Today we'll look at some strategies for meeting the requirements of vocabulary, one of the

criteria used to assess IELTS candidates.

When writing, you can expand what you want to say by adding words that give more detail,

or are more specific and descriptive.

This is a good way of showing the extent of your vocabulary.

Take this sentence for example:

Collection services can reduce rubbish.

What can you say to make this sentence more specific and descriptive?

First, look at 'collection services'. Ask yourself who, what, why and where?

What sort of collection services reduce rubbish?

They could be 'weekly collection services' or 'better collection services'. You could

also say 'more frequent collection services':

More frequent collection services can reduce rubbish.

You can do more than just use words in front of 'collection services'. You can also add

a phrase after it.

Ask yourself the same sort of questions: 'what is collected, who is collecting it'?

So you can add:

More frequent collection services for recyclables can reduce rubbish.

You don't have to stop at just one phrase. You might also want to say who does the collecting.

So:

More frequent collection services for recyclables by councils can reduce rubbish.

You can also add words to the verb in the sentence. We know more collection can reduce

rubbish - but by how much?

It can substantially reduce rubbish.

So:

More frequent collection services for recyclables by councils can substantially reduce rubbish.

Substantially is an adverb. It's one of the forms of the word substantial.

Adverbs often end with '-ly'

Other words that mean a large amount are vast, considerable and great.

Their adverbs are vastly, considerably and greatly.

Any of these words could be used instead of 'substantially'.

A good vocabulary is not simply the number of words you know. It's being able to use

all the forms of a word correctly.

For instance 'reduce' means to become smaller or to lessen. Listen to how it's used in this

clip from a story about sealing roads:

In Asia the cost of re-doing roads is very high. We can address that issue and give them

a tightly bound surface, which will reduce the costs for the regional councils.

Will reduce the costs. Reduce - that's the base form of the verb. Reduce is a regular

verb with the forms reducing and reduced. He uses one of these here:

Here you have a car that is travelling along an untreated section of road and then hitting

a treated section of the road. You can see that the dust is reduced by a significant

amount.

Is reduced by a significant amount. That's a verb form. But what form of reduce would

you use as an adjective?

Our product very effectively binds the soils and particles that make up the materials for

the roads. This means you can have a reduced cost in terms of the number of times that

road authorities have to maintain and repair that road over a long period of time.

A reduced cost. The -ed form can also be used as an adjective like this.

reduced price reduced pressure

Reduce has a noun form. Listen: One of the problems of driving on an unsealed

road is the amount of dust that comes off the surface. With our treatment, we find there's

a dramatic reduction in that dust problem.

The noun is reduction. You'll find that -ion endings for nouns, -ly for adverbs and -ed

for adjectives are very common.

When you learn new words it is important that you know all their forms and practise using

them. It's a good strategy for building your vocabulary.

So learn word forms.

Another good strategy is to know which prepositions are normally used with particular words.

Let's look at the word 'reason', a word you're likely to use in an IELTS essay.

What preposition is reason used with?

Listen to this woman talking about a famous road in Australia:

The Great Ocean road is probably the most spectacular coastal drive in the world. I

think the reason for that is that it's got such a variety of scenery from cool temperate

rainforests to the cliffs and rock stacks around the Twelve Apostles.

She says, "the reason for that is…". Reason can be followed by the preposition

'for'. You can say, reason for leaving … or reason for arguing …

Look at 'know' for instance. With the verb form 'know' we use the preposition 'about',

know about, like this woman when explaining why she makes a scrapbook of her life:

I'm creating something that gives me a chance to put something about who I am onto that

page. I often think when I'm working on a project, "What would my kids like to know

about me in 20 or 40 years time?

Know about me. But with the noun form 'knowledge', we use 'of', 'knowledge of'. Listen to this

man use 'knowledge of' to talk about an art collection that students are studying:

We have students from overseas in the course. They get to get this first-hand knowledge

of this terrific collection, but also they can take that back with them to the countries

they come from.

So let's recap.

You can add detail about who, what and where to sentences like this.

The dragon is paraded.

The colourful dragon is paraded. The colourful dragon is noisily paraded.

The colourful dragon with people inside it is noisily paraded.

The colourful dragon with people inside it is noisily paraded down the street.

To do this you need to know that the adjective of the word colour is colourful and the adverb

of noise is noisily.

And you need to correctly use phrases such as 'with people inside it' and 'down the street'.

This is the kind of vocabulary the examiners are looking for.

You also need to be aware of the prepositions that go with certain words.

You say that you know about something:

I'm creating something that gives me a chance to put something about who I am onto that

page. I often think when I'm working on a project, "What would my kids like to know

about me in 20 or 40 years time?

But have knowledge of something:

We have students from overseas in the course. They get to get this first-hand knowledge

of this terrific collection, but also they can take that back with them to the countries

they come from.

And you say that you have a reason for doing something:

The Great Ocean road is probably the most spectacular coastal drive in the world. I

think the reason for that is that it's got such a variety of scenery from cool temperate

rainforests to the cliffs and rock stacks around the Twelve Apostles.

That's all for now.

To find more information about vocabulary visit our Study English website at: australianetwork.com/studyenglish.

Good luck with your studies.