Back to IELTS Precision: Choose The Exact Word, ...BackConcept

Neutral-Looking Nouns With A Charge

Nouns that look neutral but usually introduce something negative, and how to use them in line with your argument.

11 micro-lessons

Preview · progress not saved — Chapter 1 is free

Nouns Have Prosody Too

The last three sprints were about verbs and intensifiers. The same thing happens to ordinary nouns.

The sentence

The decade saw a spate of important scientific breakthroughs.

Grammar: fine. Spate is a countable noun taking of and a plural. Meaning: a number of things happening close together, which is what the sentence means.

And it is wrong, in exactly the way he committed a generous act was wrong.

A spate of what? Answer that from memory, without looking anything up, and you will already have the sprint.

1 / 2

What Fills These Nouns

Twenty-four completions, three nouns, one box for the leftovers. Same instruction as always: sort first.

Sort each item into the correct category

a spate of ___

a glut of ___

a veneer of ___

fits none of these three

Unassigned

burglaries

senior resignations

factory closures

last-minute cancellations

formal complaints

arson attacks

unsold housing

cheap oil

graduates in the sector

empty office space

near-identical online content

second-hand cars

respectability

legitimacy

professionalism

democratic process

impartiality

calm

measurable improvements

scientific breakthroughs

careful judgements

well-earned promotions

genuine reforms

honest disclosures

The Charge and the Exceptions

Four of these are reliable. Two are not, and the two that are not are where the marks are.

The four that are reliable

spate — a sudden run of unwelcome events in a short time. A spate of burglaries. It is not simply several: it carries suddenness and clustering as well as the negative charge. Etymologically it is a river in flood, which is exactly the image.
glut — too much supply, and the too-much is the point. A glut of unsold housing. It implies that the oversupply has consequences, usually that value has fallen.
backlash — a strong negative reaction against something. Note the preposition. It is always a reaction, so something has to have happened first.
veneer — a thin surface layer concealing what is really underneath. A veneer of respectability. This one does not just lean negative; it accuses. Writing a veneer of consultation says the consultation was for show, and that is a claim you have to have earned.

All four are as constrained as last sprint's verbs, and the check is the same: look at what you are about to put inside the noun.

1 / 4

Containers and Contents

Four nouns drawn as what they behave like — including the one that holds good and bad at the same time.

Four panels: a river in flood carrying broken debris, a warehouse piled with far more crates than the single buyer needs, a polished wood sheet lifting at one corner to reveal rough split board beneath, and a single inherited house of which one half is restored and the other half is derelict.

Click to zoom

Three of these tell you what is inside before you look. The fourth does not, and that is the one to be careful with.

Match Noun to Content

Eight nouns, eight completions. Two of the completions belong to nothing on the list — decide which.

NoteMatch each noun to the completion that suits it. Read all eight on the right first: two of them are near-misses that a careless reader will attach to the wrong noun.

0 of 8 connected

Terms

Definitions

Charged or Two-Directional

Three chains. The last one is the sprint — a noun that will not carry your judgement unless you put it there.

Answer the reasoning step first, in ten words or fewer, then write the noun or phrase. Chain 3 is the one to slow down on: nothing there is a polarity error, and the sentence still fails.

0 of 6 blanks filled

Chain 1

The sentence to complete: The county recorded a ______ of eleven arson attacks in a single fortnight.

Candidates: series / spate

Step 1 — Are the events unwelcome, and are they sudden and clustered?

Step 2 — Therefore the expert writes: The county recorded a of eleven arson attacks in a fortnight.

Chain 2

The sentence to complete: The decade produced a ______ of important scientific breakthroughs.