Hi, I'm Jessica Beck from IELTS Energy, the very popular podcast, luckily.
I still love doing it.
And the online course, 3 Keys IELTS.
Today, I'm taking a little bit of a break from our recent series about how to score
highly in all the categories for writing.
I thought it was time for a vocabulary episode.
Recently there has been a question on the exam about describing a novel or a book.
There are also commonly Part One questions about books you read, the Part Two question
about novels and stories, and then this of course is continued in Part Three about what
your culture likes to read; books, magazines, newspapers.
So, I thought today we'd go into some interesting vocabulary to talk about this very common
topic.
The first vocab word, which I love using and teaching ... it's "genre."
Now of course, this is a French word but we do use it in English.
So, it sounds impressive when you use it on the exam.
Genre is simply the type of story, the type of music, or the type of movie.
Genres of movies might be action, comedy, romance.
Genres of stories would be romance of course.
Action is not a genre of book, okay?
I heard a student say that recently.
It's not.
Could be a detective novel, for example; a thriller, a mystery.
My favorite genre of course is sci-fi.
Science fiction.
Get to know the different kinds of genres and try to work that into your answers.
Another idiom that I love using is describing a book as "a real page-turner."
That means that it's so exciting, you just read so fast you can't wait to turn the page.
Okay?
A real page-turner.
I hope you guys have one of those in your background.
Another way to describe a story that is really good ... and this could be a movie, or a book,
or a comic book ... is to say that "it grabbed me from page one."
Okay?
That's an idiom to say that you were into this story right away.
It grabbed me from page one.
If you're talking about a movie, you could say, "It grabbed me from the get-go," or "It
had me from page one.
It had me from the get-go."
These are really, really native speaker idioms that you do not hear other students use.
I don't hear students use these at all.
Where you hear them is in native speaker conversations.
Again, this is how you get a high score for vocab, guys: showing the examiner that you're
a step above.
You have gone beyond your vocabulary for ... you have gone beyond these other students in your
vocabulary.
So, practice using these idioms.
Write it down.
Practice using them in conversation and in your IELTS practice.
You could also say that a book or a story was "a great read."
It was a great read.
Now remember guys, you can be honest.
You can say that the last book you read was not a great read.
That is also an interesting way to approach your answers, and an honest way to approach
your answers.
I think when you're honest about your personal experiences, that's when you relax, you become
more natural in your pronunciation, and more specific in your vocabulary.
This advice that I'm giving you, these phrases I'm giving you are not just to increase vocabulary,
but to increase your scores across the board.
The last thing that is something interesting to talk about is the characters.
Something that I like to talk about when I'm discussing books, and movies, and TV shows
is saying whether or not the characters had depth.
This is if you feel like you really know a character.
You know some of their background.
You feel like they're a person that you could talk to, that you could meet ... not just
a one-dimensional character.
Like, this character is only sad.
I don't know.
If you feel like you have gotten into these characters and you know them, you say that
they have depth.
That is another interesting detail, and interesting vocab chunk there to provide the examiner.
So again guys, watch this video a couple times.
Please take notes on these words, and practice using them.
All right, for more ways to increase your IELTS score, guaranteed to increase your IELTS
score, check out our online course 3 Keys IELTS, available now on our website ielts.allearsenglish.com.
Thank you for watching, and have a wonderful day.
Excuse me.
Thank you for watching, and have a wonderful day.