Academic Vocabulary – comparED vs. comparING (useful for IELTS Writing Task 1)

One of the main things students have to do in academic writing is to make comparisons between different theories, methods and sources of data. In task 1 of the IELTS writing test, students need to compare the significant features of the visual provided. In both cases, it is clearly a big problem if students cannot … Read more

Exploring Academic Vocabulary with BAWE

This page is set up to help students explore the use of the BAWE corpus as a tool for informing vocabulary choices in academic writing. The examples below come from either common errors in student writing or questions my students have asked about specific lexicogrammar features of English. If you search for words or phrases … Read more

Reading 9 – Deserts & Desertification

This is additional reading material for the Animation degree programme at QUST/Bradford It is uncontroversial to say that reading is probably the best way to extend your vocabulary and the more you read, the greater your vocabulary will be This week the main text below is an abstract from an academic report so you can … Read more

Reading 7a – Mini-Saga (project overview)

This is an additional Reading Text for the Animation degree programme at QUST/Bradford It is uncontroversial to say that reading is probably the best way to extend your vocabulary and the more you read, the greater your vocabulary will be Words from the AWL are in BLUE The reading material and exercises on this page … Read more

What’s wrong with the “formulaic template approach”?

This is my criticism of what I call the “formulaic template approach”. This is the approach typically used in IELTS training centres across China where the student is taught to memorise a template consisting of numerous generic sentences or partial sentences so that all they need to do is paraphrase the prompt a few times … Read more

Discussion Forum – Trump 1

During the summer of 2018, students in my IELTS 2 class were asked to read articles on topics in the English language news and recommend ones that they found interesting to other students for class discussion. The results of that homework informed us that US politics and the environment are the most popular choices so … Read more