IELTS vocabulary by topic: 18 topics with examples

IELTS questions are new every time, but the areas they ask about hardly change: education, the environment, technology, work, cities. That’s why topic vocabulary pays off: one collocation you’ve learned works both in a Task 2 essay and in your conversation with the examiner. The words that let you down usually aren’t the rare ones, but the ones that seem obvious. “The ecology in cities is bad” is a common slip, but in English ecology is the science of how living things relate to their environment, not a word for pollution. To talk about the damage, you name the specific problem: air pollution, environmental problems. Below are 18 IELTS topics with key collocations and a way to learn them so they actually turn up in your exam answers. At its core is practice in LetsWords: you write a sentence on the topic, get your mistake explained in your native language, and review keeps bringing the collocation back until it comes to you on its own. We’ll show what that looks like with the same “ecology” sentence.

How many words do you need for IELTS?

The exam doesn’t give you a list of words to learn. According to the official Writing description, the Lexical Resource criterion assesses the range of your vocabulary and how accurately and appropriately you use it.

The Writing band descriptors for Band 7 mention the ability to use less common and idiomatic vocabulary and an awareness of style and collocation, though inappropriate word choices still occur. The Band 6 description has a telling line: when a writer takes risks, the vocabulary range is wider, but so is the number of inaccuracies. A rare word used wrongly won’t rescue your score. In the Speaking band descriptors, Band 7 means using vocabulary flexibly to discuss a variety of topics, with the same awareness of style and collocation.

If you want a number: an IELTS article on vocabulary cites Nation’s (2006) estimate that you need around 8,000–9,000 word families to understand a wide range of authentic texts. A word family is a word with all its forms: produce, production, productive. The same article mentions research by Milton, Wade and Hopkins (2010) linking vocabulary size to overall IELTS scores. That’s the answer for recognising words in Reading and Listening.

For Writing and Speaking, what counts is different: how many words you’re ready to use yourself without mistakes. Here you don’t count in thousands of words, but in topic collocations you’ll really say or write.

Why it’s easier to learn IELTS vocabulary by topic

In Task 2, you’re given a point of view, an argument or a problem to discuss. In Speaking Part 1, you’re asked about familiar things: home, family, work, studies, hobbies. In Part 3, the examiner discusses questions linked to the Part 2 topic “in a more general and abstract way” (Speaking format). The wording changes, but the areas repeat: education, the environment, technology, health, work, cities and crime come up again and again in Task 2 prompts and Part 3 questions.

Learning by topic gives you three advantages:

Words come with ideas. Once you know tuition fees and graduate with debt, an argument about paying for higher education is quicker to come up with.
Your answer becomes specific. The official Writing description warns that if the question is about one aspect of computers, you can’t write about computers in general. To answer about a specific aspect, you need the precise words of the topic.
You can see where the gap is. If all you can say about transport is cars and buses, that’s a problem with one topic, not with your English as a whole. You can close it in a few sessions.

18 IELTS topics: what they ask about and where to start

For each topic: what the questions usually cover and a few collocations to start with. The full selection with usage examples is on each topic’s page.

Study, work and family

Education. School and university, on-campus or online learning, who pays for higher education. compulsory education, tuition fees, distance learning, academic performance.
Work and careers. Remote work, changing careers, money versus job satisfaction. work-life balance, job security, career prospects, gain experience.
Family and children. Bringing up children, parents’ roles, caring for elderly relatives. raise children, working parents, single-parent families, the generation gap.

Society, government and money

Government and society. What to spend the budget on and what to regulate by law. public spending, allocate funds to, pass a law, impose restrictions on.
Crime and law. Punishment or rehabilitation, the causes of youth crime. commit a crime, break the law, the crime rate, act as a deterrent.
Economy and money. Rising prices, inequality, spending and saving habits. economic growth, the cost of living, income inequality, make ends meet.
Media and advertising. Trust in the news, advertising aimed at children, social media and privacy. news coverage, biased reporting, a target audience, invade sb’s privacy.
Globalisation. Who gains from world trade, and whether local cultures are disappearing. international trade, multinational corporations, cultural identity, the global village.

Cities, nature and travel

The environment. Climate, pollution, the responsibility of governments and individuals. cut emissions, renewable energy, raise awareness of, endangered species.
Cities and housing. Life in a big city or the countryside, house prices, what a city looks like. affordable housing, urban sprawl, green spaces, high-rise buildings.
Transport. Traffic jams, public transport, restrictions on cars in city centres. public transport, traffic congestion, commute to work, at rush hour.
Tourism and travel. The benefits and harm of tourism for local people and historic sites. mass tourism, boost the local economy, a popular tourist destination, protect historic sites.

Technology and science

Technology. Smartphones, artificial intelligence, communicating online and face to face. have a profound impact on, screen time, rely heavily on technology, the digital divide.
Science. Whether space is worth the money, the ethics of experiments. conduct research into, make a breakthrough, space exploration, animal testing.

Lifestyle and culture

Health. Lifestyle, prevention, who pays for healthcare. a sedentary lifestyle, life expectancy, access to healthcare, preventive healthcare.
Food. Fast food, children’s eating habits, wasted food. a balanced diet, processed food, eating habits, food waste.
Sport and leisure. Sport at school, athletes’ pay, how to spend free time. take up a sport, team sports, keep fit, professional athletes.
Culture and the arts. Museums, art at school, state funding for culture. preserve traditions, arts education, public funding for the arts, a work of art.

How to learn topic vocabulary so it works in the exam

You can read a list of 18 topics in an evening. But in the exam, a word has to come to mind on its own, in the right structure and without mistakes. For that, you need to work with words, not just recognise them.

Learn collocations, not single words. Impact doesn’t get you far until you know that it’s have an impact on, not do an impact to. Note down each word with its verb, its preposition and the words it usually goes with.
Recall words yourself. Look at the meaning in your native language and recall the English collocation without peeking. Retrieving words from memory again and again helps you keep them for the long term (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008).
Write a sentence on the topic and check it. Take a question in the style of Task 2 or Part 3 and answer it in one sentence with the new collocation. In Hulstijn and Laufer’s experiments, learners remembered words best after a task that had them write a text with those words, and worst after reading. But a sentence nobody checks can lock in a mistake too, so you need feedback: what’s wrong and why. In LetsWords, every sentence you write gets it.
Come back to words at intervals. A review by Cepeda and colleagues (2006) looks at how spacing study sessions over time affects later recall. In practice: a word comes back a few days later, and you use it again, in a different situation.

To learn more about turning words you recognise into words you use, read our guide on how to make your passive vocabulary active.

A LetsWords feedback example: “ecology” in an essay

You’re studying the Environment topic and write a sentence for an essay about pollution in cities:

Nowadays the ecology in big cities is very bad, and the government must decide this problem.

What the feedback shows.

the ecology is very bad → air pollution has reached dangerous levels. Ecology is the science of how living things relate to their environment, or those relationships themselves (the fragile ecology of a coral reef). It doesn’t mean pollution or the state of the air in a city. In English, you name the specific problem: air pollution, environmental problems, the state of the environment.
decide this problem → tackle this problem. Decide means to make a decision or choose an option. A problem is solved, and in essays it’s often tackled or addressed: you take it on when it can’t be solved in one step.
very bad tells the examiner nothing. Lexical Resource rewards precision: how bad, and in what way.

The corrected version:

Air pollution in big cities has reached dangerous levels, and governments must take urgent steps to tackle it.

Use it in a new situation. A few days later, tackle comes back in review, and you use it in a Speaking Part 3 answer about transport:

Banning old diesel cars from city centres is one way to tackle air pollution.

On a word list, ecology would sit next to its translation and you’d never notice the mistake. It only came to light when you wrote the sentence yourself and got an explanation. In LetsWords, every sentence you write on a topic gets feedback like this, explained in your native language. Lock in the structure with the free solve a problem and take steps exercises.

Vocabulary that works for any topic

Topic words give you something to talk about, but an argument holds together with words that work in every topic: linkers between ideas, ways to describe change, comparisons. They have their own article: IELTS Writing vocabulary: linking words, trends and comparisons.

Another layer is collocations that fit any Task 2 topic: have an impact on, play a role, take into account, take action. And pairs that learners mix up in essays on any topic: affect vs effect, economic vs economical.

The full sets of these words are in the free LetsWords exercise sections:

Collocations: set combinations of verb and noun, adjective and preposition;
Linking words for Writing, grouped by function: adding, contrasting, cause, example, conclusion;
Confusing words: pairs that are easy to mix up in your own writing.

Each expression comes with its meaning, examples, a common mistake with an explanation and an exercise that checks your answer.

How LetsWords helps you learn IELTS vocabulary

LetsWords is a trainer where you don’t just recognise IELTS vocabulary, you learn to use it without mistakes. It runs in your browser; the interface is in English, and explanations and feedback on your mistakes come in your native language: Russian, Korean or Vietnamese.

You don’t have to build your material from scratch. There are IELTS B1–B2 and IELTS C1–C2 sets, academic expressions for IELTS and TOEFL, collocations and phrasal verbs. You can add collocations from the topic pages to a collection and learn them alongside a ready-made set.

You use every word. The card gives you a definition and examples; you can switch the definitions to English and reveal the translation only when you need it. Then you write a sentence with the word you’re learning. Not sure what to say? The generator suggests an idea in your native language at the difficulty you choose, and you put it into English.

Your mistakes get explained. LetsWords points out usage and grammar mistakes, suggests a correction and a more precise way to phrase it, and explains them, as in the example above. The feedback takes your goal into account: for an exam, it pays attention to whether your words and phrasing fit, even in a single sentence.

Words come back. In review, you see the meaning in your native language, recall the English word yourself and write a new sentence with it. Spaced repetition brings words back in later sessions based on how you did before.

Then comes Writing. Once words start coming to you on their own, test them in a full text. The IELTS Writing section has hundreds of Task 1 and Task 2 prompts on a range of topics, one-criterion exercises on a passage of your answer, including Lexical Resource, and full answers with detailed feedback against all four criteria. For a complete preparation plan, read our guide on how to prepare for IELTS at home.

Move from a word list to practice: you write a sentence on an IELTS topic, LetsWords shows the mistake and explains how to say it precisely, and review locks the collocation in for the exam. When you sign up, you’ll answer a few questions about your goal and level, and LetsWords will set up your practice; you can try the feedback before you pay.