IELTS Vocabulary: What to Learn and How to Boost Your Band Score

The main mistake is learning lists of "band 9 words". The examiner does not reward rare words — they reward accuracy and naturalness: whether the word fits the meaning, collocates correctly with the words around it, and is appropriate for the style.

Learn collocations, not single words

Everyone knows the word impact. What earns marks is the collocation:

• to have a significant impact on
• to minimise the impact of
• the long-term impact

More useful academic collocations:

Topics that keep coming up

Reading passages, Writing Task 2 essays and Speaking questions revolve around the same topics:

education · work and career · technology · environment · health · cities and transport · media · crime and law · globalisation · culture and traditions · science · family · tourism · sport · government and society.

For each topic, collect 20–30 collocations and one or two examples where you use them yourself.

Vocabulary for Writing Task 1

• Trends: rise, climb, surge, decline, dip, level off, fluctuate, peak.
• Degree: slightly, moderately, considerably, dramatically.
• Proportions: just under a quarter, well over half, roughly a third.
• Comparison: twice as high as, overtook, the second largest.

For more detail with examples, see IELTS Writing Task 1: Sample Answers.

Vocabulary for Speaking

In Speaking, natural, conversational language with phrasal verbs scores higher:

• I'm really into..., it's not really my thing, I can take it or leave it
• every now and then, once in a while, I tend to...
• it comes down to..., that's partly why..., to be honest...

Academic vocabulary sounds unnatural in Speaking: I possess a considerable interest in culinary activities is worse than I'm really into cooking.

Paraphrasing is the key skill

In Listening and Reading, answers are hidden behind synonyms, and in Writing and Speaking paraphrasing raises your score for Lexical Resource. Keep a paraphrase bank: increase → rise, growth, go up; problem → issue, drawback, challenge; important → essential, crucial, of great significance.

How to learn vocabulary so you actually use it

1. Take words from context: from Reading passages and Listening recordings you have already analysed.
2. Record the whole collocation with an example sentence.
3. Use the word yourself in three sentences: in speaking and in writing.
4. Revise at intervals: after one day, after three days, after a week.
5. Check collocation in a collocation dictionary before you use a word in an essay.

Common mistakes to avoid

• false friends: actual (does not mean "current"), sympathetic (does not mean "nice"), prospects vs perspectives;
• direct translation errors: make a photo, in the Internet, discuss about;
• informations, advices, researches — these words are uncountable.

For more on vocabulary for a band 8 essay and where a "clever word" lowers your score, see the IELTS Writing guide for band 8.