you've just found the Ultimate Guide to 's vocabulary we've put together step-by-step guides on how ban n students improve their vocabulary at home for free plus lots more techniques and strategies that we've only ever shared before with our VIP students so sit back relax and get ready to improve your vocabulary is vocabulary important let me demonstrate with this sentence so if I said to you meet me at 11:00 p.m. next to the old Cinema you should know exactly what I mean but imagine I take out some of the more functional words so if I take out this I take out preposition I take out an article so I take out the functional the grammar words if you like and I said meet me 11:00 p.m. next old Cinema would you understand what I mean if I said those just those words to you meet me 11:00 p.m. next old Cinema sure you would understand exactly what I mean because these words have meaning but let's try it the opposite way around let's remove the the meaning words let's remove these words and just leave the more functional words in let's get rid of that let's get rid of that let's get rid of that let's just leave the prepositions and the articles in and if I said to you add to the would you understand what I mean you would have no idea because all the meaning is gone so when I take out the words when I take out the important words the vocabulary then you're going to really really struggle so this is to demonstrate that not only is it important uh for expressing meaning when you're writing and speaking but if you did not understand those words imagine you had no idea what that meant that meant that meant or that meant you would have no idea how to how to understand it if you were doing the reading and the listening test so it's extremely important that you are impr improving your vocabulary every single day and it's extremely important that you're not doing the wrong thing if you enter I's vocabulary into YouTube and you sort by Page views or video views the two most popular videos on YouTube related to I vocabulary are these use these five words to score high in I speaking and memorize 1,800 words in 18 hours nearly a million people have watched this now first of all do not go to these videos and be nasty to the people who made them or leave nasty comments or say anything negative this is not about being negative and it's not about bashing people it's not about that it's about giving you guys the right information and the two most popular videos on I's vocabulary and YouTube perfectly illustrate the two main problems when it comes to learning vocabulary so let's look at the first one use these five words to score high in the I speaking test so if I was speaking to the person who made this video I would simply ask them these questions because what they are saying is learn five words and you'll get a high score on the I speaking test so what I would say to them is number one is the examiner a fool I don't think they are I think it's their job to do speaking tests day in day out and are you going to fool them with five special words so imagine this imagine you go into the speaking test and your vocabulary is okay let's say it's at a band Five band Six level and then you say these five words is the examiner going to be fooled into thinking you have an amazing vocabulary no because they're going to be basing your vocabulary score on all of the words you use not just the five words so it's just a basic misunderstanding of how the examiners are thinking about your speaking score will you use more than five words hopefully all right hopefully in the I speaking test you're going to use more than five words and you're being judged on all of the words you're using not five so is it a good idea to just learn five good words no it would be a silly idea will you be asked about a range of different topics yes and the examiner will be thinking and listening for topic specific words are you able to use topic specific words for a range of different topics just learning five words is not not going to help you with that and is saying a word evidence of a wide vocabulary no memorizing a word just thinking about a word and using a word is not evidence that you have a wide ranging vocabulary you need to know how to use a range of different words not just five words so 2.4 million people who follow this video and if you look at the comments everybody is saying thank you and how amazing it is because people are desperate they really want some sort of IC System that's going to mean that they don't have to do any work and get the score that they need and that's just BS because there are no high level words there are no magic words there are no diamond words there are no golden words bondline words or impressive words if you are watching videos that talk about these then just switch them off and and they are not showing you the right way to do things if you are at a school and I've seen this many times where schools will get a booklet or like like they'll create their own textbook and call it like diamond words or band nine words and give it to their students it's just a list of words um that school is is more interested in your money than there are in your I results there are appropriate words there are accurate words and that's it that's the only way to think about it think about how you speak in your native language think about the last conversation you had with someone did you go into that conversation and think how many Diamond words can I use or how many high LEL words can I use no you just use the words that were appropriate and hopefully you use them accurately and those are the only two things that you think about when you're speaking in your native language or you're writing in your native language so why do you think this is any different when you're doing the IELTS test really comes from people looking for an easy way out a shortcut uh a magic solution because I is very hard and it's a very high stakes test people are pretty desperate and they will listen to people who are basically lying to them if somebody's talking about these things they're lying to you they're they're marketing to you they're not interested in helping you and this is a very good quote you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig all right you might have heard of this this quote before I can take a pig and put lipstick on it it's still a pig I can take a student who is at a band five and I can give them five words and even teach them how to use those five words perfectly but they're still a band five student they're not going to move from a band five to a band seven until their whole vocabulary moves up to that level teaching them like five words is like putting lipstick on a pig it's still a pig and by the way do not again do not go to the person who made that video and and start saying nasty things to them that's not what it's about um it's it's about helping you guys as much as possible I hope that you're enjoying this video but YouTube can be a little bit confusing and overwhelming so what we've done is we've created a free iots course called I fundamentals what IELTS fundamentals does is it just boils everything down into the most important fundamental things that you need to learn it's designed to help you remove all of the stress and just get the score that you need in the quickest possible Time by just giving you the information that you need and it covers everything it's 100% free and it has helped thousands of students get about 7 eight or nine if you want to sign up for is fundamentals for free click the link in the description thanks very much and let's get back to the video so that one is nonsense all right how about this one memorize 1800 words in 18 hours so you can probably tell from the title that this might not be that reliable so is learning a list of words a good idea so ignore the fact that this this video is about learning 1,800 words in 18 hours most of the advice out there most of the schools out there are teaching I's vocabulary in this way learning some sort of list of words so either a list of words with the meanings in English or list of words with the translations in it does this actually help so these are the questions that I would ask those those people making those videos number one is it a memorization test is I a memorization ation test are they testing memorization no it's a language test you cannot improve your language ability you cannot improve your ability to produce language and discuss Topics by memorizing stuff it's just not a memorization test it's like trying to put a square peg into a round hole do you have to use the word yes and the key there is use there's a massive difference between learning a list of words and learning the meanings and being able to use those words you have to understand way more than that for example spelling pronunciation style use grammar collocations none of these are taught when you learn a list of words because you're learning those words out of context you're not actually learning them in the way that that most people learn new vocabulary my son is 4 years old and I read to him every night one of the reasons why I read him every night is to improve his vocabulary what I don't do is go home and say Tom here's a list of 10 words to read please memorize these and I've even seen this with some kids like they some parents show their kids these like um videos that just say like Duck ball like trying to teach them English like that's not really helping them um does it take time to learn vocabulary yes most people many many studies academic Studies have shown most people can only learn between 10 and 20 words a day some people even fewer than that do you think you could learn 1,800 words in 18 hours no and why do people believe that again they're desperate they want a shortcut they want an easy way of doing things and another quote a little knowledge is a dangerous thing like imagine that I got this camera I could take this camera and give it to a stranger walking past my office and say watch one YouTube video on how to on photography like they could get that little bit of knowledge and would they be able to then become a professional photo photographer no learning lists of words is a dangerous thing a little bit of knowledge is a very very dangerous thing so the top three ways to summarize the top three ways to lower your score if you're doing these things you are lowering your score number one focus on a small number of high level or band nine or like high level words or B Diamond words or whatever your school calls them is a terrible idea you are not improving your vocabulary and you're probably using those words incorrectly memorizing lists of words is a terrible idea because again you're not using those words correctly you have to use the words not memorize them and number three focusing on speed trying to do things as quickly as possible try and apply that to any other job that you're trying to do is doing things as quickly as possible a good way to do things not when you're trying to learn how to do things properly so instead of focusing on speed focus on trying to do things effectively what does band seven vocabulary look like when you talk to most students they'll say things like big words long words complex words high level words but when I students normally ask me about this or when we're talking about this and they say how can I use more big words or how can I use more complex words what I'll normally ask them is well what's a small word what's a simple word what's a low-level word and and most students the problem is that they have no idea what the difference is between a high level word and a lowlevel word so we're going to look at that today and we're going to look at like what is the key to getting a b seven or above when it comes to vocabulary so this is the CFR a common European framework and you can look this up just type in CFR and you'll get the different levels of English so you have C2 C1 B2 B1 and then it goes down to like A2 A1 um and they are equivalent to different levels in I so most of you watching this video want a b s all right so a band seven according to this this is from Cambridge I believe or the British Council it's around a C1 level uh Bond 8 Bond 8.5 Bond n are around a C2 level so your Prof efficient so P seven is advanced level so most of you think that high level vocabulary means long complex words and lowlevel vocabulary means quite simple short words and that's actually not the case so how do you find out you know what level a word is well there's a really really easy way of doing that just go to Cambridge online dictionary so just go to Google and type in Cambridge online dictionary and put in any word and beside the word you'll see C1 C2 B1 B2 A2 A1 and it'll tell you the level of that word so so what what does this mean well when you hear people talking about using high level words or using complex words they probably don't know what they're talking about and you should only use the real evidence the real facts to guide you on this don't listen to someone who says learn these five words and you'll get a high score that's absolute nonsense so can we get a high score by using lots of C1 and C2 words most of you watching this video and I are like hm all I have to do is just learn lots of C1 and C2 words put them into my essay or use them in the speaking test and I'll get a high score right well not so much let's have a look so what I going to show you now is a really great online tool that you can use and it's produced by Cambridge English so the people who write the the IELTS test so you know that it's relevant and it's reliable and if you type in um Cambridge text inspector or Cambridge English profile text inspector what you can do is you can put in a text so you could take the text from The Wall Street Journal here just as an example put it in and it will look at all of the words and it will give you a bar chart or a pie chart telling you which words are A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 so you would think that really good writing means that there are lots of C1 and C2 words and quite a few B1 and B B2 words and not many A1 and A2 words because they're simple right so what I did was just take a random article from The Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal is quite you know it's quite highb the the vocabulary in it it's quite specific it's quite high level I'm put it in here and what I found mind was and this is pretty much the same of any good Journal article or good newspaper 36% of the words were A1 and 133% were A2 so 50% of the words were what most students would say are low level so does that mean the people at the Wall Street Journal are like B five um is writers I don't think so and 14% B1 uh 10% B2 23% the the tax inspector didn't recognize the words but here C1 was 3% and the highest level C2 was just 1% all right and if you go and download or or look at some like really really high level academic scientific journal articles or any sort of Journal articles and put it into that you'll find this kind of pattern a tiny percentage of the total words are so-called high level and the vast majority of the words are not and if you showed that to most I students or and some teachers they would say oh that the vocabulary is not very good um it's not high level enough so that's kind of flawed logic and we can look at something else what I'm going to show you now is from IELTS 11 so I just picked one of my official Cambridge ielt books randomly and this is a student sample that they give at the at the end of the book so at the end of the book I'm sure a lot of you have used these they have student samples I took part of a paragraph and one that said it was band seven so it's probably band seven vocabulary and let's look at this one is it full of high level words well let's have a look and see so as character is concerned and there's some grammar mistakes and everything because that's what that's that's um what what most b s essays would have they would have some grammar mistakes so we have the wearer of clothes follower of fashion another aspect clean ironed grubby very casual smart concerned so the vocabulary that that they're using I wouldn't say most people would look at that and say oh it's really really high level some of it actually is some of of those words um such as grubby iron follower of fashion is a nice phrase most of the some of these words are quite high level but the vast majority of the words are not they are A1 and A2 words so what does this tell us about getting a band seven on the I test to get a band seven on the I test when it comes to vocabulary you need to focus on the basics first you need to be able to do the A1 and the A2 and the B1 and the B2 stuff first before you even think about trying to go up to the C1 and the C2 words it's not like the examiner is going to look at your essay and you've made a bunch of mistakes with quite simple A1 A2 B1 B2 words and you have you know five C2 words and you use those correctly examiner is not going to look at those see two words and think this person's vocabulary is amazing they're just going to think this person has memorized a bunch of high level words and put them into their essay and they're not silly and if you look at the vocabulary here follower of fashion ironed grubby smart uh very casual these are all uh wearer of clothes these are all uh words and phrases related to one topic which is fashion and this is what the examiners will be looking at more than using a couple of high level words they'll be looking for your ability to use topic specific words because that will will show them that it that you have a wide ranging vocabulary because if you can use lots of fashion words does that mean that you just study lots of fashion well maybe if you really love fashion but if you know a lot of fashion vocabulary it's highly likely that you know a lot of other vocabulary about many other topics so on the speaking test they're going to ask you about a range of different topics why do you think that is to test your vocabulary for one reason cuz if you can talk about fashion and maybe the environment and maybe education and maybe technology and use topic specific words for all of those topics you're proving that you have a very wide- ranging vocabulary not memorizing just a few high level Words which might not even be high level um in the first place as we demonstrated but learning vocabulary properly and using it properly so what can you do number one don't learn lists of words they're completely useless don't try and impress The Examiner you're not going to fill the examiner you're not going to trick The Examiner into thinking that by using you know five or six words that are high level that your um that your vocabulary is great walk before you can run the number of people I see trying to use very high level vocabulary but getting the Basics wrong is unbelievable so focus on the basics first you cannot learn how to run before you can walk you can't learn how to walk before you can crawl um so focus on that first and then build up and obviously improve your vocabulary how will I actually improve my vocabulary what will I do each day to expand the range of my vocabulary and improve my use of vocabulary so that I can improve my read my speaking my uh my writing and my listening everything on the I test is affected by your vocabulary level to thank you for making it this far in the video I want to give you 10% off our VIP course I VIP course is the most successful I course in the world that is a fact because we have more band seven eight and nine success stories than any other I course in the entire world we do that by simplifying the whole I process supporting you with some of the best is teachers in the world and being with you every step of the way until you get the score that you need all you have to do is just look down in the description just click that and you can sign up if you have any questions about the VIP course always feel free to get in touch with us we answer 100% of the questions that we get hope that you become a VIP if not enjoy the rest of this free video so step one if you want to improve your vocabulary you need input you need to input some vocabulary into your brain and the best way to do that is either reading books or listening doesn't have to be books can be reading you know articles on a website doesn't really matter but you need some sort of input what doesn't work is getting a list of vocabulary a list of vocabulary with meanings or a list of vocabulary with translations into your own language that does not work at all you need to learn and and notice new words in context so that means basically reading books or reading any sort of material as long it's in English if you want to improve your English vocabulary and listening to something again it doesn't matter just as long as it is genuine English real English not a list of words and if you really want to improve your I scores you should be reading and listening to English every single day anyway uh the number of people that that come to to me and say I want to improve my reading I want to improve my listening and they just never read or listen to English is is stunning and this could just be 5 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day on your way to work or before you get go to bed or when you get up or on your lunch break but find some time each day to read and listen the question that everybody asks when we say read and listen is what do I read and listen to many students think that there's some like specific books or specific podcasts or specific shows that they could listen to that is going to magically improve the vocabulary number one the main thing is just read something you enjoy reading or listen to something you enjoy listening to why is that because you're going to have to do this over a long period of time you're going to have to do it every day or you know four or five times a week if you're reading something really boring are you going to do that every day no and you're not going to really enjoy doing it and our brains just don't really um you know process information and learn as quickly as when we are enjoying something as opposed to doing something when you're really really bored doesn't matter if it is a book about Cricket or gardening or football or celebrity gossip it doesn't really matter as long as it's as long as it's in English and you really enjoy it the other thing that you can do if you're specifically trying to improve your vocabulary for writing is is look at some of the common task two writing topics so doesn't have to be the BBC News it can be any news site in English but if you look at any news site I just took today's BBC News you'll have a look up here Education Health Science technology business these are all common topics especially Education Health Science technology these come up on task two all the time so what do you do click on those and you'll find a range of different stories that you can read every single day um so if you just spent 5 or 10 minutes every day reading these how much better would your vocabulary become and how much better would your idea generation and developing your arguments and thinking of explanations and examples it's going to help everything when it comes to writing um and again doesn't have to be the BBC News it can be anything um but just get reading get doing something so step two notice and guess so let's say you you went into here and you clicked on technology so I clicked on here and I find this article about SpaceX sending their uh their capsule up to the International Space Station all right so it's about space exploration which is actually a topic that comes up quite a bit um in on task to so what I'm reading and I'm trying to improve my vocabulary what I'm doing is I'm noticing any new words or words that seem a little bit strange that I don't quite understand so imagine I'm reading this and I see commercial astronaut America's new commercial astronaut capsule so that seems a little bit strange commercial like a TV commercial why are they talking about a TV commercial when it comes to that or maybe it's something different so what I would do is I would first underline it or if you're listening you could just note it down and then what I'm going to do is very very important I'm not going to take that and just highlight it on my phone and immediately look at the meaning cuz that's not going to really help us and it's this is going to teach us a very important skill not only for the I test but for when you move to an English speaking country because on the IELTS test and when you move to an English-speaking country you're going to notice and hear new words all the time that you don't understand so it's really important that you get used to guessing what they mean from the context all right guessing what they mean from the words around it from the title from the paragraph from the words around it and try and guess what that means doesn't mean that you'll be able to accurately guess every single time but you need to to develop that skill one you'll develop that skill which is really important but two by guessing the meaning it's going to help you remember the word and use the word more effectively in the future so what I would do is I so this is the word might be multiple words in one article that you don't really understand so let's say I don't know what this word means and I don't know what this word means so try and guess what they mean and then we'll move on to step three which is note them down now there are many ways that you can Note new vocabulary down um you could go to a dictionary like I have here and just copy and paste the all the dictionary definition and all the information you need and you know past that into an online document or some app on your phone I think actually the best thing to do is to get a notebook like a traditional paper notebook um and actually write this down and you'll have a notebook that is your vocabulary notebook like there's nothing else in it only new words um and then you have it in one place and you can review it um at your leisure I think it's a nice feeling to have a notebook of all your new words and you can see that accom M and I'll keep you going and keep you motivated but what you want to do is have some sort of either an electronic or paper note of each word so I've taken the word from this commercial and I figured out that it's not a TV commercial It's actually an adjective so they're describing something and look at all the information that they give you here so this is from Cambridge online so they've given you the type of word they've given you the pronunciation you can listen to the pronunciation they've given you the level of the word they've obviously the definition they've given you some examples here some uh more examples some different ways of using this word so the use but you could also add in importantly here synonyms antonyms collocations more examples using it in context you could other word forms like when it's used as a nine because this is the amount of information that you need in order to remember the word but more importantly to be able to use the word and review all of your new words this is why just having a list of words with translations or meanings it's pretty much useless because it'll go in this ear and out this ear you're not going to remember it you're not going to be able to use it and that is the goal especially in the speaking and writing test of of the is test we want to be able to use the vocabulary um in a sentence correctly after all so get yourself the best students that I've worked with the most successful students and any students who join my VIP course one of the first things that we tell them get yourself a notebook a vocabulary notebook read every day listen every day note your new words done but that's not the final step obviously the final step is review all right so imagine you have five new words a day or 10 new words a day after six weeks you're going to have you know your your vocabulary book is going to become pretty full but you need to review these words because again the goal is to be able to use them in sentences and there are a few things that we need to consider when reviewing first of all your repetition you're going to have to do this regularly so you don't have to do it every day but you could do it you know once a week and then review them again a week later or a month but you're going to have to do them over and over again that is not exciting um you're going to be have to be disciplined but that is how our brains are going to remember these words and not just looking at them not just reading them that isn't going to help you you have to be able to use them in context so this word commercial so how could I use this how could I write a sentence or how could I talk about this um in context the the context that is normally used to talk about commercial as an itive so I would write sentences or I would talk about it and you know you can make up games or you can do all sorts of things um with multiple words um in your um in your vocabulary notebook um this is an optional step but a very very important step which is get feedback on your use of those words um are the collocations correct is your use correct is the grammar correct um and that feedback is really going to help you so you can you know use get feed Fe back just yourself by writing an essay and trying to use as many of those words as you can or recording yourself speaking and then checking the grammar and the vocabulary um or you can get a teacher or a native English speaker or a very high level English learner to help you with that um but that is really the the thing that is going to make the most difference getting the feedback that you need so to summarize input reading and listening notice new words guess what they mean note them Doge with all the information that you need and review and most importantly use those words and make this a habit all right so make it like let's say you have 30 minutes a day to do these spend 15 minutes for example you don't have to do exactly this I'm just talking theoretically but let's say you have 30 minutes in the morning 15 minutes reading and noticing new words and noting down new words and then 15 minutes trying to use those words and reviewing the words that you have if you did that every day over an extended period of Time how great is your vocabulary going to be much much better than going to some school that gives you a list of golden words or Diamond Words which is a complete waste of time and many of you are probably thinking is there a faster way so you're thinking that's that seems like a lot of work and it seems like it's going to take a lot of time if you think there's a faster way let me know in the comments I don't think there is I've I've never met a student who got a high Bond score by for example looking at a list of words or memorizing you know five words and using them um on the test but feel free to disagree with me but if you think this is a waste of time then that's kind of like going to a gym and saying that you want to build muscles but you don't want to lift any weights and you want it immediately things take time you need to follow a process process there's no magic hack there's no magic shortcut that you can take but this is not only going to improve your a scores but when you move to that English speaking country of your dreams you're going to be able to have a a much richer life because you'll be able to actually communicate with people effectively because that is what um having a wide- ranging vocabulary will help you do so I've added all of this information into a free guide for you so if you go to to I advantage.com vocabulary so if you put that into Google or put it into your browser you'll go to this page scroll down click on this button you can add in your email and your name and you can download it pretty much immediately range and accuracy are the two things that the examiner will be thinking about when they're assessing your vocabulary on test day and there's a huge misconception about what range actually means so we're going to look at what the most popular ielt blog and the most popular YouTube video have to say about this and why this is totally wrong why most students are getting this wrong and simple free methods that you can use to actually improve your vocabulary range to a band S 8 or even nine so let's start off with the difference between range and accuracy accuracy refers to are the words spelled correctly is the meaning correct are the collocations correct correct and we're not really going to focus on that today in this video because the biggest problem that we see at I Advantage is students misunderstanding range and what range actually means and this isn't actually the student's fault let's look at whose fault this actually is right most online resources most teachers not all teachers but most of them are giving this kind of advice all you have to do to get abandon is learn lots of complex words put those complex words into your essay and you will magically get a high score well that is not the case and what this kind of advice does is it spawns stuff like this so if you go on to YouTube and you look at the most popular YouTube video on vocabulary this video has millions and millions of views what they tell you is all you have to do is memorize words like this Mesmerize dilemma plethora recapitulate insert those into your essay and you will magically get a high score this is not what range means and if your teacher is teaching you that then they simply do not understand the official marking criteria that the examiners use so what do we do instead how can we actually improve our vocabulary to a band n level well what I've done here is I've divided the page into the four most common writing task two topics education and health are very very common technology the environment these are not the only topics that you might get on test day for task 2 but they are very very common so let's imagine that we get a question like this many students now learn online what are the advantages and disadvantages so if we just decided to say you know these days online learning is mesmerized by students and this poses a big dilemma because of a plethora of resources and to recapitulate blah blah blah blah that is not going to work because it's not actually using the vocabulary that we normally use to discuss this topic if we get this book so this is just a random book on this topic that was on my bookshelf and we go to the first page we go to the introduction what I've done here is I've underlined the the topic specific words so what are topic specific words these are words that we need to use in order to discuss this topic teaching online online education internet online learning online courses instructors Learners teaching online course on the web mobile apps e-learning all of these words are very very topic specific but if we compare them with these words they are actually quite simple and a huge misunderstanding is that range means using lots of complex words and the more complex words you use the higher your score and the more simple words you use the lower your score this is again a complete misunderstanding of the marking criteria because what the people at ielt will do is in the writing test and the speaking test they will ask you a range of different topics a range of different topics and what they will be testing is do you have enough of these topic specific words a range of these different words in order to answer these different types of topics that is what range is really referring to and if you look at these words let's write them down here none of these words are actually very very complex like learners teaching internet course these are very very simple words but it's impossible to write a an effective essay without using these simple topic specific words so at I advantage on our VIP course we do not give students a list of complex words what we do is we do something completely different and we're going to show you that at the end of this lesson so let's look at the topic of health and let's look at another book called lifespan it is about why we age and why we don't have to so let's create a task two question so many people have longer lifespans than others what are the causes what can we learn from this okay so this book is by Dr David Sinclair he's a PhD he's one of the leading professors at Harvard Medical School so he's not going to be using very simple dumb D language and this is quite a difficult book to read but if we were to go into this book and look for to some topic specific vocabulary this is what we would find active lifestyle healthy diet quality of life stress longevity so again even though this is a professor from Harvard Medical School writing about quite a complex topic most of the vocabulary that he uses is actually quite simple none of these words and phrases are actually very very complex but what they are they are completely linked to the question it is impossible to answer this question effectively without using these topic specific words it would be impossible to use these words to answer this question effectively you could go on this is a book about social media and its effect on our ability to focus and to work this is by Kyle Newport I believe he's a professor at MIT the leading Science and Engineering University on the entire planet but if we look at this book and the vocabulary that he uses to talk about technology again it is not that complex he uses words like Focus distractions concentration notifications productivity just like these they are not complicated complex words they are topic specific words do you need a whole library of books in order to learn this vocabulary no absolutely not let me jump into my computer and show you where you can find topic specific vocabulary for free and in a place anybody can access okay so if we go to the BBC News um and we go over here to the little hamburger menu sometimes the menu is at the top it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out but don't look at the headlines and the headlines are normally not useful for our purposes what we want to do is dig in to these news topics so these are the main news topics and as you can see Education Health Science technology these are the four most popular Tas two topics so what you can do is you can click into any of these let's start off with science so we're going into science and the environment the environment is a very very common topic there's also some science related topics but mostly it's related to the environment for obvious reasons if we have a look here at the very first news story will I still be able to fly in a net zero world so if we click into this what this is talking about is reducing our carbon emissions to zero and the effect that this will have on our lifestyle specifically about flying transportation is another very common topic so if we were to read through this and pick out the topic specific vocabulary so lifestyle goal of Net Zero carbon emissions just in the first sentence it's filled with these topic specific words so what we get our VIP students to do is simply simply go to the BBC News each day find at least one story that could be a task two question identify the topic specific words and then note these topic specific words down add enough information so that they can remember them and then review them later and they're able to then use those in their essays to effectively answer the question what we do not do is give them a list of complex words because that simply does not work and that is a misinterpretation of the marking criteria recently I asked some of our students who got a band eight or a band n how do they use vocabulary and one of the key things that they do is they use one of these four techniques for reviewing and remembering and then using vocabulary and these four techniques I'm going to share them with you today and anyone can use them just using these easy things that all of you have okay so the first technique that I'm going to show you is something called matching so get your piece of paper and write some of the words that you have recently discovered so here we have innovate develop device modify breakthrough obsolete intuitive and censorship so this student was reading an article on technology and they noticed these new words so they wrote down these new words in their vocabulary notebook and one of the review techniques that we show them is we get them to write synonyms of each of these words beside the new words that they have learned so not only are they learning one new word they're learning a additional new word that is a synonym synonyms are extremely important not only for writing and speaking but also for reading and listening to so how we get the students to remember these words is we get them to cut up these new words and make them into cards and what you can do is you can spread these out and what you do is you match them all right so we have Antiquated all right which one is Antiquated obsolete all right and we could check the meaning of those so the meaning is on the back obsolete means not in use anymore Antiquated not in use anymore so this is correct and then we match these up and then we just keep going so modify develop no breakthrough no adapt so adapt the verb adapt and modify these match together and then we just keep going until we have matched all of them together and this is really going to help you remember these synonyms so the second technique so we have the meaning of these words on the back of these cards so what you could do is put these with the word facing down and the meaning facing up so we'll just use a few of them and then what you can do is you can just read the meaning of the word and then okay what is that word so simple to use intuitive yay I got that one correct not in use anymore obsolete yeah I got that one correct using new methods or ideas original no Innovative okay so by doing that I am checking the meaning and remembering the meaning the next thing that we can do is we can categorize these words so there's different things that we could categorize we could categorize them by topic so let's say you have some words that are related to technology some words are related to education some words are related to the environment you could categorize them by that or you could categorize them by word form there are nouns adjectives and verbs here so device is a noun so we're going to put the nouns Here original is an adjective develop is a verb obsolete adjective uh restriction non discovery nine as you can see we are just categorizing them by the different word types the different word forms you could even categorize by pronunciation or number of synonyms there's lots of different things that you can do to categorize and categorization really helps our brains remember and then use these words effectively on test day but we do always need to remember that we are not going to Simply remember these words remembering the words is okay for listening or reading but remember for speaking and writing we actually have to use these words so how we can do that is we could take some of these words and tell a story so let's take just a few of these words randomly this was actually done to me in a job interview once when I was applying for a job was a lawyer they gave me four random words and says okay create a story so let's take four random words so we're going to have this one obsolete this one modify this one restriction and this one innate and then what you could do is think about the meaning of these words and then create a just a very short story that uses these words effectively so you could practice your writing doing this or you could practice your speaking doing this and you could actually record yourself on your phone and listen back and think about did I use these words effectively or not um so what I would like you to do in the comments pause the video can you write a story like or one or two paragraphs using these words effectively I'm going to think about this for about 10 seconds and then create my own story so I recently switched from an iPhone to a Google phone the reason why I did that is lots of people said that when you switch to a Google or an Android phone you can do lots of modifications you can modify many of the things within the ecosystem is the problem with iPhones is they put lots of restrictions in place and they restrict the amount of things that you can change in the operating system however after using my Google phone for about a week it was pretty obsolete for me because I was so used to iOS and the operating system that it just made using the Google Phone useless and I couldn't use it at all because I've been so used to using this operating system for so long that it is innate and so intuitive and easy for me to use the iPhone that I had to switch back so as you can see what I did was just take those four words randomly and believe me this is random I didn't spend you know two hours thinking of that story as you could probably tell from how bad the story was it doesn't matter how good the story is it doesn't need to be you know Hollywood Blockbuster and level story all you're trying to do is just understand how to use these words in a sentence and then you'll be able to remember them that is far more effective than what most students do what most students do is they get long lists of vocabulary with the word and then maybe the meaning and then maybe the translation into their native language I don't know any other language other than English so I'm not going to try that one but they just read these lists of words and this is useless uh you're not going to remember words by just reading them and the meaning and never use the translation because that causes all sorts of problems on test day you're going to be translating rather than actually thinking in English band 8 band n students think in English that is a huge difference between someone struggling at a band five Bond six level and someone getting a bond eight or Bond n bond eight Bond n students do stuff like this they don't do stuff like this because doing stuff like this forces your brain to think in English and use English this is easy anything easy doesn't help you improve this is a little bit more difficult but as you can see it's pretty fun you could play a game you could play this with other people you could play it in the classroom if you're at a school on the key it's going to help you remember all these new words and if you did this once a day you know how many words are here there's not that many if you did this every single day learned you know 10 new words every day after 10 days you have hundreds and hundreds of new words and then you're able to play even more games review them even more match even more categorize even more tell more stories you could write a whole essay just using these words so I hope you enjoyed that guide to vocabulary we also have ultimate guides for speaking and listening so if you want those click here