Hi, I'm Jessica Beck from IELTS Energy, the
very popular podcast, luckily. I still love doing it. And the online course, 3 Keys IELTS. Today, I'm taking a little bit of a break
from our recent series about how to score highly in all the categories for writing. I thought it was time for a vocabulary episode. Recently there has been a question on the
exam about describing a novel or a book. There are also commonly Part One questions
about books you read, the Part Two question about novels and stories, and then this of
course is continued in Part Three about what your culture likes to read; books, magazines,
newspapers. So, I thought today we'd go into some interesting
vocabulary to talk about this very common topic. The first vocab word, which I love using and
teaching ... it's "genre." Now of course, this is a French word but we
do use it in English. So, it sounds impressive when you use it on
the exam. Genre is simply the type of story, the type
of music, or the type of movie. Genres of movies might be action, comedy,
romance. Genres of stories would be romance of course. Action is not a genre of book, okay? I heard a student say that recently. It's not. Could be a detective novel, for example; a
thriller, a mystery. My favorite genre of course is sci-fi. Science fiction. Get to know the different kinds of genres
and try to work that into your answers. Another idiom that I love using is describing
a book as "a real page-turner." That means that it's so exciting, you just
read so fast you can't wait to turn the page. Okay? A real page-turner. I hope you guys have one of those in your
background. Another way to describe a story that is really
good ... and this could be a movie, or a book, or a comic book ... is to say that "it grabbed
me from page one." Okay? That's an idiom to say that you were into
this story right away. It grabbed me from page one. If you're talking about a movie, you could
say, "It grabbed me from the get-go," or "It had me from page one. It had me from the get-go." These are really, really native speaker idioms
that you do not hear other students use. I don't hear students use these at all. Where you hear them is in native speaker conversations. Again, this is how you get a high score for
vocab, guys: showing the examiner that you're a step above. You have gone beyond your vocabulary for ... you
have gone beyond these other students in your vocabulary. So, practice using these idioms. Write it down. Practice using them in conversation and in
your IELTS practice. You could also say that a book or a story
was "a great read." It was a great read. Now remember guys, you can be honest. You can say that the last book you read was
not a great read. That is also an interesting way to approach
your answers, and an honest way to approach your answers. I think when you're honest about your personal
experiences, that's when you relax, you become more natural in your pronunciation, and more
specific in your vocabulary. This advice that I'm giving you, these phrases
I'm giving you are not just to increase vocabulary, but to increase your scores across the board. The last thing that is something interesting
to talk about is the characters. Something that I like to talk about when I'm
discussing books, and movies, and TV shows is saying whether or not the characters had
depth. This is if you feel like you really know a
character. You know some of their background. You feel like they're a person that you could
talk to, that you could meet ... not just a one-dimensional character. Like, this character is only sad. I don't know. If you feel like you have gotten into these
characters and you know them, you say that they have depth. That is another interesting detail, and interesting
vocab chunk there to provide the examiner. So again guys, watch this video a couple times. Please take notes on these words, and practice
using them. All right, for more ways to increase your
IELTS score, guaranteed to increase your IELTS score, check out our online course 3 Keys
IELTS, available now on our website ielts.allearsenglish.com. Thank you for watching, and have a wonderful
day. Excuse me. Thank you for watching, and have a wonderful
day.
