Yes, it's back to collocation, once again. Remember, the public version of the the IELTS Band Descriptors (public version) state that for your Writing Vocabulary Mark …
Band 7 = Uses less common words with some awareness of style and collocation.
So, an IELTS 7 writer shows an ‘awareness of style and collocation’, which means (as I have said before), good collocation is the key to IELTS 7. But, what is collocation? It is the act of putting the right words together in ways that are natural and good. For example, in Chinese, you can say …
- Big rain
- Big wind
- Big noise
But in English, we would say …
- Heavy rain
- Strong wind
- Loud noise.
These second pairs of word ‘collocate’ together more naturally, and knowing this collocation takes time. The collocation could be …
- Verb + noun (launch a spacecraft)
- Adjective + Noun (financial priorities)
- Adverb + verb (ultimately establish)
- Adverb + adjective (seemingly innocuous)
There are many examples and exercises on my website, where this issue is explored at length (click Good Collocation to see that), but I’ll add a few new examples here (taken at random from recent students’ essays).
Change the word in italics to one which collocates more naturally.
- There are many advertisements advocating the health risks of smoking.
- Nicotine lets people become addicted.
- Governments need to do more policies.
- I trust advertisements can provide an answer.
- Advertisements can brainwash people to give up smoking.
- The media is a key role in this.
- Society will pay more cost on this.
- Smokers can catch more attention from their peers.
Check the next post for the answers.
Hello Teacher Andrew, here are my answers. 1. There is much advertisement advocating the risks of health that smokers have. 2. People are addicted to smoking because of the material such as nicotine. 3. Governments should take more measurements. 4. It is a good method to make advertisement to appeal the importance of giving up smoking. 5. By the brainwash of advertisement, people are more willing to abandon this bad habit. 6. Media plays a pivot role. 7. It will increase the social costs. 8. People who smoke might be more popular among their peers. thank you :)
There are some problems here. With 1. the problem is 'advocating' is wrong. With 2. a better word is 'component' (not 'material'), and nicotine is probably the only addictive component, so the 'such as' is wrong. With 4. we don't 'appeal' the 'importance'. We appeal to people. With 5. you can't use 'brainwash' (a negative word) for a positive thing. With 6. it should be 'pivotal', and I wouldn't use this word [check your dictionary]. Sentences 3, 7, and 8 look okay. Check my answers for more explanations.