In this post: The one principle behind safe paraphrasing, then my general synonym table and the swaps I used for advantages, solutions and causes in Task 2.
Paraphrasing · 3 parts
- 1. The principle and synonym tables (you are here)
- 2. "See A as B", openings, adverbs
- 3. Blacklist, practice and exercises
✦ In this post
Lexical Resource (LR, the vocabulary criterion) is the score I got a 6 for more often than any other. Of my 50 marked essays, six received LR 6, including my very first essay (Cambridge 14, Test 1), Trial essay 1 (gap year) and Trial essay 3 (advertising). Looking back at them, the problem was almost never that my words were too simple. It was that I swapped words just for the sake of swapping them, and ended up with words that were unnatural or even wrong in meaning.
This post collects the pages in my Google Doc labelled “useful patterns, phrases, synonyms and background sentences”, plus the traps I fell into myself. It is split into: synonym tables you can use with confidence, the “see A as B” pattern, the Undoubtedly background-sentence formula, a list of adverbs, and my own “blacklist” of words.
1. The principle first: don’t force a word you’re not sure about
The “general rules” at the top of my notes are just four lines. One of them is: you don’t have to change every word, and don’t make trouble for yourself with words you’re unsure of. My scores taught me that one.
Compare the public band descriptors. LR 6 says the candidate “attempts to use less common vocabulary but with some inaccuracy”; LR 7 says the candidate “uses less common lexical items with some awareness of style and collocation”. The key words are collocation and style. If you swap in a fancier-looking word and the collocation is wrong, your score goes down, not up.
The mistakes I made by forcing synonyms
| What I meant | What I wrote (✗) | A more natural version (✓) | What went wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Children spend a lot of time on their phones | children nowadays tend to spend lots of time using automobiles | using electronic devices / smartphones | I wanted to avoid repeating “smartphones” and replaced it with “cars”. The meaning changed completely. |
| People on low incomes | it is hard for economical disabilities’s to make end meets (Task 21) | it is hard for low-income households to make ends meet | A disability is a physical or mental impairment; economical means “thrifty” or “cost-saving”. |
| Skilled professionals | fostering competent professions | producing competent professionals | A profession is a type of job; for people you need professional. |
| Students who have just finished secondary school | those leaved students (Trial essay 1) | school leavers / high school graduates | The prompt itself gave me “school leavers”. I should simply have used it. |
| Entertainers are paid very high salaries | celebrities on entertainment industries gain extremely high payment (Task 25) | entertainers receive excessively high salaries / are excessively compensated | “Gain payment” is not a natural collocation. |
| Advantages | its superiorities outweigh its drawbacks | its advantages / merits outweigh its drawbacks | Superiority means a sense of being better or a dominant position. It is not the same as an advantage. |
| Adapting to a different environment | adapt to exotic atmosphere | adapt to a different working environment | Exotic means “excitingly foreign”; it doesn’t fit a discussion of changing jobs. |
| Multinational companies | International cooperation, which hire workers… (Task 1) | International corporations, which hire… | Cooperation (working together) and corporation (a company) look very similar. |
You can paraphrase the keywords in the prompt, but you don’t need to change all of them. Fixed expressions given in the prompt, such as school leavers, self-employed and life expectancy, only need paraphrasing once in the introduction; in the body, using the original term is actually clearer. What really needs changing is any word in your own essay that appears three times or more, such as important, problem, people and think.
2. General synonym table: swaps you can use in every essay
This table comes from the “general vocabulary” page of my notes, with a usage note added for each word. These are versions I actually used in my essays and that were not corrected.
| Meaning | Basic word | Alternatives | Usage note |
|---|---|---|---|
| important | important | essential, indispensable, crucial, vital, significant | essential for…; an indispensable part of…. Imperative is mostly used as It is imperative that/to…; don’t use it to describe a noun as “very important”. |
| about | about | regarding, concerning, as for, as to, with regard to | As for / as to go at the start of a sentence; regarding and concerning also work mid-sentence. |
| to stress, to value | emphasise | prioritise, stress, highlight, put emphasis on, stress the importance of, pay attention to | The to in pay attention to and the on in put emphasis on are prepositions, so follow them with V-ing. |
| food | food | dishes, cuisine | Cuisine means the cooking of a particular place: Japanese cuisine. |
| foreign food | foreign foods | exotic foods, overseas foods | Exotic suggests “new and unusual”; fine for food and plants. |
| imported food | imported foods | shipped foods, food produced overseas | Transported foods is less common, so I stopped using it. |
| products | products | goods, commodities, manufactured goods | Commodities leans towards raw materials and bulk goods; manufactures as a noun is rare, so I don’t recommend it. |
| local | local | domestic, regional | Domestic works best when contrasted with imported. Provincial can sound negative (“unsophisticated”), so be careful. |
| adverts everywhere | common advertisements | omnipresent advertisements, widespread advertisements | — |
| to educate, to develop | educate | inform, cultivate | Cultivate takes an ability or value: cultivate a sense of responsibility. |
| developed countries | developed countries | industrialised nations, the developed world | — |
| criminals | criminals | offenders, lawbreakers, culprits | Young offenders / juvenile offenders are fixed expressions. |
| argument | argument | dispute, debate, conflict | Altercation means a noisy quarrel, not an academic debate. |
| complete | complete | thorough, comprehensive | Outright means “total” or “open and direct”; I don’t recommend it as a swap for complete. |
| to take part | take part in | participate in, engage in | — |
| in the future | in the future | in the days to come, in the years ahead | — |
| many | a lot of | numerous, an array of, a plethora of, a wide range of | On my blacklist: a couple of, a myriad of (see section 7, in Part 3). |
| high (salary, cost) | high | substantial, considerable, significant | a substantial salary, considerable costs |
| completely | totally | utterly, absolutely, entirely | See the adverb table in section 6 (Part 2). |
Starting a business, residents, city and countryside: learn them in sets
| Idea | Expressions you can rotate |
|---|---|
| Starting a business | start their own businesses, pursue business ventures, pursue entrepreneurship, be self-employed |
| Residents | residents, inhabitants, citizens (not dwellers) |
| Cities | urban areas, cities, metropolitan areas, urban centres |
| The countryside | rural areas, the countryside, rural regions |
| People on low incomes | the financially disadvantaged, financially disadvantaged individuals, low-income households |
| Negative results | negative consequences, adverse effects, undesirable outcomes |
| To reduce (a burden) | alleviate their burden, mitigate the problem, ease the pressure |
The point of this table is to rotate the expressions across one essay, not to cram several into a single sentence. In an essay about cities and the countryside, for example, you might use urban areas in the first paragraph, cities in the second and metropolitan areas in the third, and it won’t feel repetitive.
3. Advantages, solutions and causes: swaps for Task 2
A few sets of words come up in almost every Task 2 essay: advantages, disadvantages, “outweigh” and “solve”. Here is how I organised them in my notes. The right-hand column shows sentences I actually wrote:
| Idea | Alternatives | How I used it in an essay |
|---|---|---|
| Advantages | advantages, merits, benefits, upsides, strengths | the merits of free admission surpass the demerits (Task 21) |
| Disadvantages | disadvantages, demerits, drawbacks, downsides, adverse effects | there are some downsides associated with free tickets |
| To outweigh | outweigh, surpass, exceed, prevail over | the benefits of this outweigh its drawbacks (Task 45) |
| To solve | solve, tackle, deal with, address, cope with, handle | the loans from banks can tackle the downsides concerning this issue |
| To cause | lead to, result in, bring about, give rise to | leading to unfairness |
| Because of | because of, owing to, due to, as a result of, on account of | owing to the high competitiveness of the industries |
| To believe | believe, maintain, argue, contend, reckon | others maintain that it is wiser to focus on other significant problems |
Linking words need rotating too
Paraphrasing isn’t only for nouns and verbs. Repeated linking words are just as noticeable. My notes group common linkers by function, and I rotate within each group when I write:
| Function | Linkers you can rotate | Usage note |
|---|---|---|
| Contrast | however, nevertheless, nonetheless, on the other hand | At the start of a sentence, follow with a comma. To join it to the previous clause, use a semicolon: …; however, … |
| Result | therefore, thus, hence, as a result, consequently | Hence can be followed directly by a noun phrase: hence the need for… |
| Addition | moreover, in addition, additionally, furthermore, besides | Besides is more conversational; use it sparingly in formal writing. |
| Rephrasing | that is, in other words, to be more specific, to put it another way | Use these to explain a topic sentence. What follows must genuinely be more specific, not the topic sentence repeated with different words. |
| Examples | for example, for instance, take … as an example, … is a good example of this | I often used “X, which…, is a good example of this matter”. Once per essay is enough, and “matter” can be dropped. |
Looking back at my essays, To put it another way and is a good example of this matter appear in almost every one, sometimes twice in a single paragraph. Compare the Coherence and Cohesion descriptors: Band 7 “uses a range of cohesive devices appropriately although there may be some under-/over-use”, while Band 6 “uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical”. So you don’t need many linkers, but you do need to vary them, and each one must genuinely match the logical relationship between the sentences.
Continue reading · Part 2 of 3
IELTS Notes in English · Writing Language (post 2 of 4)
← Previous: The Grammar Mistakes I Was Corrected for Most in IELTS Writing
Next →: IELTS Task 2 Topic Vocabulary (Part 1): Technology, Environment, Education and Work
Task 1 Structure · Task 2 Structure · Topic Guides · Writing Language · Band Score Samples · Practice Methods · Speaking & Study Tips
✦ Target Your Future
Some days you practise for hours and the score still does not move. I hope these notes remind you that the setbacks are part of the road: every recording you replayed, every essay you rewrote and every sentence you finally dared to say is progress you have already made.
I wrote this down so the next person can take fewer detours. You do not have to follow my method exactly. Find a rhythm that works for you, rest when you need to, and come back for the next small step.
I hope what you take away is more than a number on a score report: a little more confidence in yourself, and the courage to step a bit closer to the world.
— Ting
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