Review: The Choosing Is The Skill — IELTS Precision: Choose The Exact Word, Not The Rare One

What You Should Now Control

Five moves, one per sprint, and the habit underneath all of them. Tick only what you could do in an exam.

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After this chapter, I can…

Sort the Whole Chapter

Thirty frames, five jobs. Any frame that hesitates is the one to review.

Sort each item into the correct category

Changes how dense the sentence is

Sets your distance from a view

Replaces a clause with a phrase

Moves the strength of a claim

Refers back and classifies

Unassigned

the introduction of

the removal of

the extent to which

the degree of

the way in which

the case for

it is widely held that

there is a case for

the argument runs

advocates point to

critics counter

the received view

given

in light of

owing to

absent

barring

failing that

at the very least

at best

at worst

no more than

if not

to put it more strongly

this dynamic

this tendency

the pattern

such a shift

the phenomenon

this reasoning

Restraint Check

Twelve items. In five the correct answer is the plainer form — because flexibility is the choosing, not the density.

Twelve items across the five clusters. Almost every option is grammatical — you are choosing on fit, as you have been all chapter.

In five of the twelve the plainer form wins. A candidate who has learned this chapter as a list of impressive frames will fail exactly those five, and that is the whole point of the ratio.

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This is a supporting sentence inside a paragraph, giving one concrete example, and your argument turns on which department acted. Which version?

One Paragraph, Five Clusters

A single passage using frames from all five sprints. Four of the ten gaps take the plainer form.

Write ONE word or short phrase in each gap, using the bank below. Four of the ten take the plainer form, and four bank items are distractors that claim something the passage does not support.

0 of 10 blanks filled

a congestion charge changes travel behaviour depends less on the charge itself than on what a city offers instead of driving.

In 2019 one council a charge covering its central zone, and traffic in that zone fell over the following year. pricing alone alters behaviour, and the case is intuitive enough: drivers respond to cost as they respond to any other price. that first-year fall as the clearest evidence available.

the mixed record since, however, a flat claim is hard to defend — the fall reversed in two of the four cities that tried it, and nobody has separated the charge from the downturn that followed it.

, the charge changed the composition of traffic even where it did not change the volume. Deliveries were rescheduled and through-traffic rerouted, while commuter numbers moved only .

— pricing applied without a usable alternative, which pushes the cost onto the people least able to avoid it — has appeared in several cities that copied the scheme. is the objection a solution paragraph has to answer.

Four Frames, One Paragraph — Then Say One Sentence Three Ways

A ceiling of four frames, and then the thing the chapter is actually named after.

Write one Task 2 body paragraph using at most four chapter frames, then rewrite one of its sentences three ways.

Prompt

Some cities are removing private cars from their centres entirely. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Part 1 — the paragraph. Write ONE body paragraph, 180–260 words, arguing either side.

The ceiling is four. At most four frames from this chapter, from any of the five clusters. Fewer is not weaker. Zero is defensible.

And respect the chapter's four ceilings, which are easy to forget because they live in different sprints:

| | | | --- | --- | | nominalisations | two per paragraph | | compressions opening a sentence | two per paragraph | | classifying references | one per transition | | to put it more strongly | one per essay |

Part 2 — the rewrite. Choose one sentence from your paragraph and write it three ways: denser, plainer, and at a different strength. Same content in all three.

That second part is what the chapter is named after. A writer who can produce one sentence three ways and pick between them is writing flexibly; a writer with one impressive version is not.

You may invent plausible detail about a city. Do not present invented figures as published research.

Part 1 — your body paragraph*

180–260 words. At most four chapter frames.

Part 2 — one sentence, three ways*

Label the three versions. Same content in each.

Which of your three versions belongs in the paragraph, and why?*

The reason matters more than the choice.

Which Items Will You Not Use

Name the ones you are leaving behind. Deciding not to use a frame you have learned is a result, not a retreat.

Learners can ask follow-up questions and keep the thread going.

Thirty frames in this chapter. You will not use thirty in an exam, and you should not try to.

Name three you have decided not to use under exam conditions, and give a reason for each.

The reason should be about what the frame claims or promises, not about your memory. I will not use the received view, because it promises a challenge and I do not always have one ready is the shape. I keep forgetting it is not.

And one thing worth saying plainly about this chapter: several of these frames are worth having purely so you can recognise the promise when somebody else makes it — in a Reading passage, or in an argument you are about to answer.

just now

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