IELTS Reading: Qualifying Words

When you are taking your reading or listening test, you should be looking for the key words in the questions. One area where people lose marks is that people do not consider the qualifying words.

Consider these two sentences.

1.  Every parent believes that education is important.

2.  Most parents believe that education is important.

The key words are of course ‘parent’, ‘important’ and ‘education’, but there is also a qualifying word. In the first sentence it is ‘every’ and in the second it is ’most’.

So how would you answer this true, false or not given question.

“All parents feel that being educated is significant.”

If you had sentence one (Every parent …) then the answer is true, but if you had sentence two (Most parents …) then the answer is false. It is not all parents it is most.

It is from examples like this that qualifying words are important to consider.

They are very important in true, false or not given questions, but they are important in other question types too.

In IELTS you often see some of these qualifying words

Virtually nil, an insignificant number, negligible, rarely

A few, a minority, a small number, occasionally

Always, everyone, the entirety

All but a few, the majority, most, little doubt

Nil, zero, nobody, absolutely none

Roughly half, sometimes, neither one way nor the other, no particular emphasis either way

Another thing to consider, in your writing test

Use qualifying words to make your opinions less strong.

“People from less developed countries never save money.” (Too Strong)

“People from less developed countries hardly ever save money.” 

(More academic, it is not 100% anymore)

IELTS Triumph

~ Every little helps ~

                                          

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IELTSTriumph

Twitter: https://twitter.com/IeltsTriumph
Email: ieltstriumph.english@gmail.com

Instagram:   @ieltstriumph