IELTS & TOEFL Writing: What Is High-end Vocabulary?

everybody welcome to write to the top I'm Adam in today's video I want to talk to you about a very important topic and a very misunderstood topic we're gonna talk about high end vocabulary now I often tell people if you want to increase your LR score in the IELTS for example you're a lexical resource score or in the TOEFL or any other exam you need more high end vocabulary now a lot of people misunderstand this high end vocabulary to mean big words many syllables complicated spelling very academic words or very technical words that is not the case in fact what I'm going to show you today I'm going to give you seven or I'm gonna give you eight words seven or that are actually one syllable they're short words very easy to say easy to spell in most cases a couple of them might be a bit tricky but seven one syllable words that are actually high-end that are not used very commonly but are actually everyday words native speakers do use them quite regularly if you read newspapers if you watch TV news you'll actually hear these words as well and but before I do that I want to show you a little bit what not to do okay I want to show you a few words these are words that some people love to use in the IELTS or TOEFL essay because they think it will actually raise their score in most cases these words are actually going to hurt your score one these are not everyday words these are very like SAT or GMAT level vocabulary people don't really use them very often even in university when you do use these words they're a little bit for style but a little bit for show professors don't necessarily like them very much either and the main reason I tell you not to use these words is because one the graders will know that you memorize them these are not words that people just know the words that are memorized be you'll probably misspell all or most of these words they're not easy words to spell and 3oh you you might not know how to use them in context 100% okay a lot of people think they know the meanings which they may know but they don't know the context so for example plethora instead of plethora I just use the word many plethora means many plethora is too fancy you're trying to impress you're not impressing use many it's much easier myriad a lot of people don't realize that myriad means many a lot of people think that myriad means variety myriad means many or countless so you're talking about a lot of things and usually when people use myriad about something that something does not usually we don't usually described it as countless like unlimited number a lot a lot just use many you're much safer alleviate alleviate means reduce or diminish but you can't use alleviate anytime that you would use reduce for example you cannot alleviate numbers you cannot alleviate the number of staff members who are going to get fired you alleviate means you reduce something negative and something that's uncountable like a count like a concept you can alleviate pain you can alleviate suffering you can even alleviate traffic congestion but you can't alleviate anything good and you can't alleviate numbers and a lot of people use alleviate any time they would use reduce and it doesn't always work plus very easy to misspell amalgamate is a very specific word for a very specific situation when you join things to make one thing you can use amalgamate but even then better to use join or fuse the only time we really use amalgamate is when we're talking about chemical processes or in like chemistry or even in physics when you're joining two elements to make us a new one single element or in business when companies amalgamate means they take all their small companies they join them into one conglomerate but again if you're not a hundred percent sure how to use the word better just not to use it now these two words are actually very good words but as you see them right here these are a problem conductive does not mean to help something work or to help something get along to somewhere else conductive means something that transfers transfers heat or electricity well renumeration is actually not a word what you what people who try to use these words are trying to use are actually conducive notice the T here notice there's no T and the next one conducive means help something happen and remuneration means like a salary or payment not renumeration very easy to mix these two if you're not a hundred percent sure don't use them the graders will know you memorize them they'll know you're trying hard to use these words it will work against your score so I'm gonna give you seven easy to remember words generally easy to spell words just be careful with gauge and rein they can be a little bit confusing in terms of spelling and these are words that are again native speakers use them all the time you'll hear them on the news or read them in newspapers all the time they're actually quite simple but a lot of context that you can actually use them in so let's start what does court mean to court to court someone or something means to try to attract to seduce or to attempt something or someone to do something to join something to go somewhere it could also mean to invite now to invite doesn't mean like to invite to a party it means to invite a situation into your life right so almost like a risk/reward kind of invitation to something or to just try to achieve some sort of result now if you want to use the noun form use courtship or courting and I'll explain that in the last sample so again the best way to understand words is to see them in action right so in the u.s. college sports is a multi-billion dollar industry so all the sports together is one industry makes it multi Millions everybody thinks it's amateurs it's actually a big business that is why college teams often send scout scout are professionals who look for talent to high schools all over the country to court the top players so in a high school there's a player who's really very good he's tall he's seven feet tall amazing basketball player all the top colleges want this player to come play for their team so they will go there they will offer scholarships they will offer opportunities and endorsements and commercials all of this to try to attract that player to their school now all kinds of schools are doing it a lot of colleges are competing all of them are offering something to try to court the students to their school to try to attract them him or her anyone who opens a business without researching the market the location and the competition is courting failure is basically inviting failure into the business into the into the into the person's life if you don't do the research you're almost guaranteed to fail so not doing the research is inviting the failure is courting failure and again you could say inviting or is risking failure or is probably going to end up in failure all these things but again court or to court is a very good word easy to remember generally easy to spell will get your higher points because this word if you use it correctly doesn't look like you memorized it it looks like you actually know how to use it the big words stand out and either grader knows you memorized now 100 years ago courting rituals or courtship rituals included bringing a girl flowers and asking her to the movies today relationships are conducted via text and flower emojis so they don't bring flowers anymore they send a flower and mochi over the phone so the courtship rituals the way a man tries to attract a woman or vice versa has changed over the last hundred years right so you're trying to achieve a relationship you're trying to attract someone invite them into your life all of these things courtship that's where the word comes from in the old days of kings and queens there was a court of the palace or the mansion or whatever and all the nobles were gathered there and they would all the young people would try to match up that's where the whole courtship idea comes from sway sway could be a noun or a verb as a noun it means the influence you have over somebody or the power or the rule you have so especially governments have sway or have power over colonies or other countries - and you we often use a have sway or hold sway over someone or some thing as a verb it means to influence or to bend to one's will so if you think of a tree a tree is standing there but when the wind comes or the breeze that the tree sways back and forth that's what the actual action of the verb means bend right so when you sway someone you bend them to do what you want them to do to your will even though it may seem that politicians do mostly what lobbyists and donor ask of them the voting public does hold sway over these officials so the voting public does have some power over these politicians since they can fire them and hire them through the ballot box they can vote them out of office vote them into office that being said an experienced politicians knows how to sway his electorate the politician knows how to bend the opinion the feelings of the people voting using the media and the money that his donors give him or her okay so that is sway again every day word but hardly ever used on the IELTS and TOEFL you can really impress the graders by knowing these types of words that are you know short one syllable small easy to spell but very powerful words very high end vocabulary and this is what I mean by high end not big useful very contextual words next we have gage now don't let the spelling fool you the pronunciation pronunciation is gage just imagine that you is not there again noun or verb the noun you're not going to use so much the noun is an actual tool that you used to measure something a speed gauge a depth gauge a height gauge that you used to measure speed depth or height but to gauge means to measure you can measure something like the actual numbers but it's also to get a sense of something so that's where you're gonna use it more instead of using measures is instead of using the word understand you can try to gauge something you can try to gauge a situation gauge a mindset etc a good teacher will gauge his students comprehension of the class material before having them sit for a formal test so if I'm a teacher if I I think okay next week I need to give the students a test but first if I think they're all going to fail then there's no point giving them a test I don't want my students to fail so I need to gauge try to get an understanding of do they understand the material if yes give them the test everybody does well if no review a little bit more and then give them the test the Consumer Price Index so that's more like an education topic for an essay let's talk about economics or business topics for an essay the Consumer Price Index or it's called a CPI is a tool that uses basket of daily consumer goods and services to gauge the rise in prices so here we're actually measuring numbers how much the price is right so it includes things like bread and milk and eggs and cleaning service and gas and carwash and very basic everyday consumer items and services how much do they all add up to in this little basket of things let's say 30 items and services if one month they cost $2,000 or let's say $200 the next month it costs two hundred and five dollars that means prices are going up that means inflation is happening and have to be careful about fiscal policy the government needs to be careful how they change their money policies fiscal money right so again a lot of these words I'm giving you pay also attention to the context you can have very a lot of different topics for essays that you're gonna need to write use these words start building up your vote your vocabulary base your idea bank think of where you can use all of these different words so next one flock now this is a very good word everyday word people think about flock they think about birds but you can use this about people you can talk about tourism you can talk about shopping you can talk about all kinds of things flock means to come together in large numbers or to go somewhere in great numbers and with when I talk about great numbers I talk about I'm talking about people a great number of people or a certain type of person when we're talking about the noun use the noun is a group of people of the same type so Canadians are well-known in Florida as snowbirds since so many of them flock to the warm beach towns so flock that means a lot of them a lot of Canadians and great numbers go to these warm beach towns during the cold Canadian winters that's why they call them snow birds they fly down to Florida many stores hire extra security guards during the sales season to try to control the greedy flocks of shoppers looking for bargains flocks means big groups of shoppers but there are very specific type of shopper this is looking for bargains and they're willing to beat each other up like you sometimes you see on the news Black Friday people getting into fights over a TV that's a type of shopper they flock together to these stores next site this is a very useful word in everyday use but also in academics if you're going to university you must know this word to cite the noun is I when you sight you're referring to something like you're referring to a study that's been published or research or an expert who said something so anytime you're taking information that somebody else has already published or expressed you must say that you got this information from there or from that person okay so people often cite the Constitution when making political arguments though it is not always clear that they have actually read this document okay people talk about the Constitution all the time doesn't mean they actually know that the Constitution says this or it doesn't say it and this is very important again if you're going to university a university can expel a student who does not properly cite data taken from published sources so if you write a paper and you use material or data or quotations or anything from something that's already been published and you don't include a citation you don't say where you found this when that thing was published why you're using it in a bibliography that would be called then you could not only will you fail the project they can actually kick you out of university it's illegal to copy other people's information okay it's called plagiarism you're breaking copyright laws you can get kicked out of school a couple more rain sounds like the rain that falls from the sky but be careful it's our iin our a in2 as a verb it means to control or restrain somebody or something to hold back as a noun it just basically means the controls the things you're using to control somebody or to restrain somebody or something so it is up to parents to rein their children when the latter spend too much time on social media if a child if your child is on social media too much it's up to you to control how much time they spend you have to rein them your child rein their usage of their phone tablet whatever if government's do not rein in the amount of waste produced they can't blame others for polluting just like they do right if they do not rein in if they do not control or reduce or somehow restrain waste from getting worse and worse they can't say to anybody else or you're polluting too much right that's a hypocritical motion governments are weak because no one has the courage to take the reins so take the reins is actually an idiom it basically means take control now if you think about a horse a horse has like the you know the the straps of the metal on its mouth and the thing that the rider can pull back those are called reins so when you take the reins means you're taking control of the horse but you can take control of any situation including politics business anything else like that take the reins very good idiom you can use it in your essays in your academic essays and last but not least tweek you may have heard this word I like to use this word myself a lot to tweek means to make small changes to something to make it better or more efficient a tweak is the noun is the change that you've made so if you find that job interviewers are not calling you back for second meetings try tweaking your presentation a little to stand out from other candidates make some changes to your presentation so that you stand out and are more memorable to the interviewers by making just a few small tweaks as few small changes to a car's engine a person can get an extra 10 miles per gallon per tank of gas and make it more efficient reduce the carbon footprint so just make some changes and those changes will make the car run more smoothly and that's it so there you go seven words a few words to avoid using because the graders will see right through it and it'll make your writing much smoother not to use those but to use these shorter but more effective words and that's it start building your vocabulary Bank start building your idea Bank get more of these simple words but effective words and of course you can ask each other questions on YouTube comments section hopefully try out some of these words and sentences if you liked this video please give me a like don't forget to subscribe to my channel and come back I'll make more videos like this about vocab about grammar writing etc ok see you again soon bye bye

Channel: Write to Top

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Keywords: IELTS, TOEFL, English writing, writing skills, language test, English grammar, English vocabulary, test tips, English test, word choice, English skills, test preparation, study tips, IELTS high score, TOEFL high score, lexical resource, language skills, how to write in English, IELTS high band, IELTS writing, TOEFL writing, academic writing, academic vocabulary, IELTS academic task 2, IELTS prep, IELTS test, TOEFL test, IELTS Reading, TOEFL reading

Id: F9SAv_z61fs

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020