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Planning Essays - thinking of vocabulary
This article looks at how to plan the vocabulary for your IELTS essays. Tounderstand the importance of doing this, readIELTS Essays: the planning process.Read the question - identify key words
Many city centres these days have traffic flow problems, causing congestion and pollution.One solution is to build fast ring roads on the outskirts of a city, taking traffic away from the centre. While this is helpful in some ways, it also causes new problems.To what extent do you agree or disagree? You should use your own ideas, knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.
These are the “content” words which relate to the topic of the question. Normally they willbe nouns, verbs and adjectives, but they can also include quantifiers like “many”manycity centrestraffic flowcongestionpollutionsolutionbuildring roadsoutskirtstraffichelpfulcausesproblems
Rephrasing the question
One function of the introduction is to identify the question you are writing about. It isimportant not to repeat the same wording so you need to rephrase the question. There area variety of techniques available here:•synonyms•words in the same family•related words
Dominic Cole’s IELTS Blog
http://www.dcielts.com
Look for synonyms
The most obvious way to avoid
r
epeating the wording of the question is to find synonyms.Note, however, that synonyms may mean the same thing and that they may be a phraseand not just one wordmany: several, a number ofcity centres: urban areas (not an exact synonym)congestion: traffic jamsbuild: constructoutskirts: outlying areas, the suburbs (not an exact synonym)traffic: carscauses: leads to, results inproblems: difficulties, issues
Words in the same family
Sometimes there are no very good synonyms. Here you can vary the language bychanging the form of the word from verb to noun for example.city centres: the
centra
l parts of the citytraffic flow: the traffic flows (v)pollution: pollutesolution: solve
Related words
Sometimes it helps to brainstorm words that are related to words in the question to helpyou rephrase its meaningtraffic
→
roads
→
streetspollution
→
exhaust fumes
→
air pollution
→
noise pollution
Specialist words
It is important to note that there are frequently some words in the question that are sospecialised that there may be no other natural way to express the idea. In this case it isgenerally best not to try and change those words.ring roads
Dominic Cole’s IELTS Blog
http://www.dcielts.com
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