 Hi everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and this week we've been working on how to improve our vocabulary. So we, on day one, we had our first lesson where we looked at all the myths surrounding how to improve your vocabulary. On Wednesday, day two, we looked at what band 7, 8 and 9 vocabulary actually looks like and we gave you a really cool online tool that you can use to collect and to check your own vocabulary level and today we're going to be answering this question, which is 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 reading, my speaking, my writing and my listening? Everything on the IELTS test is affected by your vocabulary level. So just a review, if you have not looked at day one or day two, you can check this out on our Facebook page and our YouTube channel. Just have a look at vocabulary, mini course, day one and day two. It's really important that you understand day one, what doesn't work, because if you are doing things that don't work, it's a complete waste of time. And day two, what does band 7, 8 and 9 vocabulary actually look like? There's a lot of confusion about what high level vocabulary or what complex vocabulary actually is and we look at that a lot and we give you that online tool that you can use to test your own essays and your own vocabulary and day three, we're going to give you a step-by-step plan that is very simple to follow that you can start immediately after this video and start improving your vocabulary and we're going to give you a free PDF gift at the end which summarizes this step-by-step improvement plan. Okay, 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 articles on a website, doesn't really matter but you need some sort of input. All right, so we looked at day one, what doesn't work? 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 notice new words in context. So that means basically reading books or reading any sort of material as long as 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 IELTS scores, you should be reading and listening to English every single day anyway. The number of people that come 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 stunning. And this could just be five minutes a day or ten minutes a day on your way to work or before you go to bed or when you get up or on your lunch break, but find some time each day to read and listen. But just reading and listening is not really going to improve your vocabulary and you're going to have to take a few more steps. So step two, before we look at that, actually step two, 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 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 process information and learn as quickly as when we are enjoying something as opposed to doing something when you're really, bored. So it 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 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 look at some of the common task two writing topics. So it 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. So if you just spent five 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 is going to help everything when it comes to writing. And again, it doesn't have to be the BBC news, it can be anything. But just get reading, get doing something. So step two, notice and guess. So let's say you went into here and you clicked on technology. So I clicked on here and I found this article about SpaceX sending 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 on task two. So when 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, because that's not going to really help us. And this is going to teach us a very important skill, not only for the IELTS 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. It doesn't mean that you'll be able to accurately guess every single time, but you need 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, so this is the word, it 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 I 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 could note new vocabulary down. You could go to a dictionary like I have here, and just copy and paste the dictionary definition and all the information you need and paste 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, 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. And then you have it in one place and you can review it at your leisure. And it's just a nice, I guess a nice feeling to have a notebook of all your new words. And you can see that accomplishment 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 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 line. 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 having a list of words with translations or meanings is pretty much useless because it'll go in this year and out this year, you're not going to remember it and you're not going to be able to use it. And that is the goal, especially in the speaking and writing test of the IELTS test, we want to be able to use the vocabulary 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 down. But that's not the final step, obviously. 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 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. You're going to 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 in context, the context that is normally used to talk about commercial as an adjective? So I would write sentences or I would talk about it and you can make up games or you can do all sorts of things with multiple words in your vocabulary notebook. This is an optional step, but a very, very important step, which is get feedback on your use of those words. Are the collocations correct? Is your use correct? Is the grammar correct? And that feedback is really going to help you. So you can, you know, get feedback 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. Or you can get a teacher or a native English speaker or a very high level English learner to help you with that. But that is really the thing that is going to make the most difference getting the feedback that you need. So to summarize, input reading listening, notice new words, guess what they mean, note them down 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 and 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're probably thinking, is there a faster way? So you're thinking, 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 never met a student who got a high band score by, for example, looking at a list of words or memorizing, you know, five words and using them 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. Well, that's like someone saying, you know, they want to learn how to drive. And they don't know how to drive and they want to do it in two days. Like, things take time. You need to follow a process. There's no magic hack. There's no magic shortcut that you can take. But this is not only going to improve your IELTS scores, but when you move to that English speaking country of your dreams, you're going to be able to have a much richer life because you'll be able to actually communicate with people effectively, because that is what 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 IELTSAdvantage.com slash vocabulary. So if you put that into Google or put it into your browser, and go to here, 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. So it's just our vocabulary page on our main website. So if you go to our main website, vocabulary, click on that. And you can click here and get everything you need. It's not very complicated. Please don't add into the comments that you know, for us to come to your house and hand it to you or anything because you can't figure that out. It's pretty easy. But I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out yourself. If you need help with anything else, if you're struggling with anything, or you're really worried about the IELTS test or there's some part of the IELTS test, you're really, really struggling with or worried about, feel free to send me an email Chris at IELTSAdvantage.com either myself or one of my team will get back to you as soon as we can. Hopefully you enjoyed that. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions or queries. Hope that you have a great weekend. Good luck to anybody doing the test tomorrow. And thank you very much. Bye bye.