Idioms, Collocations, and Phrasal Verbs — Used Correctly

Source: Adapted from publicly available articles on https://www.ieltsbuddy.com/. This is an original, condensed summary — not a copy of their site.

Every IELTS prep list tells you to "learn more vocabulary." Almost none of them tell you which kind of vocabulary actually moves your score, or how badly it backfires when you use it wrong. This page covers three specific categories — idioms, collocations, phrasal verbs — and how the examiner actually treats each one.

Idioms: Lower Priority Than You Think

An idiom is a phrase whose meaning has nothing to do with its individual words — "over the moon" (very happy), "so far, so good" (things are going well up to now).

Here's the part most students get wrong: idioms are mentioned in the Speaking band descriptors ("uses some less common and idiomatic vocabulary" — band 7), but they are not mentioned in the Writing descriptors at all. That means:

• Never use idioms in Task 2 writing. They're too informal for an essay. (An informal letter in General Training Task 1 is the one exception.)
• In Speaking, idioms are optional, not required. Using one does not automatically bump you to a band 7. If your overall vocabulary is running at a band 6 level, dropping in "over the moon" once won't fix that.

Where should idioms sit in your priority list?

The risk with idioms is that they're hard to use naturally under pressure. A native speaker reaches for them without thinking, in exactly the right context. If you memorize one and then wait for a chance to "fit it in," it usually sounds planted — and an examiner notices planted language immediately. If it's not coming out naturally, leave it out.

Collocations: The One That Actually Matters

A collocation is a pair (or group) of words that are conventionally used together, for no reason you can derive from grammar — you just have to know it. This is genuinely high-value: the band 7 Lexical Resource descriptor explicitly rewards "some awareness of style and collocation," and getting collocations wrong is one of the fastest ways to sound non-native even when your grammar is fine.

Some common verb + noun collocations:

• make the bed / money / a noise
• catch a cold / a bus / a fish
• come late / on time / to a decision
• do homework / the shopping / nothing

Notice you can't swap these — "do the bed" is simply wrong, even though "do" and "make" seem similar. There's no grammar rule to reason your way there; you either know the pairing or you don't.

The fix: stop learning words in isolation. When you learn a new word, learn the two or three words it's normally used with at the same time — as one chunk, not as a vocabulary item you'll later have to guess a partner for. This is exactly how good coursebooks teach: not "take" as an abstract verb, but take a risk, take a break, take responsibility, take advantage, take turns — you absorb the collocations along with the word.

Here's what that looks like for a single word, broken down by pattern — this is the level of detail worth building for any high-value word in your own vocabulary:

Get the collocation wrong and it's obvious even in a simple sentence: "I'm under a big pressure" is wrong twice over — "pressure" in this sense is uncountable (no "a"), and the natural intensifier is "a lot of" or "intense," not "big." A candidate who consistently gets pairings like this right is demonstrating real control of the language, which is exactly what the higher lexis bands are looking for.

The other reliable way to build this: read. The more natural English you read, the more these pairings register passively, without you having to sit down and memorize lists.

Phrasal Verbs: Useful for Speaking, Trickier Than They Look

A phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition or adverb (sometimes two) whose combined meaning has nothing to do with the individual words. "She had to put up with the noise all night" — "put" means to place something, "up" means a higher position, but "put up with" means to tolerate. None of that is guessable from the parts.

They matter for Speaking (and informal General Training letters) because using them naturally signals real command of the language — and you need to recognize them too, or you'll misunderstand other speakers in Listening.

Three things make phrasal verbs harder to use correctly than they first appear:

1. Some are separable, some aren't, and it varies by verb. "Turn down" can go either way: "I felt hurt when they turned down my proposal" or "They turned my proposal down without much discussion." You have to learn each one's behavior individually.
2. They conjugate like any other verb. "Set up" changes with tense: set up (past), sets up (present), has set up (present perfect), is going to set up (future). Don't memorize the phrase in only one tense.
3. Many have more than one meaning. "We fell behind on the project" = failed to keep pace with a schedule. "He fell behind the counter reaching for a pen" = physically dropped down. Context decides which one applies.

Here's a set worth knowing, shown in the kind of answer you'd actually give in Speaking Part 1 or 2:

"What do you usually do in the evenings?" → Most evenings I just settle in with a book, but on Fridays a few of us usually get together, and we always end up talking for hours about whatever's going on.

"Do you have any habits you'd like to change?" → Actually, yes — I keep putting off exercise, telling myself I'll take it up next week. I've also been meaning to give up ordering takeout so often, since it's not exactly cheap or healthy.

"Have you stayed close to your childhood friends?" → With most of them, not really — we've naturally drifted apart since we moved to different cities. But I still run into a couple of them occasionally, and it's always good to catch up when that happens.

As with idioms: don't force these in to chase a score. Learn them properly (tense changes and all), and let them come out only when they'd come out naturally in your own speech.

Speaking Part 3 — A Phrase Bank for Giving and Defending Opinions

Part 3 rewards the ability to state a position, acknowledge a counterpoint, push back on it politely, and land on a conclusion — the shape of a real discussion rather than a monologue. These phrases do that structural work for you, so your fluency doesn't collapse while you're busy thinking of content.

Stating your position: - I hold the position that… - I would argue that… - From my perspective… / For me… - I actually think that… - So my position is that…

Acknowledging the other side (before you push back): - I take the point that… / Fair enough, but… - I follow your reasoning there… - There's something to what you're saying about X, but… - That's a fair point, though…

Disagreeing politely: - I'm not fully persuaded by that argument. - I'd push back on that a little… - Let me offer a different angle. - I'd say that's a slightly idealistic way of looking at it — it doesn't quite account for…

Adding weight to your argument: - On top of that… - What really matters here is… - It's worth thinking about the wider impact, not just the immediate one. - Consider this too:

Concluding / summarizing: - To summarise my position… - In the end, I think… - I still maintain that… (reasserting after a back-and-forth) - This highlights the difficulty of…

Use two or three of these per answer, not all of them — the goal is a natural discussion, not a checklist recital.

How Lexis and Grammar Are Actually Scored (Quick Reference)

Everything above feeds into two of the four IELTS scoring criteria: Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range and Accuracy — together half of your Writing and Speaking score. Roughly, the examiner is tracking how often errors occur and how much they interfere with communication, which is why the language gets more forgiving as you go up:

The practical takeaway: getting word forms right, using a real range of grammatical structures (not just one safe pattern repeated), and controlling collocation are what separate a 6 from a 7 — not how exotic your vocabulary sounds.