 Hi everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and in this video we're going to look at the five most common keywords that you'll find in IELTS writing and more importantly, what are their synonyms? So we're going to reveal these five most common words and then we're going to tell you what loose synonyms are. So these are synonyms that don't mean the same thing really as the keywords and you do not want to use these and then we're going to show you close synonyms. These are words that you can use. So it's not only useful to know what these five common words are, it's even more useful to know what not to do because these can, as I said, lower your score and then it gives you more confidence to just use these words, learn these words and then you can vary your vocabulary as much as possible. And what I'm also going to do is explain to you why you cannot use these words and why you can use these words. This is really the difference between someone who's at a band five or a band six and someone who's getting a band eight or a band nine. They understand why you cannot use these words and why you can use these words. So understanding these is really going to make the difference between you struggling at a five or a six and improving your score to seven and beyond. And I'm not just going to give you a list because just giving you a list doesn't help you understand why. So I'm going to explain everything. And how did I do this? Well, I have marked thousands of essays and there's some software that we use that you can put all the essays in there and it will tell you the most common words. So these are the most common keywords that come up in essays. So without further ado, number one is people. Okay. So what are some synonyms that you should not use in your essays? The first one is homo sapiens. This is an overly academic, overly scientific way to describe people. The only context that you would use homo sapiens in is if you're trying to differentiate people from other species and we're not doing that. So it is a synonym, but it is not appropriate to use it because it is not the right context to be using such a word in. So anything overly scientific, overly academic, very, very specific, you're not going to use that for a very general term, which is people. You would also not use words like residents, citizens, locals or natives. The reason why you wouldn't use these four terms is these don't really mean the same thing as talking about people generally. Citizens are people, but they have residency in a specific country or a specific area. It is a little bit too specific. Same with citizens. These are people who have citizenry of a specific country. Whereas people were talking about that in general, locals, again, just the local people in an area, natives, again, very, very specific meaning that all of these things are people, but the meaning is not really the same in this context. The question we'll ask you about people in general, you're not going to be using these because they are a subset of the larger group. You also wouldn't use a common one I see as men. You're leaving out 50% of the population there. And then ones that we commonly see that lead to grammatical errors, ones, peoples. These just lead to lots of grammatical errors, so you would avoid these. And then others that are just not really accurate at all, masses, multitudes. Masses, multitudes. This is an example of a person, a student or a teacher that has just blindly looked up synonyms of people and they see masses, they see multitudes and they think, oh that sounds very fancy, that sounds high level, I'll use that and impress the examiner. It is a fancy high level word, but it doesn't really mean the same thing as people in this context. So you have to be very careful by looking at these lists that lots of schools, lots of teachers, YouTubers produce and you're like, oh great, I'm going to use multitudes and get a band nine. You aren't. It is going to lower your score because it doesn't really mean the same thing. So how are you going to know if something means the same thing? Well, you look it up in a dictionary. Look up the meaning of masses, multitudes, residents, citizens and look up the meaning of people. Does it mean the same thing? If it does, you can use it. If it doesn't, you need to think about whether you can use it or not. So in this context, people really means so you could use members of the public or just the public. The public is generally people. You could use individuals. So we're talking generally about people, but we're calling them individuals. We're not talking about an individual person. It's more of a plural of people in general. You could also say members of society. You might be able to use men and women at a push, but remember, we're talking about people in general. Men and women really refers to adults. People include children as well. I would only really use this if maybe you couldn't think of anything else, but I'm going to put it in here. Same with I'm putting it in brackets because it's borderline humans or human beings. It's a little bit like homo sapiens. It's not as scientific. It's not as academic. Really you want to think about the context. Are you able to talk about things related to humans? Human beings, it depends on the topic that really that you're talking about. That's why I'm putting that in brackets. And you can also use referencing as they. So once you establish the context, you can use they. Referencing is very important. So if you're talking about people, they, if you're talking about one of the other keywords that will reveal it could be it, if you're talking about something else. OK, the next one is a subset of people, children. Very common to get questions on education. OK, so ones that you shouldn't use kids, youngsters, anything really informal. Now, these would be fine to use in the speaking test. The speaking test is less formal. During the writing test has to both academic and general training. You want to avoid really informal words like this. Then overly academic, overly scientific offspring. You would only really use this in the context of mostly talking about animals. And in a very, if you were writing a biology essay, you might use offspring. But we're writing normally in task two about children and schooling and their education or maybe the effect of technology or things like that on children and we're not really going to use offspring. And then we have words that don't really mean the same thing as children. So young people, young people can mean anything from babies up to maybe 30 years old. So it is not really accurate. A 25 year old is a young person, but they are not a child. Generally around the world, the definition of a child is someone under 18. Differs from country to country, but generally 16, 18, anyone under that age is a child. And then we also wouldn't use teens. We wouldn't use adolescents because that is a more specific subset of children. Teens are people from 13 to 19. Children is baby up to 18. Same with adolescents. Those are people that are going through puberty again from around 13 up to 16 or something like that. We're not going to use that because it is not accurate. They are children, but not all children are teens. Not all children are adolescents. What can we use? Well, very simply, we can use child or a child. Juveniles, juvenile's children means the same thing. Miners, so minors are people under 18. Children are people under 18. Just make sure you get the spelling right, not E-R-S. That's someone who goes underground and digs up things. And then we can also use the referencing they. So once you establish the context that you're talking about children, you can reference they. And then you might also use examples such as someone's daughter. These are specific examples of children if you want to vary your language a little bit, but only do that if you are actually using those as examples. Now, you'll notice here that there are not a huge number of close synonyms. Don't worry, that is absolutely fine. What you are trying to do is not demonstrate to the examiner that you know 15 to 20 different correct synonyms because for the vast majority of words, there are only a few correct close synonyms. What you are demonstrating to the examiner is you have the ability to vary your language as much as possible. That does not mean vary it every single time. So if you were talking about children and you said, you know, a child, a juvenile, a minor, they, my son or daughter, you are giving a very wide range of vocabulary for that specific word. If then you run out of close synonyms and you have to repeat the word children, that's fine because you have demonstrated already that you are varying your language as much as possible and you are aware of different close synonyms for this word. What that does is it demonstrates to the examiner that if you know a few synonyms, correct synonyms for this word, it means that you probably know them for a lot of other words as well, thus demonstrating that you have a wide range of vocabulary. The third most common word is time. This is an interesting one because people know what children means. Generally people know what people means. What time can mean many different things? As a noun, it can mean all of the time in the past, present, future of all of existence in the universe. Or as a noun as well, we could talk about a point in time. So today is a point in time. Yesterday was a point in time. Or as a verb, time could mean to schedule something or to measure something to say, what could you time the IELTS Task 2 essay that I'm doing? So you need to be aware, is it a noun? Is it an adjective? Is it a verb? And then within that, some words have different meanings. So what you cannot do is just look at a list of words that someone gives you online and then immediately use these, memorize these without thinking about them and then use them on test day and think, I'm going to get a band 9 because this list was called band 9 words. You are not going to be able to do that. Again, this is the difference between a band 6 or a band 5 student and a band 8 or a band 9 student. They are actively thinking about what they are doing. Memorization is the opposite of thinking. So the one word that you should never use is the misspelled word that we always see, Nizadays. Nizadays, people think that they are talking about a point in time today but they misspell it and they use this as the very first word in their essay. You are demonstrating to the examiner that you have really just memorized a bunch of words, you've memorized a bunch of essays and that's really clear to the examiner in many ways but one of the ways that examiners are trained to spot this is there will be common keywords that are misspelled. A band 8 or a band 9 student is not misspelling this word because they are actually thinking about what they are doing and checking their spelling. Band 5, band 6 students, either because they don't know how to spell, there's nothing wrong with that or what is wrong is people that have been trained to memorize words, phrases, essays, they make these key mistakes. If you use this in your first word the examiner immediately is thinking this person doesn't know what they are doing. So generally we will be talking about a point in time, often we are talking about the past or the present or the future. So you could talk about a period of time, you could talk about an era, you could talk about an age or you could use a word such as presently but again make sure that you are using these words in the right context, the spelling is right, the grammar is right, you know how to use them, you are aware of what these mean. Fourth most common word, company, often comes up in questions about different companies businesses but also comes up a lot in examples and things like that. This one is a good one to think about because there are many synonyms that don't really mean the same thing as company, for example corporation, corporation in general is talking about huge public companies such as Apple, Samsung, British Airways, these are huge companies that are listed on public stock exchanges, IELTS Advantage is a company but it is not a corporation, IDP is a company and it is a corporation. Firm in general that is like an accountancy firm, a legal firm, this is normally a group of partners that have a partnership within a business, doesn't really mean the same thing as company. So I used to be a lawyer and I worked for a legal firm but it wasn't a company, I actually used to be a company lawyer so if you disagree with me on any of this I probably know a little bit more about it than you do. Same with an organization, an organization is very broad, a club can be an organization, a football team can be an organization, doesn't necessarily mean that it's a company. Same with manufacturer, if the company that you're talking about manufactures things then it is a manufacturer but if it doesn't, like my company IELTS Advantage doesn't manufacture anything so it is not appropriate. Same with an agency, again that's a specific type of company. If you're talking about an agency or a corporation you can use these but if you're talking generally about companies then they probably will not be appropriate. The difference between band 5 and band 6 and band 8 and band 9 is thinking. The easiest way, business, company, same thing in this context. You can also change the form of the word so we can go from singular to plural so we might be talking about different companies. That is a different word. You're demonstrating to the examiner that you know that this is singular and this is plural, again demonstrating to the examiner that you know what you're doing. Or we could add in a possessive so maybe we're talking about a company's profits. Same word, different form of the same word. We could use a business's profits or business's plural. Referencing, we might talk about it or we might talk about they. Examples, you could use the names of companies such as Apple is a company. If you're using that as an example, you're varying your language. Again, don't spend a huge amount of time worrying about oh I need 10 other synonyms, just learn the basics. And there are always exceptions so you might be talking about a corporation. If it's about Apple, you might be talking about a manufacturer. If you're talking about Samsung, they manufacture lots of stuff. But again, always think about the context and the meaning and what you're actually talking about. Do not blindly list words. And the fifth most common one is parents. Again, very common because you will often get questions about education, about health, talking about parents, talking about children. Okay, so I won't talk too much now because the same principles apply, ancestors doesn't mean the same thing. Here the context is just not appropriate. You would never turn up to your house and say hello creator to your father. Sire, we would talk about sires maybe when we're talking about horses. Guardians, guardians is more a general term for someone who takes care of someone. This specifically is about biological parents. Could also be adopted parents and things like that but we're getting into the weeds. We're getting a little bit too technical. You need to avoid these debates that I often see students having where they will debate for 20 minutes minute differences in words. And then mom and pop or whatever, you can use that in the speaking test. You shouldn't use it in task two. Simply keep it green for go, mother and father and they or them for referencing. Okay, so let's summarize. Avoid things that don't mean the same thing. Ancestors and parents, citizens and people just doesn't mean the same thing. Avoid overly scientific or overly academic such as homo sapiens, sire, offspring and avoid informal kids, youngsters for example. And also avoid anything not 100% sure about, oops sorry, on test day, if you can think of something but you're not, maybe that means the same thing, maybe it doesn't. If you're not 100% sure on the meaning, on the grammar, is it appropriate to use this word, the formality of this word, don't use it. If you have a choice between repeating the word and using something that's wrong, this will lower your score far more than just repeating the word. If you repeat the word, you are grammatically correct. Your vocabulary is correct. You're not demonstrating to the examiner that you have a wide range, but that is much much better. So, the best is to use these. Second best, use these. Avoid these. If you would like more information on how to learn vocabulary properly and how to record and review vocabulary, I've put together a free vocabulary course for you. All you have to do is just click on the video here and it will take you to this course for free and it will teach you everything you need to know about what vocabulary to use, how to learn vocabulary, how to review it, and how to use it properly on test day. Hope that you enjoyed this video. If you need anything at all, feel free to get in touch.