Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
34 
Difficult Vocabulary 
Some IELTS reading questions cause problems because of difficult vocabulary. 
Read the following sentences from Cambridge IELTS 4, page 46. 
We've had a tradition of doctors being fairly powerful and I guess they are pretty 
loath to allow any pretenders to their position to come into it.
A better educated and less accepting public has become disillusioned with the 
experts in general, and increasingly sceptical about science.
Those surveyed had experienced chronic illnesses, for which orthodox medicine 
had been able to provide little relief.
Exercise 22: Which words in the sentences above have the following meanings? 
Write ONE WORD ONLY. 
1.
long-term or persistent: ………. 
2.
having doubts or reservations:
………. 
3.
reluctant or unwilling: ………. 
4.
conventional or normal: ………. 
5.
disappointed when something is 
not as good as you thought it 
was: ……….
 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
35 
Guessing the meanings of new words from the text (context)
You often don’t need to understand every word to carry out the required task. You can 
often guess the meaning of an unknown word, especially if you can see what the 
writer is doing. 
Exercise 23: 
Read the paragraph about obesity and answer the questions below. 
Obesity is a medical disorder that affects that approximately 20-30% of the 
population of the United States of America. It is an excessive accumulation of 
body fat that results from the storage of excess food energy calories in the 
body’s fat cells. 
1.
Most Americans suffer from obesity.