Selecting words for your vocabulary

notebook
You should not add every new word you see to your vocabulary
notebook.

Learning to use a new word accurately takes time and effort.

It’s important to use your time wisely by only learning words that
you’re likely to read, hear or use again.

Include words that are familiar to you

The best words to add to your vocabulary notebook are the ones that
are familiar to you.

As you’re reading, you’ll see a word that you don’t understand, but
you’ll recognise it as a word you’ve seen a few times before.

These are the perfect words to learn.

This is because you know that they are used regularly in the English
language and that they are suitable additions to your current lexical
resource.
New meanings of a word you already know.
Students often say, “I know all the words, but I can’t understand the
sentence.”

Trust me; if you can’t understand the sentence, you don’t know all the
words.

This usually happens because some words in English have multiple

meanings.

Let’s take the word ‘close’ as an example. As a verb, close has the
opposite meaning of ‘open’. As an adjective, it has the opposite
meaning of ‘far’.

Imagine if a student knows the meaning of ‘close’ as a verb but

doesn’t know the meaning of ‘close’ as an adjective.

That student would not understand the sentence, ‘She was sitting
close to me.’

However, they would be able to say that they understand every word.

In this case, the student needs to research the other meaning of

‘close’ and add that to their vocabulary notebook.
Ignore specialist words and phrases.
Specialist words are only used by people with a deep knowledge of a
topic.

Internet experts, for instance, will use phrases like Transfer Control
Protocol, packet switching and Domain Name Server.

You are wasting your time learning words like these because you will
never use them in the IELTS test.

This is because Writing Task 2 questions do not require you to have

specialist knowledge in any topic, and you will never be asked to
describe something specific such as how the internet works.

Instead, you’d be asked to comment on the effects that the internet

has on the world or society in a more general way.

A more likely question would be;

With the availability of information on the internet, libraries are no

longer as necessary as they once were. Some believe that libraries
should be permanently closed as they are a waste of tax payer’s
money.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

As you can see, Task 2 questions will not require you to have
specialist vocabulary, so there’s no need for you to learn any.