Free recording of a 1-hour IELTS vocabulary lesson on actually using the words you learn (timestamps inside)

We ran a free vocabulary lesson with @The Hero Teacher on Saturday, and the recording is now up.

It’s for the

“I know loads of words but can’t use them when I speak or write”.

problem. He breaks it into four steps: find, mine, store, activate.

What it covers:

• Read twice. The first time is for meaning. The second time you only look for chunks, so not “pollution” but “tackle air pollution” or “a major source of pollution”.
• A word card instead of a translation: the word and its stress, part of speech, a collocation, your own sentence, a synonym and a topic tag. His example is “mitigate the impact of”.
• Store words by topic, not A to Z, and review them on day 1, 3, 7 and 21.
• Speaking: pick three target words before a Part 2 answer, record it, then do it again with two upgrades.
• Writing: “Cars cause a lot of pollution and this is bad for cities” becomes “Heavy traffic is a major source of air pollution, which steadily degrades the quality of urban life.”

He also makes the point that misused big words hurt your band more than simple, accurate ones.

Timestamps:

• 12:31 where to find words (BBC Future, The Guardian, TED Talks, 6 Minute English, Cambridge passages)
• 24:54 pulling chunks out of a text
• 31:46 the word card
• 33:50 storing and reviewing
• 42:46 using new words in Speaking
• 47:44 upgrading sentences for Writing
• 56:19 a 7-day routine
• 57:25 Q&A (accent, linking words, grammar)

50:48–56:19 is a demo of our feedback tool, so skip it if you’re not interested.

webinar recording

Questions welcome here.