Grammar and Vocabulary for IELTS
In this page we are going to give an overview on two important areas for your exam:
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Essential Grammar
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Essential Vocabulary
Make sure you go through all the links, examples, and detailed discussions for your 100 percent preparation. Let's focus on the grammar area at first.
Essential Grammar for IELTS
Many students throw away crucial marks making silly grammar mistakes. If you can use a range of grammatical structures in your speaking and writing, examiners will get a good impression about your English proficiency. Specially in writing, if you can use
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a few complex sentences,
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some cohesive/linking/connecting words in appropriate places,
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accurate placement of articles and determiners,
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appropriate punctuation, proper forms of parts of speech and tenses,
you can write a killing essay and examiners will be incredibly impressed.
Covering everything of grammar is beyond of the scope on this page. However, we will be focusing on the most common grammatical issues that you will need in IELTS exam.
Most Common Grammar Areas for IELTS
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Complex Sentence
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Coherence and Cohesion
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Appropriate Prepositions
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Articles
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Punctuation
A brief introduction of each item is given below. Don't forget to click on each title for more detailed discussion analysis and examples.
If you add one or more subordinate (dependent) clauses to the main clause (independent) clause, it will be a complex sentence. In other words, a complex sentence consists of one main clause and one or more subordinate clauses that join together.
There are two major ways to join clauses to make a complex sentence:
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Using relative pronouns - which, whose, who, that
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Using conjunctions - although, as, until, unless, through, since, by, if, before, whenever etc.
Click on the title to get more detailed discussion how to construct a complex sentence.
Cohesive devices are used to link sentences, paragraphs or any parts of text. In other words, these devices make our sentences coherent. Appropriate level of using cohesive device is very important. Both over-usage or under-usage of these devices can create a damaging impression in reader's mind. Click on the title, it will lead you to a more detailed discussion on coherence and cohesion.
Prepositions are the most important little words in English language. Because they play a very crucial role in sentence formation. In fact, prepositions are the words that show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and with some other words in the sentence. Remember, prepositions are always followed by nouns or pronouns.
Articles are the most common type of determiners. Because of so many rules of their usage, articles have become a very complicated part of English grammar . However, some important rules can be useful for general purpose, and the logic of these rules can be helpful for your IELTS writing section.
The most effective way of practicing articles is to use them in your writing, keep your sharp eyes on them in your reading, rather than just memorising the rules. Click the title for a comprehensive discussion on articles.
Improper use of punctuation can attack and damage your score as a sniper. Your all the hard work may go in vain if you place wrong punctuation. Because it can change the meaning. Therefore, punctuation is very important for your writing section.
Sometimes you may need to use long and complex sentences in your IELTS essay writing. If you don't have a clear concept about punctuation, it will be very difficult for you to get a band 7 or 7 plus in writing. Click on the title to check our detailed discussion on Punctuation.
IELTS exam is also a test of vocabulary. You will need vocabulary resource everywhere in this test. It will be easy for you to impress the examiner if you can use a wide range of vocabulary. On the other hand, if you use the same word multiple times for different sentences in a row, it will convey a negative impression to the examiner about your lexical resources.
Vocabulary is a huge area. We cannot cover here everything. We are going to give you a detailed discussion only about those vocabulary that you will need frequently in IELTS exam. Click on the title and jump to our vocabulary page.
Don't forget to check the followings: