In this post: Core collocations for saving, income, advertising and Task 1 spending charts, taken from my own essays, and breakdowns of my Task 34 (overall 7) and Task 25 (overall 6.5) paragraphs.
Money and Consumption · 3 parts
- 1. Common questions and arguments
- 2. Vocabulary and two breakdowns (you are here)
- 3. Model, mistakes and practice
3. Core vocabulary and collocations
The right-hand column contains sentences from my own essays, exactly as I wrote them; the notes in brackets give a more natural version.
Saving and personal finance
| Collocation | Meaning / use | Ting’s original sentence (source) |
|---|---|---|
| save money for the future | put money aside for later | saving money for the future is essential for all generations (Task 34) |
| overcome / cope with difficulties | get through problems | it helps people to overcome the hindrances in their lives (Task 34; difficulties is more natural than hindrances) |
| pose a financial burden on | create a money problem for someone | we may meet difficult times in our lives, which always pose a financial burden to us (Task 34; burden takes on) |
| go bankrupt | lose all your money and be unable to pay debts | Medical bills, which are always costly and make some people go bankrupt, are good examples of this matter (Task 34) |
| pay for one’s retirement | fund your life after you stop working | people who save money when they were young are able to pay for their retired life (Task 34; pay for their retirement) |
| offer loans to businesses | lend money to companies | financial institutions like banks or post offices are able to offer loans to businesses and corporations (Task 34) |
| a rainy-day fund / an emergency fund | savings kept for unexpected problems | (model) Everyone should build an emergency fund that covers several months of living costs. |
Income and salaries
| Collocation | Meaning / use | Ting’s original sentence (source) |
|---|---|---|
| be paid excessively / receive excessively high salaries | be paid too much | celebrities on entertainment industries gain extremely high payment (Task 25; celebrities in the entertainment industry receive excessively high salaries) |
| deserve to be paid highly | have earned the right to high pay | there are other jobs that deserve to be paid highly (Task 25) |
| high academic qualifications | advanced degrees | jobs require high academic qualification should undoubtedly have a relatively high salary (Task 25; jobs that require high academic qualifications) |
| ensure the public’s safety | keep people safe | who conduct risky tasks to ensure the public’s safety (Task 25; carry out dangerous tasks) |
| an extravagant lifestyle | a life of expensive luxuries | makes the public overemphasize on appearance or extravagant lifestyle (Task 25; overemphasize takes no on) |
| income bracket / income group | a band of income levels | households in $75,000-$99,999 salary group were the least (Task 5; change salary to income) |
Spending and advertising
| Collocation | Meaning / use | Ting’s original sentence (source) |
|---|---|---|
| catch customers’ attention | make customers notice something | it helps producers to catch customers’ attention from various brands (Trial essay 3) |
| leave a deep impression | be remembered clearly | it is undoubtedly that they will purchase it because of deep impression (Trial essay 3; because it leaves a deep impression) |
| promote products | advertise and sell goods | advertisements are brillant paths for sellers to promote their items (Trial essay 3; brilliant ways) |
| skip advertisements | jump past adverts | I usually skip those advertising videos when using Youtube (Trial essay 3) |
| fake / misleading advertising | adverts that make false claims | With increasingly cases of fake advertising, people now always ignore those advertisements (Trial essay 3; With increasing cases) |
| a cheap and accessible marketing tool | an affordable, easy-to-use way to market | advertising is a relatively cheap and available marketing tool (Trial essay 3; accessible is more precise than available) |
| impulse buying | buying on a sudden urge, without planning | (model) Online flash sales encourage impulse buying. |
Income and spending vocabulary from Task 1
Income and spending also come up often in Task 1. I have written about a bar chart of US household annual income (Task 5) and pie charts of household spending in Hong Kong and the UK (Task 14). These words for describing where money goes are just as useful for consumption questions in Task 2.
| Collocation | Meaning / use | Ting’s original sentence (source) |
|---|---|---|
| household expenditure / spending | what families spend | The given charts illustrate the distribution of household expenditure in two countries in 2000 (Task 14) |
| a major contributor to | a large part of a total | housing was a major contributor to household spending with 32% (Task 14) |
| account for / make up | form a share of a total | followed by food, accounting for 22% (Task 14); it made up the remaining 7% (Task 14) |
| the predominant category | the largest category | other goods and services were a predominant factor on family’s spending with 36% (Task 14; the largest category of household spending) |
| households earning between … and … | households in an income range | households with income around $50,000-$74,999 (Task 5; around cannot be used with a range; change to earning between $50,000 and $74,999) |
4. Breaking down my own paragraphs
The paragraphs below (4-3 and 4-4 continue in Part 3) are the original versions I sent for marking, completely unedited. The three essays happen to represent three situations: a logically complete 7, a 6.5 where the argument drifted off the question, and a 6.5 where the content was fine but the language dragged the score down.
4-1 Task 34: everyone should save money (Agree / Disagree)
The question, in short: it is important for everyone, including young people, to save money for the future; to what extent do you agree? I agreed completely, and my first body paragraph argued that saving helps individuals through hard times.
The main reason why I believe that saving money is significant is because it helps people to overcome the hindrances in their lives. It is readily apparent that we may meet difficult times in our lives, which always pose a financial burden to us. Therefore, if we have enough money, it is possible for us the beat the hard time successfully. Medical bills, which are always costly and make some people go bankrupt, are good examples of this matter. When a person makes an effort to save money in their bank account, they can easily go through the difficult moment likes illness because they have a certain amount of money to afford the bills.
What works: this is a textbook “point → explanation → example → link back” paragraph. The point is that saving helps people through difficulties; the explanation is that difficulties often bring a financial burden; the example is medical bills; and the last sentence explains how someone with savings gets through. The second body paragraph then moves to the level of society (welfare spending, bank loans). One paragraph on the individual and one on society is, in my reading, why Coherence reached 8.
What was missing: Task Response stayed at 7. My analysis is that the question specifically says “including young people”, yet the essay hardly discusses why young people should save too. Agreeing completely is fine, but adding a sentence such as “the earlier you start saving, the more you accumulate over time”, or answering the counter-argument that “young people earn too little to save much”, would have addressed the question more fully. On the language side, The main reason … is because is redundant (reason and because overlap, so use is that), us the beat is a typo for to beat, and likes illness should be like illness.
4-2 Task 25: are stars paid too much? (Two-question)
The question, in short: some people think entertainers such as actors, singers and athletes are paid too much; do you agree? Which other jobs should be highly paid? My first body paragraph explained why I agreed.
There are two reasons why I believe that entertainers should not be paid too much money. The main reason is that it distorts the values toward lives, especially makes the public overemphasize on appearance or extravagant lifestyle. Singers, models, and movie stars, who have high income to wear luxury clothing, are good examples of this matter. The value they deliver to the public and the bahaviors they conduct will pose a threat to the society. Another point supporting my idea is that it distracts younger generation from concentrating on their studies. When being aware that being famous can earn a certain amount of money, youngsters do not want to focus on their schoolwork anymore, further leading to lower labor productivity in the future.
Main problem: the argument slides from “pay is too high” to “celebrities’ influence”. The question asks whether entertainers’ pay is too high, but the two reasons in this paragraph are really saying that “stars’ lifestyles corrupt values” and “young people want to be stars, so they stop studying”. Both are about fame, and only indirectly about how much money stars earn: even if their pay were halved, the image of stars in designer clothes being adored by fans might stay exactly the same. The example, “stars have high incomes to wear luxury clothing”, also just describes a phenomenon; it does not prove that high pay causes any specific harm. This kind of answering next to the question matches the Task Response band 6 descriptor: the essay addresses the question, but the ideas are not fully developed and are sometimes not relevant enough.
How to fix it: tie the argument to money. For example: stars earn huge fees while nurses and firefighters are poorly paid, which sends the message that society’s rewards are out of proportion to people’s contributions, so young people feel that studying hard and doing important work is not worth it. That way, pay becomes the starting point of the chain of reasoning rather than the background. My second body paragraph (“doctors and police officers should be well paid”) was stronger, because it directly answered “which jobs should be highly paid” and gave reasons (training time and job risk).
Continue reading · Part 3 of 3
IELTS Notes in English · Topic Guides (post 7 of 10)
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✦ 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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