Expand Your Academic Vocabulary for IELTS
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Hello there IELTS students. Welcome to IELTS Podcast. You no longer have to worry, fret or panic about IELTS because we are here to guide you through this test jungle.

Enjoy these IELTS tutorials and if you need more help or want to access the Finlis online course, you can visit us at ieltspodcast.com. How to expand your vocabulary, how to expand your academic vocabulary for IELTS. Hi there, my name is Ben Worthington and in this practical tutorial, we are going to look at formulas.

and methods to expand your vocabulary. Now, knowledge of these formulas are incredibly useful for you because when you were

learning English, when you started learning English, you probably stumbled across certain sort of like rules and formulas. And then you probably like stumbled across something like, oh, OK, if I add I-O-N to the word,

it becomes another it becomes the noun or if I add a and G becomes the gerund or if I add L Y it forms the adverb from precise to precisely

and that's exactly what we're going to cover today we're going to look at using these rules and we're going to apply it more to expanding your vocabulary so you don't have to stumble across it you can actually hear it and then start applying it because for example if you know one word and then the root of the word especially and if you know that you can add pre or

or "un" or "ly" to the end, now you've just expanded your use of that word three times so you've tripled your vocabulary by using the formula, by using the rule, not by brute force memorization. And this will give you such a more natural feel for the language.

So my name is Ben Worthington. I've been doing IELTS, teaching IELTS for too long, for a very long time now. And I'll be honest with you, some days I'm just like...

IELTS again and then most of the other days I'm like let's go let's do this especially with my private students who are having a blast at the moment yeah so I set up this site a long time ago to help students with the IELTS exam and it's all designed for the student who doesn't have the cash for a language academy doesn't believe in language academies which believes in themselves and doesn't have the time it doesn't have the patience just wants to

hit the ground running, pass this exam fast, end their frustration and move forward in life. If that's you, go to ieltspodcast.com. You can sign up there and you'll get lots of tutorials and resources and tools to help you reach your goal. Let's jump into it. Expanding your vocabulary is incredibly important for the exam. It not only improves your comprehension skills but

but it enhances your ability to express complex ideas. And this is insanely important, especially for the speaking where you're going to be asked pretty much the same question, especially if you're going for seven, eight or nine.

you're going to be asked the same question a few times but in different ways so the examiner is really testing it's like okay I heard the student talk about this but can they say the same thing again in a different way like how good really is their vocabulary

and this is exactly what this tutorial is going to help you with and also we built the tutorial around the academic word list the academic word list is a list of the most common words found in academic journals and reports and because we're writing in academic writing because we are

we should be writing academically we should be using this vocabulary let's have a look so we're going to start off by understanding the root of the word then we're going to look at prefixes and suffixes and then we're going to look at

reusing words in the other forms and then we're going to go into some 10 practical examples and demonstrations so it's insanely valuable this tutorial now let's have a look at the root of a word this means the root is the word in its most basic form it carries the most fundamental meaning

now this is easier for students who are French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese or Romanian the other Romance languages because a lot of these words in English come from their language Latin or the mother of their language which is Latin thanks to the Romans anyway by recognizing these roots you can often deduce the meanings of unfamiliar words

especially when you've got knowledge of the prefixes or suffixes for example if you know the word now you can deduce what the words actor means the actor Brad Pitt you can deduce what the word action means you can deduce what the word activate means and this all starts to

become unlocked the deeper you get into the language this is why when we're learning a language we've got the typical S curve and it's at the highest you know we have a slow start it's difficult it's tedious we get very little improvement and then we hit a point where we're just accelerating we're improving

or going faster and then we get around usually a B2 level band 7 level and it's difficult to improve like an hour studying the language results in maybe a 0.001% improvement whereas previously an hour in the language studying the language could have resulted in i don't know

a 2% improvement. Anyway, I got distracted. I'm sorry. Let's go on. Let's have a look at the most common prefixes and suffixes and the origins. If we know the origins, it just makes it that little bit more interesting. So prefixes are added to the beginning of the word and modify its meaning.

So, we have UN. This comes from Old English, another Old Germanic language, and it means "not" or "the opposite". So, we know "unlikely" is "not likely" or "uninformed" "not informed". "Pre" this comes from Latin. This means "before" to preconceive, to form an opinion before knowing all the facts.

pre-test a test that can be taken before learning a subject again in English we've got lots of variations we can also say a mock test and I can have a pre-test so the and this is what's beautiful about language is that when there usually is a word

or two words that mean the same usually what happens is that they start to take on slightly different meanings you know like scream and screech they're similar but they are different anyway DE this comes from Latin this means the opposite

or down or away so we've got deconstruct obviously this means the opposite of construct so it means to break down into parts or deregulate to remove regulations and what's beautiful about this is now we can put this prefix on deregulation you see so we've got to remove regulations or we've got deregulation

and that's because we know the noun, verb, adverb forms anyway RE this comes from Latin meaning again back for example rebuild to build again re-evaluate to evaluate again re-evaluate my IELTS score I believe I scored better

And then we've got another one from Latin which is "in", "im", "il" or "ir" and this again means "not" or the opposite. So inaccurate, immobile, illogical, irrelevant.

Let's have a look at the suffixes. Again, a lot of these come from Latin and Old English. And Old English, as we should know, comes from... well, it's a Germanic language. So we have "tion" or "sion" meaning "state" or "quality" or "act". For example, "innovation" - the act of innovating.

or discussion the act of discussing then we've got able able or able with an i meaning capable of or worthy of this book is readable we can even expand this to this book is unreadable can you see where i'm going with this because we know these suffixes and the prefixes

we don't have to learn it and memorize it just being aware and then when we're reading we start circling them and we start becoming aware of them it just makes it so much easier

and you start picking it up the formulas start revealing themselves alright so we have readable unreadable we have comprehensible or even uncomprehensible yeah and then we have l y this is in a manner of form in the manner of in the manner of so this forms adverbs so we have quick quickly precise precisely

Or we could even combine it with one of the ones before we said imprecisely. Or is it un-precise? Im-precise. Im-precisely. Or imprecise. You see, we could just... It's like Legos, you know? There's lots of opportunities here just to build the word. And it's not always going to work, but it's an educated way. It's an educated guess to expand your vocabulary. And when you're preparing, you can always test it out.

NESS. N-E-S-S. This comes from Old English and it means a state or a condition. Happiness. Unhappiness. Darkness. Redarkness? No. Undarkness? No. Illdarkness? No. I'm just playing now. F-U-L. Full. Meaning full of. Joyful. Hopeful. But here we can do it. We can say unhopeful.

So you can see here there's lots of ways and it doesn't stop there. As I've been playing with before, we've also got the noun form, the verb form, the adjective form, and the adverb form.

And I think this is one of the reasons why we have this S-curve when we're learning the language. Because once you start unlocking these, it's like that scene in the Matrix where you see all the numbers and you see everything. And it's like, wow, this is how we build. This is how we use the English language. And I've had the same experience when I'm learning Spanish. And I was like, ah, yeah.

ocasión is the same as occasion in English I could probably do the same with the other ION words in Spanish transform them to it the other ION words in English I can easily just adopt them to Spanish now

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. So let's have a look at some 10 examples which are 10 very useful words from the academic word list and we've included the roots, the prefixes, the suffixes and the various forms. So we've got assume. Now we can make assumption. We can make unassumed. We can make reassume. You see?

and then we've got assume the verb, assumable the adjective and assumingly the adverb so just from one we've got six and we could even expand that further by using I don't know the adverb of unassumed which would be unassumingly so we've got an exp... it just expands exponentially again the root benefit we've got beneficial the adjective beneficiary the noun benefiting

the verb and then we've got variations such as benefit the noun verb benefited verb past tense and we've got beneficially the adverb next one conclude conclusion the noun conclusive the adjective inconclusive the adjective and then we've got variations such as conclude the verb conclusively the adverb

Unconcludable? Wow! That's not a word. I just researched. Turns out it is a word. I had no idea. It just seemed odd. But I found it in the OED.com, the Oxford English Dictionary. I'm not entirely convinced because there's two spellings with the ABLE and IBLE at the other

Merriam-Webster, the American one, it says, Google says it's not the most common and it's more common to use conclusory which again seems bizarre. Anyway, I would just personally just focus on using the more common ones. Next one, consistent.

the root is consist and we've got the prefix the suffix which means consistent sorry we've got consistency the noun and inconsistent the adjective variations consistent the adjective consistently the adverb inconsistently the adverb moving on contribute we have contribution the noun contributor

a noun also contributive, contributive, yeah, adjective and then variations contribute the verb contributing verb participle and contributory adjective I like the word contributory there are many con there are many contributory factors regarding global warming for example differ another one actually that I quite like

if you can use differ it definitely shows you've got a higher language ability you know it's not that common you definitely don't use it in spoken English that much so when you use it in your academic writing especially as a non-native English writer you're going to stand out so the root is differ and we've used it we can use it as a noun difference different the adjective indifferent

the adjective and like we've done before we can put that prefix to the noun and we've got indifference there is an indifference among the people regarding climate change there is basically an indifference means they're just not bothered then we've got differ the verb the blue differs from the green drink in that the blue one

sends your kids mental differently the adverb indifferently the adverb and indifference the noun can you see where you know it's just expanding and expanding once we've got knowledge of these establish establishment the noun established the adjective de-establish the verb variations establish the verb re-establish

the verb and de-establishment the noun so some of these do get you into quite uncommon words so it's worth just checking when you're going through it

Next one, just. Justification is the noun. Unjustified, the adjective, the reverse, the opposite. Justifiable, again, unjustifiable, unjust, justifiably, justify, it just goes on and on. You can get the full list when you sign up to our newsletter at ieltspodcast.com.

and we will send you this full tutorial to your inbox or the next ones but you can always search for this just put IELTS podcast expand academic vocabulary for IELTS and you'll be able to find that or just look in the most recent tutorials section of our site so there we go by mastering the prefixes and suffixes and roots of words you can

significantly expand your vocabulary. It's not only going to help you understand and boost your comprehension of academic terms as we said before, but it also enhances your ability to communicate more precisely and effectively, which is what we mentioned in the middle of the tutorial about expanding your vocabulary so you can speak about the same topic or the same

thing in your speaking exam when you get in the same question and again and again okay that's it from me today if you found this tutorial useful um we don't charge for these we give them out for free so if you did find it useful please um a way of saying thank you would and i'd be incredibly grateful for you to do this would be just to share it with your friends send them an email

share it on social, whatever. I'd just be incredibly grateful. It helps out tons. And if you want to take it to the next level, if you want to move forward, you can go to ieltspodcast.com, sign up, send us your email.

Sign up there with your email address and we'll start sending tutorials and to you in your inbox tutorials how to use our free AI essay correction tools where you can get free feedback and soon we'll be launching the speaking module where you'll be able to chat and get feedback on your speaking using AI as well. So that's super exciting. Have a beautiful day and all the best.

And good luck with your IELTS exam. You've got this. Thanks for listening to IELTSpodcast.com.