IELTS vocabulary: 3 steps to increase your passive vocabulary

Touching story, isn't it?

I don’t know.

There are too many new words.

Hello. This is Hong.

I got 9.0 in Reading IELTS, and today I'm here to share

with you how I improved my English vocabulary.

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To get a high band score in IELTS reading it mostly comes

down to your passive vocabulary, which is the kind of vocabulary

that you can understand in receptive skills,

listening and reading.

On the other hand, active vocabulary is

a portion of passive vocabulary that you can

use in productive skills such as writing or speaking.

And, to be honest, for everybody,

even in their mother tongue, their passive vocabulary always

exceeds their active vocabulary, and explains why you may

know lots of words when you read or hear them,

but it doesn’t mean that you can speak or write them.

Now, in the first part of this video, I will focus

on passive vocabulary, and in the second part,

it will be active vocabulary.

So, what did I do to improve my vocabulary?

I did only one thing.

Flash cards.

You can call me old-fashioned, but I don’t use flashcards

in mobile apps.

Instead I like to use pieces of paper like this, so,

I can count my conquered words.

But if you're more comfortable using mobile apps or taking

notes on your phones, that works too.

Oh, but wait a minute, what did I just say?

What does it mean, the word, conquered?

Conquered, let’s wait and find out.

Here are the three very simply steps to make learning

vocabulary as easy as pie.

Step 1, write down new words.

Every time you encounter new words when you read

or listen, write them down on different cards.

On one side write the word.

On the other write things such as meaning.

It can be in English or in your mother tongue.

Or a word can have several meanings.

Then, pronunciation, how the word is pronounced.

We can write down some example sentences.

The next thing is word family.

And, of course, you can include other interesting

information if you need.

Step 2.

Play with your cards.

When you have free time, take out your cards and start

playing around with them.

First, take out a card.

Read it, see if you still remember all the information

relating to the word.

Next, check.

And then repeat.

You'll soon have two piles of cards, one with

words you know well, and the other with

words you don’t know, or are not sure about.

Step 3.

Revise and revise.

The purpose of the game is to move all the cards in the Don’t

Know pile to the Know pile.

And before you know it, you have increased your

passive vocabulary tremendously.

So, these were my three simple steps.

Write down new words, play with your cards and revise.

Don’t forget to check out the second part of this video

where I will talk about how to improve your active vocabulary.

And you can also share with me how you learn your new words

by commenting below.

Don’t forget to subscribe to this channel,

and I will see you real soon.

Bye bye.