Choosing the right form of a word is essential for clear and accurate communication.
If you want to achieve a high score in your IELTS Writing and Speaking tests, it’s also important to use a variety of words. Using a range of word forms shows the examiner that you can vary your sentences and use English more flexibly.
In the IELTS Listening and Reading tests, you also need to understand how different types of words work together in a sentence. For tasks like summary completion, checking the words around the missing answer can help you decide if you need a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.
In this article, we’ll take you through the basics of word formation in English, look at some common mistakes to avoid and finish with our top tips for choosing the right words.
Before we get started, let’s see what you already know. Look at the word families below. Can you fill in the missing words?
Noun | Verb | Adjective | Adverb |
|---|---|---|---|
reliability | rely | ? | ? |
? | ? | creative | creatively |
? | encourage | encouraging | ? |
Answers to Word Family Challenge
Noun | Verb | Adjective | Adverb |
|---|---|---|---|
reliability | rely | reliable | reliably |
creativity/creator | create | creative | creatively |
encouragement | encourage | encouraging | encouragingly |
Understanding Word Forms
The form of a word in English changes depending on what you want to express. There are many reasons why you might need to change a word form. Here are a few examples:
Verb tense: work (infinitive), worked (past simple)
Subject-verb agreement: I work (first person), She works (third person)
Singular or plural: child (singular), children (plural)
Comparison: fast (adjective), faster (comparative), fastest (superlative)
Word class: encourage (verb), encouragement (noun), encouraging (adjective)
In this article, we’ll focus on changes to word class.
Using Word Forms
The form a word takes depends on the way it is used in a sentence. We call this its grammatical function or part of speech.
Let’s look at some common examples:
Noun: a person, a place or an object. Nouns can also be ideas, qualities, feelings and events. (Examples: student, river, cup, freedom, beauty, sadness, festival)
Verb: describes an action or a state of being. (Examples: walk, sleep, climb, feel, know, be)
Adjective: describes a noun or a pronoun. (Examples: beautiful, high, green, interesting)
Adverb: describes or gives more information about a verb, an adjective, another adverb or a phrase.
(Examples: beautifully, slowly, quite, often, early, unusually, everywhere, fortunately).
Imagine you want to take the verb create and make it the subject of sentence to talk about a process or concept.
You will need to change the part of speech from a verb to a noun. Create (verb) becomes creativity (noun).
Example sentence: Creativity helps organisations adapt to new trends and technologies.
If we want to use it to describe something (e.g. creative thinking), we need to change the word form to an adjective.
Creative thinking can help organisations adapt to new trends and technologies.
If we want to use this word to describe how something is done (e.g. thinking creatively), we need to change the word form to an adverb.
Thinking creatively can help organisations adapt to new trends and technologies.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
From spelling to pronunciation to irregular forms, here are a few things you need to watch out for when you’re forming new words.
Spelling
In English, some nouns and verbs have similar spellings with only a slight change to one or two letters.
Example: advice and advise
The doctor advised him to cut down on sugary foods. (verb)
Her teacher gave her some useful advice on how to improve her reading skills. (noun)
Tip: Allow time at the end of your Writing test to check your responses for spelling and grammar mistakes.
Pronunciation
Other nouns and verbs have the same word form, but the word stress is different, depending on whether you are using them as a noun or a verb.
Many companies are using artificial intelligence to inCREASE efficiency. (verb)
You would stress the second syllable of increase if you were reading it aloud.
The graph shows an INcrease in food expenditure over the past year. (noun)
You would stress the first syllable of increase if you were reading the sentence aloud.
Tip: Not sure about word stress? The Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary includes an audio feature so you can click on the different forms of the word and listen to any pronunciation differences.
Meaning
Some words look very similar. They might even belong to the same part of speech but have different meanings. Examples include economic and economical, which are both adjectives.
Tourism is an important part of our country’s economic growth.
Meaning: Economic = relating to an economy e.g. the way money, trade or industry is organised (adjective).
It’s more economical to cook at home than to eat out.
Meaning: Economical = not using a lot of money or resources (adjective).
Tip: Take care when translating words from your first language. Double-check the meaning of new words in an English dictionary.
Irregular forms
Take care when changing adjectives to adverbs as some words follow an irregular pattern and look quite different from each other.
Adjective: That was a good game.
Adverb: ✓ They played well.
× They played goodly.
Tip: When you learn a new word, use a dictionary to check what other forms it can take.
Tips for Choosing the Right Word Form
So, what can you do to improve your word formation skills?
Parts of Speech: Learn more about the different parts of speech in English. Become familiar with where words go and what they do in a sentence. This will help build your confidence when choosing the right word form.
Suffixes: Learn common word endings. Suffixes can give you clues about a word’s form and help you improve your word-building skills.
Here are some common suffixes to get you started:
To make nouns | To make verbs | To make adjectives | To make adverbs |
|---|---|---|---|
-tion / -sion Examples: creation, explosion | -ate Examples: activate, create | -able / -ible Examples: breakable, sensible | -ly Examples: quickly, happily |
-ment Examples: development, agreement | -en Examples: strengthen, lengthen | -al Examples: natural, cultural | -ward Examples: forward, backward |
-ity / -ty Examples: activity, creativity | -ify Examples: simplify, identify | -ive Examples: creative, active | -wise Examples: otherwise, clockwise |
Word Forms Quiz
Test your knowledge of word forms. You can find the answers at the end of the quiz.
Answers to Word Forms Quiz
1. economical, 2. careful, 3. considerably, 4. shorten, 5. belief, 6. late, 7. hard, 8. benefit, 9. validate, 10. justify.
Final thoughts
Whether you’re writing an essay, discussing a topic, or filling in a missing word, learning how to use word forms effectively can help you perform your best in the IELTS test.
For more IELTS test tips, see our other articles on vocabulary for IELTS:
Use Mind Maps to Build Your Vocabulary Resource for IELTS
How to Improve Your Spelling in the IELTS test
IELTS Listening Test: Tips to Build Key Vocabulary
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