Academic vocabulary in reading

Read academic texts in meaningful chunks by recognising collocations and stance vocabulary: how strongly a claim is made, and whether the writer accepts it. Practised with an IELTS-style passage on citizen science and a summary completion task.

Level C1 25 min5 exercisesLesson 10 of 12 in Reading C1

Trains: IELTS Reading – Summary completion, IELTS Reading – Multiple choice, TOEFL iBT Reading – Read an Academic Passage

What you'll learn

Recognise common academic collocations and read them as single units of meaning
Judge the strength of a claim from reporting verbs, hedges and boosters
Use collocation knowledge to complete summaries accurately and quickly
Match academic phrases in a passage to their plain-English paraphrases

Lesson content

7 steps · 5 exercises · 25 min total

1. Warm-up2 questions
2. LearnThe skill and the strategy
3. ModelSee how it's done
4. PracticeQuestions 1–10: Summary completion + 3 more
5. Exam tips3 tips
6. Key vocabulary12 words
7. SummaryReview and finish

Start lesson