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.

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.

Righty-o!

Let's begin.

So how can you improve your vocabulary for IELTS speaking?

First of all,

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.

What about the fancy words, the Band 9 words that I must learn to get a Band 9?

Right.

Okay.

I don't think really you know, do Band 9 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 9.

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 5,

you should learn of course all that Band 5 vocabulary and Band 6.

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 2 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 heavy rain.

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, (Da) 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 Hong Cha, 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,

[Speaking Chinese]

“Hey have some black tea”

and they're like,

“What do you mean black tea? Hei Cha? Oh! You mean Hong Cha? 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 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.

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 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 6.

At the Band 7, 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 6 and with flexibility at a Band 7 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 or even a transcript.

What you don't want is to go and get lists and word lists from the internet.

You know, the 100 most important words or a 1000 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.

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 in use”,

this book is organized each unit focuses on a topic.

It has work, study, people, the environment,

society, the media, 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 either Google or into one of my dictionaries.

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 countable

because it said that in the dictionary.

And we know that it means to be well known for something, right?

Great.

So next, 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 for 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?

My brother has a reputation for being very 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.

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 acronym, the common acronym is fanboys,

F A N B O Y S

And that stands for “F” for "for",

“A” for "and",

“N” for "nor",

“B” for "but",

“O” for "or",

“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 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 colours

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,

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.

You know, there's mobile phone apps like,

“Memrise, Quizlet, TinyCards, 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 3 or 4 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 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 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 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 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.

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

90% 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.

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 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 8 kinds I told you about?

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, 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!

Bye-bye.