Maya falls ill in the busiest week of the year. Sixteen words that IELTS candidates often spell wrong — learned four at a time.
Let's start with the story. The highlighted words are the ones to learn. Read slowly. Press 🔊 to hear a part read aloud.
It started with a tickle in her throat on a Sunday evening. By Monday morning Maya had a dry cough, an upset stomach and a headache that made everything feel awful. She rang the surgery and managed to get an appointment for that afternoon, although leaving work early in the middle of a busy week was a real nuisance.
The doctor was kind but brisk. A nurse checked Maya's height and weight, then asked how well she was sleeping and how much exercise she did. Nothing about her physical health was worrying, the doctor said; it was almost certainly a virus rather than a disease that needed treatment. Her advice was simple: rest, drink plenty of water and stay at home.
On the way back, Maya called in at the pharmacy to buy some medicine for the fever. Standing at the counter, she suddenly felt her keys slipping through a hole in her coat pocket. She was about to lose them down a drain outside the door, but she caught them just in time.
She cancelled all her plans and spent the rest of the week on the sofa. On the eighth day after that first tickle, she finally woke up feeling like herself again, and she laughed at how completely a small virus had turned her careful plans upside down.
How did Maya deal with being ill so far from home? What do you do when you are ill and still have things you must get done?
Each word is split into small parts. The yellow part is where people make mistakes. For each word: hear it → say it in parts → read the trick. Then press Hide the words and try to spell all four out loud.
Press 🔊, listen, read the clue, then type the word. If a letter is wrong, you will see which letters are already right. You get a second try before the answer appears.
In IELTS Listening, a correct word that is spelled wrongly scores zero. British and American spellings are both accepted — just be consistent.
Talk about a time you were ill, or looked after someone who was. Use at least five of the sixteen words. For two of them, spell the word out loud, part by part: "ap – point – ment".
You are registering at a doctor's surgery. Press 🔊 and write the missing word in each gap. Then check.
1. Reason for visit: a bad ______
2. Patient's ______ : 62 kg
3. Next ______ : Friday at 10 a.m.
4. Collect tablets from the ______ on the ground floor
5. Room: on the ______ floor
1. cough · 2. weight · 3. appointment · 4. pharmacy · 5. eighth
Write four or five sentences: "Some people think that governments should spend more money on preventing illness than on treating it. To what extent do you agree or disagree?" Use and spell correctly: disease, exercise, physical, medicine.
Which helped you most today: hearing the word, seeing it in parts, or the memory trick? Which word is still the hardest for you — and what trick could you invent for it?