Academic collocations for Writing Word partners like "play a vital role" and "pose a threat" that make essays sound precise and natural.
Words have favourite partners
A collocation is a pair of words that naturally go together. Using the wrong partner is one of the fastest ways to show a lower Lexical Resource.
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make a decision, do research, take responsibility
do a decision, make research
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Pollution poses a serious threat to health.
Pollution makes a big danger to health.
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Teachers play a vital role in society.
Teachers play a big part role in society.
High-value pairs for Task 2
raise awareness, address an issue, tackle a problem, have a detrimental effect on, bring about change, meet the demand for, widen the gap, a growing concern, a significant proportion.
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Campaigns can raise awareness of road safety.
Campaigns can increase awareness about road safety.
"increase awareness" exists, but "raise awareness of" is the strongest collocation.
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Governments must tackle youth unemployment.
Governments must fight with youth unemployment.
Strong adjective and noun pairs
Replace "very big" and "very bad" with precise pairs: a dramatic increase, a marginal decline, a heavy reliance, a widespread belief, a pressing issue.
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There was a dramatic increase in house prices.
There was a very big increase in house prices.
IELTS tip
When you learn a new word, learn its partners too. Vocabulary pages here show example sentences, so copy the whole phrase into your deck.
Practice quiz
Pass with 7 or more to tick this topic off.
