Free IELTS study resources
300+ short, practical vocabulary, grammar, and strategy guides for Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking — not another question bank.
IELTS vocabulary: Video Games and Society
A precise Technology/Leisure subtopic, distinct from general social-media vocabulary — here's language for discussing gaming addiction, the genuine benefits, and the industry's specific monetisation and regulation debates.
9 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Streaming Services and Entertainment
A precise Media/Technology subtopic, scoped to subscription models, content licensing, and binge-watching rather than general algorithm vocabulary — here's language for discussing how streaming has changed entertainment specifically.
9 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Book Publishing and E-books
A precise Media/Education subtopic — here's vocabulary for discussing how a book actually gets published, the industry effects of digital formats, and the access and rights questions e-books have raised.
9 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Homeschooling
A precise Education subtopic scoped to curriculum, socialisation, and the parental role — here's vocabulary for discussing home-based education as an alternative to traditional schooling specifically.
9 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Gap Year and Alternative Education Paths
A precise Education subtopic scoped to deferred enrolment, work experience, and travel-based learning — here's vocabulary for discussing non-traditional routes between school and career specifically.
9 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Whistleblowing
A precise Government/Ethics subtopic — here's vocabulary for the risks whistleblowers face, the legal protections meant to address them, and the broader debate over where whistleblowing's limits should lie.
9 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Surveillance and Privacy in Public Spaces
Most candidates answer every surveillance prompt with the same three words — cameras, privacy, safety. Here's the fuller vocabulary set for the technology, the case for it, the case against it, and how it's supposed to be governed.
12 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Land Use and Agricultural Expansion
Farming and conservation are competing claims on the same finite land, and this vocabulary set names the drivers, consequences, and trade-off-laden solutions behind that competition specifically.
12 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: National Parks and Protected Land
Almost every interesting question about protected land is really a question about management — who pays, who gets access, and how those two things pull against each other. Here's the vocabulary that argument needs.
11 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Space Law and Governance
Space essays usually describe rockets and missions while ignoring the governance question underneath: who actually has authority to regulate any of it. Here's the vocabulary for the framework, its gaps, and the reform it needs.
11 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Parental Leave Policy
Parental leave questions are usually about design choices, not whether leave should exist at all. Here's the vocabulary for leave types, equity in design, and the economic trade-offs that a design-focused answer actually needs.
11 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Childcare Costs and Access
Cost and availability are connected but genuinely different childcare problems, and this vocabulary set names both sides plus the workforce shortage that funding alone rarely fixes.
11 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Social Class and Mobility
Class, mobility, and inequality are related but genuinely separate ideas that a vague answer collapses into one. Here's vocabulary for class structure, specific barriers to movement, and how mobility is actually measured.
12 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Meritocracy
Most candidates already believe hard work should be rewarded, which is not the same as being able to evaluate meritocracy as a system. Here's vocabulary for the concept, the case for it, the critique against it, and proposed reform.
11 min readWritingIELTS vocabulary: Sleep and Productivity
"Tired people work worse" is too obvious to develop into an argument. Here's vocabulary that separates the biological mechanism, the workplace consequence, the modern causes, and the proposed fixes.
11 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Articles (a, an, the)
The single most common recurring error category across Writing submissions, and one examiners notice within the first paragraph — here's the actual logic behind a, an, the, and no article at all, worked through rule by rule.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Present Simple vs. Present Continuous
A distinction most candidates think they already know, yet it remains one of the most consistent sources of tense errors under exam pressure — the functional rule, worked through with the specific mix-ups that show up in Task 1, Task 2, and Speaking.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Past Simple vs. Present Perfect
One of the most frequently misused tense pairs in Academic Task 1 and Task 2 — the actual rule for when each one applies, plus the specific time-marker test that resolves almost every borderline case.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Conditionals
Conditionals carry the weight of cause, effect, and hypothetical argument in Task 2 and Part 3 speculation, and mixed conditional forms are one of the most common structural errors examiners see — the rule for each type, worked through with the mixing error that undoes them.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Passive Voice
Overused by some candidates, avoided entirely by others, and rarely used with real judgment by most — here's when passive voice actually strengthens Writing scores, when it weakens them, and the errors both extremes produce.
9 min read