.

1. Vocabulary for a Descriptive Essay

Descriptive Vocabulary refers to explaining your thoughts in a clearer and precise way.

Let's say, you need to describe a person's looks and character in your essay.

Mr. Smith is a calm, kind and at the same time a cheerful person. He has a terrible sense of humour and knows how to tell great funny stories.

Here, words like 'calm', 'kind', 'cheerful' describes the personality of Mr. Smith. Moreover, words like 'terrible', 'funny' showcases his qualities.

In order to articulate your essay beautifully, what you need to do is - write an essay, proofread it, find words that can be described in a better way and add adjectives or adverbs to those words to highlight your message.

Consider a word 'abuse'. This word has a meaning on its own.

Abuse means form of mistreatment.

Using it in two sentences,

1. They abused her.

2. They sexually abused her.

1^st statement does not make clear what kind of mistreatment she faced. While 2^nd statement makes the narration clearer.

Thus, if you have proper knowledge about Descriptive Vocabulary, you can use it to add nuance to your essay.

2. Reported Speech Vocabulary

When you are writing an essay with reference to a secondary source or third party, it is imperative to show the examiner that you have read or consulted these kind of studies previously and are familiar with what you are writing. This is where Reported Speech Vocabulary is helpful.

Below is the list of some phrases that help you to strengthen and optimize your essay with Reported Speech Vocabulary.

According to

Based on the assumption made by

It can be said that

As stated by

In fulfilment of

As specified by

On the report of

In the opinion of

3. Conjunctive Adverbs

Coherence and Cohesion contributes 25% to the total score of your IELTS Essay Writing task. Therefore, it is essential that you maintain coherency in your thoughts throughout your essay. You can achieve this easily if you are aware of the Conjunctive Adverbs.

Conjunctive Adverbs link together your thoughts, ideas or arguments. These help the examiner understand where you have made specific points or reached a conclusion.

Here are a few Conjunctive Adverbs to help you thread your essay together.

Therefore	Thereafter
However	Moreover
Nonetheless	Furthermore
Hence	Thus
Besides	Additionally
Also	So

4. Vocabulary for Argumentative Essay

Argumentative vocabulary is of sheer importance for writing an IELTS essay that demands you to argue on a given point of view. Some words that show an argumentative style of writing are - bias, credibility, facts, insurance, statistic, hypocrisy and many more such words. Knowing this kind of Vocabulary helps you fetch a good score in your essay writing task.

5. Jargon

As discussed earlier in this blog, you will require to analyse the essay topic at first. After analysing, you can optimize your essay by determining in which discipline is your essay topic focusing. Then, you can decide the type of vocabulary that will be specific for the given topic. Thereafter, you can look for relevant jargon.

For example, you are supposed to wrote on Global Environmental Problems.

In order to optimize your essay, you can use some specific terminologies like 'deforestation', 'resource depletion' or 'degradation' that relate to the global environment problems.

These particular terminologies are referred to as Jargon.

Use of Jargon in your essay will inform the examiner that you are familiar with certain words and terms that are exclusively related to the topic you are writing on.

Developing a wide range of Vocabulary is important, but knowing how to use relevant vocabulary for your IELTS Essay Writing task helps you in fetching a high score. At IELTS Tutorials, you can avail Writing Correction Service to ensure that you do not commit any mistakes in your writing tasks in the actual test. You can practice writing essays on topics of your own choice and then submit them for evaluation. The certified trainers correct your tasks and provide feedback & suggestions for further improvement. You can thus identify your mistakes and rectify them to make sure you do not repeat them in the actual exam.

Keep Practising!

All The Best!