Vocabulary and phrases for academic essays

IELTS writing is not true academic writing. It does help you, however, if you follow some of the conventions of academic writing in IELTS. If you do this, you are more likely to use language in a more interesting way that is likely to impress the examiner. This lesson looks at one way you can do this by learning to make your writing slightly more impersonal.
 

The general idea
 

The idea is that the more impersonal you make your writing the more academic it sounds. This means that you want to try and avoid using “I” unless you are emphasising the fact that this is you personal opinion.

These impersonal phrases can often be replaced by short one or two word alternatives: such as “possibly”. I suggest that you try and use some of these impersonal phrases and some of the plainer alternatives – that way you should get some good variety in your writing.

The impersonal IT
 

One strategy you can think about is using IT phrases to start your sentences when you are about to give an opinion. This has two effects:

• it makes what you say sound more intelligent/plausible
• it gives you some ready-made English to use that is grammatically complex
• you don’t always need to say “Some people say”

Here are a few alternatives for you:

The impersonal THERE
 

Another alternative is to use a THERE phrase to be more impersonal. This works for the same reasons as IT does and nearly all these phrases are also for giving opinions:

ONE and WE
 

This one is slightly trickier. Personally, I rarely use either of these structures but some academics do. So here are a few:

How to practise
 

Learning phrases is a very efficient way to learn a language. Indeed, we tend not to use words by themselves but groups of words when we speak or write. However, this language will not make you Band 9 overnight. What you need to do is to experiment and try using these phrases for yourself in your writing. I’m not sure that the best way to learn these phrases is to try and use them in essay immediately. This is what I would suggest:

• look at some of your old essays and find the opinions in them – rewrite those opinions with some of these phrases
• look at some sample IELTS essay questions and practise writing YOUR opinions about them using some of these phrases in one or two sentences
   

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