BACK is one of those words in English that has a million definitions, so when you are studying advanced vocabulary for the Cambridge Advanced or IELTS exam, you’re going to want to know how to use it. It can come up in phrasal verbs, expressions, compound nouns and adjectives or even all by itself.
With a family, but also being a teacher, back to school has become both a welcome and dreaded time of year for me. And with the war in Ukraine, the irony of the lyrics to “Back in the USSR” have taken on new meaning. With our wordspot series, we’ll focus on common words, their uses and collocations to help learners improve their Use of English skills in advance of an exam. This time, our word of the day is BACK.
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Why is vocabulary important for the Cambridge Advanced and IELTS exams?
If you’ve reached the point where you are even thinking about doing the Cambridge C1 Advanced exam or you’re aiming for a band 8 or 9 in IELTS, you’ve already got excellent English. You’ve probably spent hours pouring over books, reading grammar explanations, attending classes and listening to your favourite films and music in English. But the more you learn, you more you realise how much you don’t know, right? The biggest barrier to becoming a proficient user of English is vocabulary. Advanced vocabulary doesn’t just mean knowing the words for objects or activities. It also means knowing when to use those words, the context where they are appropriate and the syntax surrounding them.
Our word of choice for this wordspot is a classic example of advanced vocablary in English that tends to cause issues. How is it possible that a word as seemingly simple as BACK can have so many meanings? Do you know the meanings of the words below? If not, try out the materials to get a deeper understanding.
The materials
How many famous films and songs can you think of with the word BACK in them? A few, I’m sure. With these materials, we’ll take a close look at Advanced vocabulary using the word BACK, both in phrasal verbs and other uses. Then after a simple gap-fill activity, you’ll have to complete 6 Cambridge (CAE) Advanced key word transformations, all of which use BACK as the key word.
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