IELTS Vocabulary For Bands 6.5 And Above, by Pauline Cullen

This book is the second book in its series that I have read, and it has a companion volume for bands up to 6.0. In reading this book, I found its vocabulary to be slightly more advanced than the previous volume (which is fitting), and more than words, it appears that this particular volume is devoted to the tricky issue of collocation, which is selecting words to make appropriate and grammatically correct phrases. This art is one that I do not remember studying deliberately as a student of English myself–at least not by that name–but it appears to be far more important for speakers of English as a second language who are candidates for sitting for the IELTS. Like the previous volume, this book is constructed in a fashion that allows the author to work in various themes and also to demonstrate how vocabulary can assist someone in achieving a high score in all sections of the IELTS. Indeed, far more than the previous volume, this book seems particularly designed to focus on the structure of the IELTS exam itself and what words and phrases are necessary to master if someone wishes to get a high enough score to work or study on the professional or academic level.

This particular book is 25 chapters, where each chapter is labeled as a unit. The book begins with a table of contents, which is largely repeated as a map, along with an introduction to the structure of the book along with the goals of the author and her intended audience and a summary on the IELTs test as a whole. This is followed by twenty five chapters, which have a test for every five chapters that follows each set of units. The first group of chapters discusses human character and psychology (1), time and change (2), individuality and community (3), chemistry and medicine (4), and work and study (5). This is followed by a section that discusses advertising and marketing (6), tourism and travel (7), government and society (8), animals and conservation (9), and space and physics (10). The section that follows after this covers technology and design (11), fashion, trends, and consumerism (12), rural and city life (13), problems and solutions (14), as well as nature and agriculture (15). After this there is a section that covers energy and natural resources (16), management and personal finance (17), crime and punishment (18), fame and the media as well as media bias (19), and the arts and one’s personal taste (20). The final section of the book, a reference section, covers learning vocabulary through dictionaries and wordlists (21), as well as the reading (22), writing (23), listening (24), and speaking sections of the IELTS (25). The book concludes with an answer key, reading scripts, wordlist, and acknowledgements.

A book like this is obviously meant for use for a candidate to the IELTS exam who has ambitions as either a professional worker or for academic study in an English-speaking country, and it is the sort of work that can be of benefit both to students studying formally and those engaged in self-study. The book takes a balanced approach to the four sections of the IELTS and focuses on all of the elements related to vocabulary. Still, although the target market for this book is big and fairly obvious, even for those outside of the immediate target audience can still find this book or others like it of use. For me, at least, it can be interesting and worthwhile to read about grammatical elements that are taught to foreign speakers of English that are not taught explicitly or formally to native speakers. As was the case when I studied Spanish and learned verb tenses that were used in English (but were not labeled in my own instruction), so too one can learn a lot about one’s own language by seeing how it is taught to outsiders. There is much that someone who knows a language from birth knows how to do but may not know how to explain and a book like this can be useful in bridging that gap between unconscious use and formal knowledge and awareness.