IELTS Speaking Vocabulary: The Ultimate Guide

hi guys if you want to improve your knowledge and use of vocabulary for ielts speaking so you can speak fluently in the ielts speaking test then this video is just for you [Music] hello my name is keith and i run the website the keith speaking academy and today i'm going to give you some tips to help you improve your vocabulary for ielts speaking great right so what we're going to look at we're going to look at the different words and kind of words you need to know for ielts speaking how you can learn new words the best way to remember vocabulary how to get the words from your brain to your mouth so that you can speak fluently in the test and then finally i'll be looking at where you can find this vocabulary that you need for ielts speaking yes i know it's a lot right but hey listen this video is the ultimate guide right everything you need and want to help with your vocabulary for ielts speaking rightio let's begin so how can you improve your vocabulary for ielts speaking first of all the the important thing to remember right is vocabulary counts for 25 of your overall ielts speaking mark so as well as fluency grammar pronunciation vocabulary it's a quarter of your mark and you're evaluated on two things basically the range of vocabulary first and your accuracy second so it's really important that you know a lot of vocabulary but it's also important that you can use it correctly and have good accuracy or fewer mistakes so bearing that in mind in order to improve your vocabulary here are five simple things to do first of all study a wide range of topics secondly learn vocabulary in context so that you know how to use the words right thirdly record new words write them down make a note or even an audio recording fourthly practice activating and using the vocabulary so it's coming out of your mouth and fifthly regularly review and test yourself that is the short quick way to improve your vocabulary let's look in a bit more detail at some of these points so i mentioned learning and studying a wide range of topics so you have the vocabulary to discuss a wide range of topics right many students ask then well okay keith so which words exactly do i need for ielts speaking well it's not mathematical and it's hard to say exactly which words you need i do notice there's a lot of confusion out there people talking about how many idioms i should use um what about the fancy words the band nine words that i must learn to get a band nine right okay i don't think really you know do band nine words exist well yes and no they don't really exist but however they do exist because if you look at the work that linguists do and material writers there are projects like the english profile project so english profile organizes the language the words in english according to the topic the part of speech and the level based on the cefr the a1 being the low level beginner and c2 the advanced level so you can see for the words in this database like zoo is at a1 beginner level zone b1 is an intermediate level and so on you can see a b2 yourself talking about people generally right is b2 level a high intermediate level so you can theoretically and in reality you can organize this this language and look at the c2 advanced language right and you can get a list here it's alphabetical order of all the words you need to be a band nine but is that gonna help you no the short answer is no because you don't know how to use those words and what's more if you're a band 5 and you're trying to use these advanced level words probably you don't know how to use them you don't understand the nuance or the connotation you won't get fully the grammar and the real meaning behind them and so you will probably make lots of mistakes and bring your vocabulary score down so no no no my advice is learn the vocabulary at your level and the level above you so if you're a band five you should learn of course all that band five vocabulary and band six don't try to go for the higher level stuff because you'll be making too many mistakes so your own level and what i call level plus one the level just above you right that's the vocabulary you should be focusing on i think a much more useful question is what kind of words at my level and level plus one should i learn right now then here are eight kind of words that i think you should be focusing on first synonyms right now these are words that have the same or a similar meaning take for example difficult a difficult job we can say a tough job a challenging job this job is a tall order a bit idiomatic but synonyms right number two look at antonyms these are words with the opposite meaning so for example great it was a great film opposite it was a terrible film it was an awful film awful it was the worst film ever the worst ever right antonyms thirdly look at word families and by this i mean words that have the same root and belong to the family so looking at the different parts of speech of a word for example we take friend right is a noun the adjective is friendly he is very friendly the verb well there is a verb to befriend right it's less common probably higher level more common to make friends as a verb there's a noun friendship the idea of having friends right so learning these different parts of speech from this family can be really useful it is true that some parts of speech may be at different levels and so some of them like befriend you may want to leave because that's a higher level depending on where you are right is it your level or level plus one word families next collocations and these are the words that commonly go together right we talk about uh heavy rain um we talk about black tea it's funny right because in different languages the collocations may be different and translate different i do remember right when i first arrived in china and people were i was meeting people and they would offer me tea and they would say here would you like some red tea and i went red tea i've never heard of red tea i mean do you have green tea oh yes we have green tea but you should try the red tea hong pao i'm like okay and then they give me a cup of tea and it's black tea i say ah it's black tea oh right they were translating right because in chinese it's red tea so be careful with collocations that you're not translating but you're learning them in english i'm going to show you more about that in a few moments i had the same problem in china when i was speaking chinese i would be going around saying hey have some black tea and they're like what do you mean black tea oh you mean hong ta red tea anyway that aside the next one idiomatic expressions yes they are important especially at a band 7 and above there's no maths about how many you should use but you should be using them naturally in a very in a way that feels comfortable to you an idiomatic expression is where the meaning of the phrase is a little different from the meaning of the individual words right so if i say i am tickled pink that doesn't mean somebody came and tickled me hahahahaha and i became pink no it means i'm very happy i'm tickled pink idiomatic expressions so worth learning as well next phrasal verbs now some phrasal verbs are idiomatic some are not some are literal but they are extremely common in spoken language they are difficult but they are worth learning because it gives you much more flexibility and natural spoken english right phrasal verbs there are different kinds but basically where you have a verb and a preposition or a particle after the verb like for example to put off meaning to postpone the meeting was put off or to take away to remove right will you please take away all of this rubbish to reduce we can say to cut down on i'm smoking too much i need to cut down on my smoking or i'm spending too much time in front of the computer i need to cut down on the time i spend in front of the computer next look at the grammar of the words by this most people think grammar and vocabulary are different um but actually vocabulary involves grammar or for example let me test you right do i say make friends at someone make friends to someone or make friends with someone right it's make friends with someone right that use of the preposition with is the correct one make friends with someone so the use of prepositions is the grammar of the words or is it countable uncountable is it a noun or adjective a verb all of this in a way is the grammar of the word really important to look at finally number eight i would say focus on spoken english rather than written english right so when you're learning vocabulary make sure as far as possible that you're familiar with spoken english rather than a written academic style of english that's important for your writing but in the speaking test you need to be speaking spoken english so there are eight different kinds of words that you should be learning and focusing on i also as a final point want to make clear the difference between something in the band descriptors for the ielts speaking band descriptors they talk about familiar and unfamiliar topics so you need the vocabulary to talk about both familiar and unfamiliar topics what is that what does that mean exactly well very simply familiar topics are topics we talk about every day right so maybe family home work hobbies everyday life shopping maybe cooking that kind of thing unfamiliar topics are the topics we don't talk about every day so maybe things like climate change globalization law economics finance things like that of course if you're an accountant or a banker finance is familiar to you of course but for most people it's not an everyday topic now if you look at the band descriptors a band 6 needs to be needs to be able to talk at length on both familiar and unfamiliar topics at length so you need to be able to talk a lot about climate change globalization all of these unfamiliar topics that's just at the band six at the band seven you need to be able to use your vocabulary flexibly on all of those topics familiar and unfamiliar right so it really is important that you can cover and discuss all of those topics at length for a band six and with flexibility at a band seven and above right enough about that let's move on to the next bit right next how can you learn new words well do remember as i mentioned right i said to learn the word in context so the context i mean some kind of a text whether it's a spoken text podcast a video or a film or a book a written text text or even a transcript what you don't want is to go and get lists and word lists from the internet you know the hundred most important words or a thousand academic words for ielts they are no use to you because you don't know where they've come from and how to use them of course word lists can be very useful but make your own from some kind of a context right maybe it's an audio file like this or a transcript like this my big suggestion is to learn words by topic by theme or by topic um this is done very very widely by most course book writers and training schools you know if you take even a book like this right english vocabulary and use this book is organized each unit focuses on a topic it has work study people the environment society the media hob hobbies it goes on so by focusing on a different topic it's easier to collect and connect collect and connect the vocabulary because our brains work very similar to computers and the internet right you have a folder of english and inside there's a folder of different topics and inside the topic folder there are subtopics and then there are words that are connected to each other and this is how we learn vocabulary by connecting words and ideas together so if they're under the same topic it's a lot lot easier so learn by topic and also make notes i think it's really important to make and take good notes of the vocabulary that you're learning right how do you do that well let me show you how i would do that in a particular context right basically my approach when i've learned french spanish chinese is always the same right taking notes is i do the following i note the grammar of the word i note the meaning in the language i'm learning so for you that would be in english rather than a translation if possible useful collocations which words go together with that word and a sample phrase which is normally about my life connected to me let me show you briefly how i might do this okay so i've come to this website keith speaking academy there's a sample answer here about an apology which will give me some context for language learning for vocabulary so i've got here a cue card this is describe a time someone apologized there's a sample answer on the video but also i can look at this transcript here so i remember once i took my wife to a restaurant it was a run-of-the-mill restaurant nothing to write home about i've studied that before so that's okay it had excellent food and a good reputation reputation i'm not sure what that means right a good reputation so maybe that's a word i want to study and i want to find out so i guess typically i will take the word reputation right and i will just go and put that into a into either google or into one of my dictionaries um here i've got reputation in the collins dictionary is one that i use it tells me that reputation to have a reputation for something means to be known or remembered for it okay right so i'm going to take my notepad and i just use a digital notepad here and i'm just going to write down word so first of all the word reputation and it's a noun we've seen that and actually we know that it's uh countable because it said that in the dictionary um and we know that it means um to be well known for something right great so next um i want to be clear about the grammar of this word so yes it's countable yes it's a noun when i use it right i say i have a reputation for something so it's used with four right i have a reputation for something and if i'm not sure i can check in the dictionary i can look at the example sentences or even the collocations let's take the example sentences they have a good reputation for being strong right okay good that's one example i'm just going to focus on one i know there are lots of others but let's just have one the other thing i want to do then is look at collocations bad reputation deserve a reputation there are so many and so i will just pick out one or two that i quite like so for example let's say have a bad reputation to gain a reputation to gain a reputation what else to ruin or to tarnish look at that tarnish a reputation which i can check in the dictionary but i do know that it means to to ruin a reputation so i might just make a note there to remind myself to ruin a reputation so here great i've got the word i've got the grammar i've got the collocations and i would just finish with a sentence that is meaningful and true for me right um my brother has a reputation for being very uh generous oh you've just lost me great and that's it now i know it's a lot of work but what i'm doing is i'm not just practicing this word right i'm practicing different collocations to give me flexibility essential for a band 9. and in my phrase i'm also practicing different language not just the word reputation practicing generous practicing very it's great great practice so that is a simple example of how i might record a word okay so we've looked at the different kinds of words to learn we've looked at how to learn and making notes now what's the best way to remember vocabulary right this is really important and keeping it as simple as possible right when we say to remember there are probably three different steps the first one is when you get the word and you make it attractive so that it can go into your head the second is keeping it in your head the storage whether it's long term or short term and the third is recall getting it out of your head right recalling the word and probably the most important is the first one is making the word attractive so it will stick in your memory it's sometimes called encoding there are lots of different tips and tricks about this um people like different methods and there is no one best method i really do think it depends it's different for each person right so for example you can try mnemonics right mnemonics a way you have some kind of memory trick to remember a word for example right in order to remember useful conjunctions in english people sometimes use an acronym and the acrobin the common acronym is fanboys b o y s and that stands for f for four ah a for and n for nor b for but o for r y for yet and s for so fanboys the acronym is there's a quick way to remember right that's a mnemonic or for example i have trouble write spelling the word believe is it i before e except after c or e before i so my mnemonic for the word believe is the phrase never believe a lie can you see lie l-i-e is the l-i-e from the word believe never believe a lie that's a mnemonic to remember it so some people love mnemonics and they you can create your own that's the best way to do it right otherwise you can take your word lists as we mentioned before word lists that you've made with the phrases using the word and i think it's good to make two or three phrases to learn the word and to to repeat those phrases so it goes into your head other ways are mind maps like this sometimes also called spider grams like this and these organize the words in an attractive way often with colors and visual support to help it encode or go into your head right so that's really important now there is some very very popular science um which i say popular i think is based on real research that tells us when you study something new after one hour you forget 50 after 24 hours you forget 70 wow now that is mind-blowing because you learn something today it means tomorrow you've forgotten 70 unless you review it and so the science tells us we need to be reviewing reviewing reviewing in order to reconnect the words up here and this of course has led to the emergence of a lot of apps mobile phone apps right often based on spaced repetition if you've heard of that where you study the words and at different spaces of time you repeat repeat and repeat typically there's a flash card with a picture or a translation and then it shows you the word and that helps you remember the word um you know there's mobile phone apps like memrise quizlet um tiny cards anki some people swear by them right they think they're fantastic and they do work for some people my only caveat or warning is only having the word and the flash card doesn't really have any context whereas if you've written out some phrases and put the word in your own context it's much more powerful to get it into your head so i think the idea of reviewing regularly is fantastic if mobile apps space repetition apps work for you fantastic otherwise make up your own phrases with the new word and practice saying them or reading them the research tells us that in order to learn and get the word into your head effectively we need to see it in three or four different contexts and that's why i recommend right if you're learning a particular topic to do the following to read something about it to listen to something about it and to watch something about it because you're seeing the vocabulary repeated in different contexts and different mediums and that can be really really helpful to encode and get the words into your head great a bit of science but hey there's nothing wrong with a bit of science to help us learn better okay now another common question from students about vocabulary is keith how do i get the words from my brain to my mouth right now this really is to do with what i said before about remembering right so you have first of all encoding getting the word in secondly storage or keeping it and thirdly recalling it or getting the word out and this is what this is about right and often we call this activating vocabulary so you have two kinds of vocabulary passive and active passive vocabulary are the words that when you see them or you hear them you recognize them you go oh yeah i know that word but you can't use it active vocabulary are the words that you recognize right but you can also use them so you can actively use that word typically your passive vocabulary is this big when your active vocabulary is this big is much much smaller the words you can actually use this is why people have trouble speaking because their active vocabulary is too small so how do we get the words out how do we activate vocabulary basically you need to be doing things with the words you're learning and that can be writing or speaking obviously for speaking i suggest speaking activities you can do things like grouping making phrases speaking out conversation practice right what do i mean by grouping well when you've got some new words for example a topic of food for example and i have a word list that i have made um i then put the words into groups for example right let's say i've got these words all about food and then i look at them and i just put them into groups maybe i look at the groups of what i like and what i don't like and i might say something like this i like white bread i love fresh fruit i'm a big fan of sliced ham i don't like cheese i love tasty food i don't like insipid food and so on right can you see what i'm doing i'm grouping them into like and dislike but there's a context for every word i'm repeating the words it's something that's true for me and meaningful for me and i'm actually practicing other language lots of synonyms you noticed right it's a great activity grouping with word lists you could talk about for example in the in the word list things that are good things that are good for you and things that are not good for you right you can see what's happening you're just practicing and practicing lots of different language but you're also activating these new words that you've learned through grouping the other thing is to make phrases that are true for you because the more meaningful the example the better it will stay and come out right to say it simply if you imagine you've just learned the word um salty as an adjective salty food right then i can make some sentences true for me i actually don't like salty food my wife makes the food really salty for me i prefer food that is less salty very simple but all of those sentences are true for me and therefore it's coming in what is also nice is you can actually record these sentences right make your own little podcast and listen back to yourself when you're out walking you've got your earphones on instead of listening to what you normally listen to listen to yourself and help get the language in a meaningful way in to hear what else practice conversations um absolutely so when you're taking your word list if you've got a speaking partner or even talking to yourself you're going to practice talking about food and cooking as you're just talking try and incorporate these words into your conversation try and use them actively and that will help activate those words as well great let's move on okay great so listen we've talked about the kind of vocabulary to learn how to learn how to remember how to recall and get the words out and activate finally what about well that's great keith but where can i find these words where do i find my ielts speaking vocabulary you talk a lot about context where is the context okay first thing i would suggest that you focus as much as possible on spoken texts because the spoken language if you're listening to that is going to help you with spoken english of course you can read your magazines and your books ninety percent of the language is the same but the style is different so as well as that make sure you're doing lots of listening so i suggest for example tv chat shows or internet chat shows soap operas and sitcoms because situational comedies um because they often talk about everyday family life and things that people are doing every day great conversation podcasts especially interviews and again chat shows likewise the radio debates tv debates or youtube debates where people are discussing topics and debating them great to get the kind of language you need and also of course ielts sample answers a lot of websites have sample answers i do encourage you to use the ones that have audio not just the written because a lot of those sample answers are written in a written style it's not natural spoken english so try and find ones that do have audio is better well by the way my wife my website has a few audio sample answers as well so go and check those out i think the benefits of using listening to develop your vocabulary are huge right first of all you know the language is spoken not written you know or you get the context and the kind of situation where that word can be used so you understand also how it is used with the collocations as well you get the correct pronunciation and intonation in a sentence you get the whole bundle you get everything in that nice listening activity it's a great way to learn vocabulary for speaking i've talked about well the importance of reviewing right on a regular basis i also think testing yourself is a really good way to review sometimes because by testing you actually find out if you remember a word or if you don't or if you can use it or not so testing yourself is a great way you can use tools like quizlet which are fantastic for testing or you can get your speaking partner or your teacher to practice and test words with you to see if you know the meaning see if you can use them in a sentence or not you can do that on your own with a mirror also with your word list lots of different ways of testing yourself i think it's a really useful thing to do so in this ultimate guide to vocabulary for ielts speaking we've talked about the different kinds of words to learn do you remember the eight kinds i told you about [Music] good we talked about how to learn vocabulary the importance of context learning by topic making notes right we talked about the best ways to remember vocabulary getting it in keeping it getting it out mnemonics word lists mind maps spider grams spaced repetition lots of different ways to do that we talked about activating vocabulary whether it's through grouping or making phrases that are true for you or just practicing in conversation and finally we looked at where to find vocabulary and i'm going to add on there that if you go to my website there are now a whole group of pages which are lesson pages by topic it's talk fluently about something something different topics for ielts speaking there's lots of vocabulary lots of context they're based on my live lessons on youtube which by the way if you haven't seen yet do come and join us every thursday 10 o'clock um spain time yes and we're looking at a different topic each week and you can learn lots of vocabulary there as well a final word when it comes to learning vocabulary my suggestion is right as i mentioned to learn vocabulary at your level or a level plus one just above you in the test only use vocabulary that you're comfortable with vocabulary that you really know you can actively use and you're confident with otherwise you're going to make a lot of mistakes and bring down your score right so focus on what you're comfortable with in the actual test that's it this is my little tour of how to learn vocabulary for ielts speaking i hope it has helped you you may want to go back and listen to different chapters or parts of this video to get a deeper understanding lots of links below that you can follow to find more resources thank you ever so much for watching if you've liked it please do like leave a comment below what's your tip or suggestion about learning vocabulary share it with us and all together we can learn from each other remember subscribe turn on the notification button and i can't wait to see you very very soon take care my friend [Music] bye you

Channel: English Speaking Success

Views: 467,641

Rating: 4.9449296 out of 5

Keywords: ielts speaking, ielts keith, ielts exam preparation, how to prepare for ielts, ielts speaking vocabulary, ielts speaking test band 9 vocabulary, ielts speaking vocabulary band 9 pdf, ielts vocabulary list, ielts vocabulary band 9, ielts vocabulary synonyms, ielts vocabulary speaking, vocabulary ielts speaking, vocabulary ielts speaking band 8, ielts speaking words, ielts speaking words to use, ielts speaking words and phrases, ielts speaking vocabulary words

Id: R1AFp1QfSaM

Length: 38min 51sec (2331 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021