IELTS Practice Lab™Language Lab
21 drills · adaptive
Word choice was the largest single error category in a corpus study of IELTS essays — bigger than any grammar fault. This lane is first for that reason.
Choosing the word that says exactly what you mean. This is the biggest single source of lost marks in IELTS writing.
Which words keep company. This is the single clearest difference between band 6 and band 7 vocabulary.
The commonest way a strong candidate loses marks: reaching for a bigger word than the sentence can carry.
One root, four forms. Choosing the one the sentence has room for.
Choosing the word that belongs in an essay, without reaching for a word you cannot control.
The eight subjects that keep coming back, and the words each one needs.
Sequenced by what candidates actually get wrong, not by the order a grammar book happens to use.
Getting verbs right — the form, the time, and matching them to the subject. The biggest single grammar fault in IELTS writing.
Run-ons, comma splices and fragments — the three ways a longer sentence breaks.
a, an, the, or nothing at all — and which nouns can take a plural.
The small words that follow a verb, a noun or an adjective — and are not chosen by logic.
You know the word. The sentence wants a different shape of it — and nothing underlines the mistake.
Making both halves of a sentence match — and comparing two things properly.
Commas, semicolons and apostrophes — the marks the band descriptors name by name.
Sounding like an essay — and claiming only as much as your evidence allows.
Sentence and paragraph level, marked against a key. Whole essays are marked in the Mock Series, not here.
Turning two short sentences into one longer one — without losing the accuracy you already had.
Opening an essay in your own words — without copying the prompt or losing its meaning.
Joining your ideas with this, such and the latter — and deleting the linkers that are doing no work.
Making the first sentence of a paragraph state the point — not announce that a point is coming.
Cutting things, aspects, many and very — and putting something checkable in their place.
Saying what you think, claiming only what you can support, and not disappearing behind either.
Rise, fall, level off — and the difference between reporting a chart and explaining it.
Every drill runs at four levels. You do not need to choose — the drill picks one and then moves you.
| Level | CEFR | Practising for | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | A2 | around band 4 – 4.5 | Short sentences. The mistake is pointed out for you. |
| Moderate | B1 | around band 5 – 5.5 | Two clauses. You are told what kind of mistake to look for. |
| Hard | B2 | around band 6 – 6.5 | Nothing is pointed out. Several parts look wrong but are not. |
| Very hard | C1 | around band 7 – 8 | The sentence sounds fine when you read it aloud. You write the answer yourself. |
The band range is what a level practises for. IELTS is not a level-based test, so treat it as a guide, not a score.
How you move. Two sets at 83% or better and the next one gets harder. Two sets at 50% or less and it steps back. Stepping back is the drill doing its job — you learn fastest just above what you can already do.
Each drill has its own level. You might be on Hard for vocabulary and Easy for verb forms. That is normal, and worth knowing.
The point is one short rule you can use again on any question. Here explains this particular sentence. Both are written in plain English — simpler than the exercise itself, so the explanation is never harder than the thing it explains.
Read the explanation even when you are right. Getting it right for the wrong reason is the most expensive habit in IELTS preparation.