Linking Words and Vocabulary for IELTS WRITING AND SPEAKING

Connectors and Linking words are mainly used in IELTS writing and IELTS speaking to keep the content in flow. And if, these linking words are used accurately that improves cohesion/coherence of your writing and speaking. But you should use it very carefully. Many candidates are making mistake by using similar looking connectors at wrong place and loses bands. And sometimes it has been seen that candidate put some connector which goes with the sentence and miss out on putting in the perfect one. So if you understand the below given table of linking words and use it relevantly it will help improving your coherence of your IELTS writing task 2.

Use as many of the following words and make your essay or speech coherent.By the way, you do not have to use all or most of them. You may end up using 10-20 relevant words for the situation.  

For the words, which you do not know the meaning of  OR how to use it in the sentence,search it on the Google it will provide you with the meaning and it's use by giving more than one sentences of the same words.

Vocabulary/lexical resources:

Vocabulary plays a major role after you are well versed with structure of IELTS writing tasks. Because the vocabulary is something which can express your writing precisely and relevantly. And it will add more stars to your structure.

But the question is how to build up the vocabulary??

Answer: everyday out of your readings get 3-8 words (as per your convenience) and get its meaning and example sentence from dictionary or you can find it on google. Then note those words somewhere in your notebook you use for IELTS preparation.

Like this:

Deterrent => A thing that discourages or is intended to discourage someone from doing something Sentence=> cameras are a major deterrent to crime.

You can use this web site to research on words : http://www.reference.com/

Then keep referring this list of words after some span of time because after some days you would have forgotten some words. And to build up the vocabulary remembering only word and its meaning is not enough you also have to understand how to use that word in writing so that the sentence construction will not go wrong.

IELTS SPEAKING GUIDE

IELTS speaking tests your ability to communicate without hesitation, with proper grammar and with cohesion and compliance. Apart from these technical abilities you have to acquire one more piece of command to present your IELTS speaking well, which is “Just speak your mind”. That means you should be able to speak whatever is there in your mind about the asked question, in English, without going off the topic and without putting in more information than required.  

IELTS speaking module is divided in three sections.

Section Number	Type of Questions	Time taken (Approximately)
section 1	Introductory questions	4-5 minutes
Section 2	Cue-card/monologue	3-4 minutes
Section 3	Two way discussion	5-7 minutes

IELTS Speaking Section 1:

Here you will be asked general things about you.

•        Your full name
•  Your identification             
•        What you do? (Work/study)                
•     your daily routine.                
•     your house.             
•        your hometown.           
•        your hobbies.            
•        your liking of foods.

IELTS Speaking Section 2:

In this section you will be given two minutes to speak on given topic/situation which can be from your past, present or future.

Sample cue-cards:

1)      Describe a special event you have visited.(Past)

•             What was that
•            Where it was?
•       Why it is so special for you?

2)      Discuss one of your traits which helps you a lot in your life.(Present)

•             What is it?
•       How it is good for you?
•             How the other people react to it?

3)      What kind of change you would like to see in your country in future?(Future)

•             What it is?
•              How is it beneficial for your country?
•              How would you like to contribute in it?

IELTS Speaking Section 3:

In this section you will be asked counter questions related to the cue-card question you had. It will be a two way discussion.

Describe a special event you have visited.

=> Do you think this kind of events should happen regularly?

Discuss one of your traits which help you a lot in your life.

 => How personality development is so important in professional life?

What kind of change you would like to see in your country in future?

=> Can politics play a vital role for social change in the country?

 Tips to improve your speaking 

  ü  Regularly speak in front of the mirror, with friend or coach.

  ü  Record your speaking and notice errors and try to remove it from the next round

  ü  Get comments and tips on your speaking from other.

  ü  Always try to speak in English in normal conversation with friends or relatives, if possible.

  ü  Make sure the pronunciation is correct for every word you speak.

  ü  In cue-card, practise to organize your time well. So, you do not miss any point to speak upon.

  ü  Learn to create the answer. Because it is possible that you get the question about the situation you have          never come across in your life. BUT, you have to speak!!!! YES. It is fine to create the answer as long          as you are not clashing it with the other answer you have given.

        ü  In short, you just have to make your tongue habit of flawless speaking in English.

IELTS WRITING GUIDE

IELTS WRITING is considered to be the toughest module in IELTS exam. But it is easy to make it the most easiest and exciting module by following some strategies and essay structures before writing.

IELTS writing format:

TASK	GENERAL	ACADEMIC	WORD LIMIT	TIME(RECOMMENDED)
One	Write a letter	Describe Graph, Process , Diagram	150-170	20 minutes
Two	Write an Essay	Write an essay	250-270	40 minutes

Question types:

General task 1	Academic task 1	Task 2
Formal	Bar chart	Agree or disagree
Semi-formal	Pie chart	Discussion
Informal	Line graph	Compare and contrast
	Table	Causes and effect
	Flow chart	Problems, reasons and solutions
	A process	Miscellaneous

Four parameters to mark your IELTS Writing bands:

TASK ACHIEVEMENT	COHERENCE AND COHESION	LEXICAL RESOURCE	GRAMMATICAL RANGE AND ACCURACY
How deeply you have gone to include what is required.	How organized your writing is.(connectivity between sentences and paragraphs)	Range of vocabulary	Grammar composition with accuracy

3 step Process of writing any task  

      1)   Read the question carefully, infect, read it until you do not grasp it completely. And make sure you do not misunderstand any sentence or word in the question otherwise your answer can be turning into bizarre. So, read it 2-3 times.

      2)    Plan the response. Yes!! Weather it is task-1 or task-2,  Take 4-5 minutes to plan and rest of the time will be enough to write the answer with perfection, because you will not waste your time on too much thinking while writing. Moreover, it will be very easy for you to write cohesively.

3)   Write the response/answer

While writing task-2 make sure you write 8  lines each paragraph and if your writing is bigger than you should write each paragraph with 8 line and write 4 paragraphs. Or design your own strategy; It will make your essay about 250 words. And you would not spend time calculating your words.

Whereas for task-1 you should write about 22 lines in total to make 150 words. 

Things to keep in mind while IELTS writing

 Read back and write

·         After writing the first line think what could be the best second line as per the paragraph (Introduction, Body, Conclusion).

·         After writing the first paragraph think what kind of sentences you can use in the next one.

·         This way you will be able to able to write very relevant and related content to the given topic which is very much important when you want to score more than 6.5 or 7 bands in IELTS writing.   

Not high-level Ideas but it should be relevant and supportive

• Do not worry if you do not have very high level knowledge or idea, but, how you express your idea is actually important.
• The ideas should be relevant though. To put more content inclusion of irrelevant idea is not a good practice at all.
• You can add one example each body paragraph with proper explanation. Adding examples comes up with few advantages. It can reduce your pressure of content generation and it expresses our idea in a proper way so sometimes it helps to convey the correct message of our idea to the examiner.
• To score bands like 7 or more you should use complex sentences in your writing 1 complex and compound statement is enough.

Planning and Structure - IELTS Academic Writing Task 1   

In IELTS writing task 1, you will be given a pictorial data like bar chart, pie chart, line graph or any other, which you have to understand and demonstrate in your own words. Infect you should narrate the graphic in such a way that the reader can get the full idea even without looking at pictorial graph.

Follow the below road map to achieve accuracy in IELTS writing taks-1

1.       Identify the type of graph.

2.       Identify the remarkable change or trend which you can add in your writing and also make sure where you will put it in your writing.  You can plan and make sequential points so that you do not forget to put in any points.

3.       You can also make a list of the vocabulary you are going to use so if you forget the work you can grab out from the list without wasting any time to recalling it.

4.       Make sure about the trend you should ignore which is not going to make any contribution to improve your bands.

5.       Now your pathway is crystal clear. So, start writing the task following the planning and list of words and points.

Planning and Structure - IELTS General Writing Task 1

In IELTS general writing task-1 you will be writing a letter to a university, a company, any government department or your council (to anyone, even other organization). You have to focus on tone (formal, semiformal, informal) OR formality level you use while writing. And off course you will be tested on your vocabulary, coherence, grammar, sentence construction skills too.

    Sample task:

You have rented a car for few days from an agency. However, there are some problems with the car.

Write to the agency officer and complain about the rented car. In your letter

·         Tell him/her the problems of the car

·         What you want the agency to do now

·         How you feel about the problem?

So, as you can see above there are three points mentioned in the question, you can make 3 body paragraphs out of it.

Start	Dear Sir/Madam, Greetings for the day!
Body	3 paragraphs as per the question.
End	Yours faithfully, Your name.

Planning and Structure - IELTS Writing Task 2

Planning IELTS writing task-2 is very easy just draw a vertical line in the middle of your paper and the left part will be filled out with the ideas about body paragraph one. And the right part will be filled out with the ideas for body paragraph-2. Third body can be made if needed, in case if we have to cover 3 major points like causes, effect and solutions. In this kind of situation we cannot merge two areas in one paragraph so it has to be in three paragraph separately. This happens sometimes but not so many times.

Whereas introduction and conclusion could be written without planning as introduction can be drawn up from the question, and conclusion from the 2 body paragraphs. But, if you want to plan it as well it is not at all a bad idea tough.

 PLAN:

BODY PARAGRAPH 1	BODY PARAGRAPH 2
Point 1	Point 1
Point 2	Point 2
Point 3	Point 3

 STRUCTURE:

Introduction (paragraph 1)	Background/history Information Relate it to question given
Body (paragraph-1) Agree Or Discussion point-1 Or Problem/cause	ØFirstly......................In addition............................. ØSecondly..................what is more.............................. ØThirdly.....................for instance................................... Ø Finally.....................
Body (paragraph-2) Disagree Or Discussion point-2 Or Solution/effects	ØOn the contrary.........Moreover................................ ØSecondly....................Furthermore.......................... ØLastly.........................for example.............................
Conclusion (Last paragraph)	Give opinion Summary of the body content

IELTS READING GUIDE

There are two categories for IELTS READING

1)     Academic Reading

2)     General reading

Candidate has to choose any one as per his/her requirement.

  Academic Reading

This test consists of three sections with 40 questions. There are three passages which are taken from journals, books, magazines and newspapers.

Question types:

ü  Multiple choice ü  identifying information(True/False/Not Given) ü  identifying writer’s views/claims(yes/no/not given) ü  matching information ü  flow-chart completion ü  diagram label completion ü  matching sentence endings ü  matching headings ü  matching features ü  sentence completion ü  summary completion ü  note completion ü  table completion    ü  short-answer questions.

 
    General reading

This test consists of three sections with 40 questions. The passages are taken from notices, advertisements, leaflets, newspapers, instruction manuals, books and magazines. The first section contains text relevant to basic linguistic survival in English, with tasks mainly concerned with providing factual information. The second section focuses on the work context and involves text of more complex language. The third section involves reading more extended texts, with a more complex structure, but with the emphasis on descriptive and instructive rather than argumentative texts. (Ref: Cambridge IELTS book 8)

Question types:

As above in Academic Reading.....

  strategies to be developed to score better in IELTS READING??

Tip 1:

Read the question first!!, YES !!, Read the question and underline the keywords and try and find the keywords in the passage or it’s synonyms, and once you find it understand the text around the keyword and see if it can get you your answer. This technique is immensely successful and adapted by so many IELTS candidates and made reading module easy!! Infect this technique has been proven as a boon for those students who could not complete their reading module in time.

Tip 2:

skimming and scanning is also very helping technique to accelerate the IELTS READING PERFORMANCE.  

What is skimming and scanning?

skimming is when you read through a piece of writing quicklyto see what it is about.

Scanning is when you scan the page with your eyes to find answers to questions.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS.....

Tip 3:

you have to develop your speed in reading passages which will help you find the answer quickly from the paragraphs. And that doesn’t mean you should not read it actively but you should improve your speed with grasping the content as much as possible. But How To Improve Speed Reading?: Speed reading can be improved by reading news paper periodicals about different topics like space, politics, sports and all others as per your liking and capacity. You can focus more on topics of your own interest. You can read magazines or any other reading resources. Read for about an hour a day or as much as you can and 5 days a week is enough.

Tip 4:

while reading you should remember the concept or gist of each paragraph you go through, and somehow you should develop a technique to predict the location of the answer in the passage, after reading the question. Well, this will happen when you will come across the question whose answer is in the paragraph you already read. But this technique can be proven time saving many a time in whole IELTS READING MODULE.

Tip 5:

You should develop strategies to handle each different kind of questions with different techniques. Yes!! Every question can be cracked with more ease by following the right and particular strategy, which saves a lot of time. 

Tip 6:

Answers will be in the sequence most of the time, only for some questions you will need to come back to the same paragraph you already read and found previous answer.

After taking 3-4 test everytime go through this page you will grasp it more each time you read and so your skills in IELTS LISTENING will be improved.

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENT IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION ABOUT IELTS LISTENING OR IF YOU LIKE MY TIPS!!

IELTS LISTENING GUIDE

How the test is taken??

In IELTS LISTENING TEST candidate will be listening to a tape and answer the questions.

This tape will be played for about 30 minutes which will be split up into four section and the questions will also be divided into four sections. As you go ahead with the sections and the questions the test will become harder (normally this happens but still you should be prepared for the tough one from the very first question and throughout the test). That means the first section is easier and the fourth is hardest one in the whole test. 

      What kind of questions are asked in IELTS LISTENING??

Candidate will be given a test question paper containing 40 questions. These 40 questions will be divided into four sections. And as the candidate goes ahead, harder the questions become.

·      The first section will be a conversation between two speakers and the answer of the questions will be normally a phone no., student Id, pin code of any area, car type, car model, year or likewise.

·      The second section will be a monologue where one person will be speaking.

·      The third section will be two way conversation ie. a representator speaking to a group of students, or may be three or four way conversation. And will be about education & training context. 

·      The fourth section will be a monologue again. And will be about education & training context. 

      Question type:

Multiple choice, matching, plan/map/diagram labelling, form completion, note completion, table completion, flow-chart completion, summary completion, sentence completion, short answer question.

 Tips to score better in IELTS LISTENING??

   

     1)   Listen ACTIVELY to Movie, Radio or English serials for 2 hrs a day and take notes of the         phrases, words, idioms or proverbs you are coming across which you are not aware of, so         that you can go through the list later on as well. What?? It is not possible to have that much         time and you are not student then spend as much time you can spare for it because it is really     a listening booster exercise. Really!!

    2)   Get a little ease with different accents like British, Canadian, Australian and all other if                 possible.

    3)   Understand the question:

    When you have a time to read the questions understand the question and underline the               keywords in question and in options of the answers too if it is multiple choice question. By           doing this you will be able to keep the question in your mind easily and while listening to the       tape you will be able to click the answer quickly (Even the tough one!).

    4)    Presume the answer:

    There are some kinds of questions where you can presume your answer or the type of the           answer or one option best fitted to the question in case of multiple choice etc. Try it you will         get  a grip with practise with this skill which is very much necessary to adopt for IELTS                 LISTENING because you will not hear the tape again.

    5)   Use the answer review time to read next questions:

    After finishing any section you will get time to check and rectify the answers, use that time to       review the next questions. And the answers can be rectified in last 10 minutes given to                 transfer the answers to the answer sheet.

    6)   Keep on practising:

    Well this is very important advice which says that you should take the test every day (at least       one). So you can be very comfortable with the exam format and clear the common mistakes       you make each time. What is more after taking test check the wrong answer and try to work       out how did you go wrong with the answer. from next time 

    7)    Check for the silly errors in answers:

    After transferring the answers to the answer sheet check for spelling mistakes, check the             word limit for the answers and check for the grammar part of the answers.

After taking 3-4 test everytime go through this page you will grasp it more each time you read and so your skills in IELTS LISTENING will be improved.

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENT IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTION ABOUT IELTS LISTENING OR IF YOU LIKE MY TIPS!!