- [Chris] In this video, we're going to look
at a very common question that we get at IELTS Advantage,
which is, if I repeat a word, will it lower my score
in the writing test and the speaking test?
And if you make the key mistake that most students make,
it will probably lower your score,
and you will get a lower score than you deserve.
What I'm gonna do is show you the three options
that you have, and just break everything down
into easy to understand language,
and so that you can understand
how important it is to avoid this key mistake.
So we're gonna focus on the start of this question,
and we'll focus on this word.
So often, you will get a key word in a question,
and because it is a key word,
you will have to mention that word
many times throughout your essay.
And if you go into most IELTS classrooms
or look at most IELTS books or YouTube videos,
the most common advice that students get
is do not repeat words.
Let's look at whether this common advice is correct or not
using logic and common sense.
So the first option is use
an accurate synonym.
So synonyms are words that are different,
but they mean the same, like female and woman for example.
So we could put impoverished.
Many impoverished countries
means the same thing as many poor countries.
So that's our first option.
The problem with Option 1 is that most students
don't have a wide enough range of vocabulary
in order to do this many times throughout the essay.
And that in itself is not a huge problem.
Most of the students that we work with don't have a problem
so much with the range of vocabulary that they have.
What most people have a problem with
is understanding what improves your score
and what actually lowers your score.
Option 2 is to take a chance, so to change it to.
What does take a chance mean?
It means to change it to something
that you're not 100% percent sure if it is accurate,
if it means the same thing,
but you think that it might be correct.
So for example, you might say measly.
So measly and poor are synonyms,
but they actually have quite different meanings.
And if you said many measly countries,
this would be completely wrong,
even though they are synonyms.
Or you might change it to something like paltry.
Again, they are synonyms,
but they mean very different things.
There are close synonyms,
synonyms that mean basically exactly the same thing,
and then there are very loose synonyms.
They are synonyms,
but they don't really mean the same thing.
So this would be wrong because what you are indicating
to the examiner is you don't really understand
the meaning of these words.
So by changing the words to measly and paltry,
you are not increasing your score.
You are decreasing your score because you're demonstrating
that you do not know how to use these words.
Even though they're quite complex words,
they're quite high-level words,
it's not about using high-level words.
It is about using words that are accurate.
Or we had another student, when I gave this exercise
to our students, that said meagre.
And meagre and poor are actually much closer synonyms
than measly and paltry, but they spelled it wrong.
The spelling is wrong. Again, you are lowering your score.
If you're using words that you don't understand fully,
and you're taking a chance, then the meaning might be wrong.
The spelling might be wrong.
It might be inappropriate. The style might be wrong.
There are so many things that could be wrong.
Why do students do this?
Because the common advice that most people are given
is do not repeat a word.
So this forces students to use words inaccurately
because most of the time their vocabulary
is not wide enough to accurately change the word
over and over and over again.
Option 3 is repeat the word.
So use the word poor. So Option 1 is the best option.
But if you have a choice between repeating the word
and using something that you're not sure about,
it is much better to repeat the word
than it is to use something that is wrong.
If you disagree with me,
then you are blindly following
what people tell you
because you believe that they're experts
rather than understanding logic and common sense.
So the big mistake that we see every single day
is students choosing Option 2.
This will produce an essay that is unclear,
difficult to understand.
The examiner will not know
whether you've answered the question or not
because most of the words, they won't understand them.
You will get a lower score for vocabulary,
and you'll probably get a lower score for grammar
because, if you don't understand these words,
you won't understand the words around them,
and your grammar will suffer.
In other words, your essay will be a complete mess.
It's what we call a headache essay.
It gives the examiner a headache
because it is nearly impossible
to understand what is going on.
This is not as good as this,
but it is much better than this.
And you might look at this and say,
"Well, my teacher told me that,
"if I repeat a word, I'll get a low score."
Well, ask them this.
"Imagine you write a great essay, like a band-eight essay,
"and you have clearly understood the question,
"clearly answered the question.
"Everything is clear, well structured, well organized,
"logical, easy to understand, great grammar,
"lots of Option 1's, and you repeat the word.
"Would an examiner ever look at that essay and go,
"'Oh, they repeated one word.
"'Let's give them a band five.'"
That is not how an examiner thinks about your essay.
What they will look at is, okay,
they changed some of the vocabulary, and it was correct.
They've repeated some of the words.
But that doesn't mean they necessarily have bad vocabulary
because they'll look at your entire essay
and look at all the vocabulary in your entire essay
and make a judgment, holistically,
on the totality of your essay,
not because you repeated one word.
If you are struggling with vocabulary,
I'll put a little link, a little pop up, and a link below.
We have a three-part mini course on vocabulary,
which will give you more information
about how to improve your vocabulary.
What you want is to increase the number of words
in Option 1 as much as possible, and we'll show you
how to do that in our three-day mini course.
Thanks very much. Hope that you enjoyed that video.
Hopefully, that changes your thoughts about vocabulary.
And the other thing that, removing Option 2
and just sticking to Option 1 and Option 3
makes writing your whole essay
much, much, much, much easier.
So anything that makes your job easier on test day
is going to improve the entire essay.
So hopefully, it improved things.
If you still believe this common advice,
please feel free to give this a dislike
and unsubscribe to the channel.
But if you are able to think logically,
you're welcome, and it is a pleasure to be able to help you.
(gentle music)