Free IELTS study resources
300+ short, practical vocabulary, grammar, and strategy guides for Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking — not another question bank.
IELTS 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 readWritingIELTS grammar: Relative Clauses
Relative clauses turn short, simple sentences into the complex structures Grammatical Range rewards — here's how to choose who, which, that, and whose correctly, and the punctuation rule that changes what a sentence actually means.
9 min readSpeakingIELTS grammar: Reported Speech
Genuinely useful in Speaking when recounting what someone told you, or in Part 3 when referencing a common opinion — here's the tense-shifting rule most candidates half-remember, and the word-order error that gives away exam pressure.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Modal Verbs
Modals express certainty, obligation, and possibility with precision, and choosing the right one is a genuine hedging skill IELTS rewards directly — here's how to calibrate them instead of defaulting to the bluntest option.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Gerunds vs. Infinitives
A genuinely tricky area of English with no reliable shortcut rule, since which form follows a given verb has to be learned case by case — here's how to handle the specific verbs that trip candidates up most often, including the ones that change meaning depending on the choice.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Linking Words for Cohesion
Coherence & Cohesion is scored on ideas connecting naturally, not on how many linking words appear on the page — here's how to choose the right category of connector, avoid the stacking error that undoes it, and use cohesion tools beyond linking words entirely.
9 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Punctuation Rules
Punctuation errors are graded as Grammar mistakes, not style issues — the four patterns behind most of them, and a fast self-editing pass that catches them.
12 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Building Complex Sentences
Grammatical Range rewards genuine subordination, not just length — the difference between real complexity and long strings of "and," and how to vary it.
11 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Subject-Verb Agreement
The rule itself is simple — the errors happen at a distance. Where agreement actually breaks down in longer sentences, and how to check for it fast.
10 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Countable vs. Uncountable Nouns
One miscategorised noun triggers three errors at once (plural, article, quantifier) — the high-frequency list, the dual-sense nouns, and how to self-check fast.
10 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Comparatives and Superlatives
Task 1 is built on comparison, so this error repeats itself across a script — form, the two-vs-three-item rule, and scaling a difference with precision.
10 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Prepositions of Time and Place
Part memorisable pattern, part pure memorisation — the in/on/at scale for time and place, movement and duration prepositions, and fixed verb pairs.
10 min readSpeakingIELTS grammar: Phrasal Verbs
Two opposite errors: avoiding them entirely in Speaking, overusing them in Task 2 Writing — separable vs inseparable, and the formal-register exceptions.
10 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Collocations
Grammatically perfect but instantly flagged as unnatural — verb-noun, adjective-noun, and academic collocations, plus the near-synonym traps that break them.
10 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Word Formation
Wrong word form is often not stylistic but genuinely ungrammatical — the suffix families, prefix patterns, and academic word families worth drilling.
10 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Commonly Confused Words
A specific, memorisable list of word pairs that even advanced learners mix up in Writing — here's the actual distinction behind each one, not just a warning to "be careful."
14 min readWritingIELTS grammar: Parallel Structure
A subtle but real error that makes lists and comparisons feel awkward even when every individual word is correct — here's the actual rule for keeping grammatical form consistent, and why examiners notice when it breaks.
10 min read