IELTS Speaking tips for Band 7: why replacing “very” with context-specific vocabulary is one of the fastest ways to raise your IELTS Speaking score.
A few months ago, one of my students, Priya, sat down for a mock speaking test and gave me answers that were honestly… fine. Clear pronunciation, decent grammar, no awkward pauses. And yet, when I marked her, I kept landing on 6.
She was annoyed. “What am I doing wrong? I answered everything!”
So I asked her to describe her hometown again, and I told her to really listen to herself this time. Here’s roughly what she said:
“My hometown is very beautiful. The food there is very good. My grandmother’s house is very old, and honestly, life there is very peaceful.”
Four sentences. Four “very”s. That’s when it clicked for her.
Why “very” is quietly capping your IELTS Speaking score
Here’s the thing examiners aren’t going to say out loud but that matters enormously for anyone doing serious IELTS preparation: Band 6 lexical resource means you have “enough” vocabulary to get your point across. That’s it. That’s the bar. You can paraphrase, you’re understood, you’re done.
IELTS Speaking Band 7 asks for something more — the exact wording in the official band descriptors is that you show “some ability to use less common and idiomatic items” and an “awareness of style and collocation.” Notice “very” doesn’t even come up. It doesn’t need to. It’s the poster child of “common” IELTS vocabulary — the linguistic equivalent of wearing the same grey t-shirt to every event. It’s not wrong, it’s just… forgettable.
What I had Priya do instead
I didn’t give her a giant vocabulary list to memorize (that never works — trust me, I’ve tried it with hundreds of students). Instead, I gave her three buckets: people, places, activities — because almost every Part 1 and Part 2 question falls into one of these.
For people, instead of “very smart” or “very kind,” we worked with words like astute, perceptive, compassionate, charismatic. For places, instead of “very busy” or “very old,” we used bustling, hectic, historic, time-honored. For activities, “very hard” became demanding or strenuous, and “very boring” became tedious or mind-numbing.
The trick wasn’t the word list itself — it was training her brain to pause for half a second before saying “very” and ask, what bucket is this in, and what’s the sharper word for it?
The response that actually got her a 7
Two weeks later, describing the same hometown, Priya said:
“At first glance, my hometown might seem sleepy and uneventful, but once you get to know it better, it’s actually quite charming and authentic — the kind of place that offers real tranquility.”
Same city. Same girl. Completely different impression on the examiner. Nothing about her ideas changed — only her precision did.
An IELTS Speaking practice exercise to try today
Take three sentences you’d normally say about your life — your job, your city, your hobby — and see if “very” sneaks in anywhere. If it does, ask which bucket it belongs to (person, place, or activity) and swap in something sharper. Do this consistently for a week of IELTS Speaking practice and it stops being a “trick” and starts being how you actually speak.
That’s the real goal, by the way. Not memorizing fancy words for IELTS Speaking test day — building a habit that makes you sound like you, just a slightly more precise version, ready for Band 7 and beyond.
Struggling with the same “very” problem in your own IELTS Speaking practice?
I run live online IELTS coaching sessions at IELTS Sutra where we work through exactly this kind of vocabulary upgrade in real time.
DM me on Instagram @ieltssutra or reach out at contact@ieltssutra.com — I’d love to help you get past the Band 6 ceiling and into Band 7 IELTS Speaking territory too.
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Written by Amarjot Singh — 7+ years of experience
Certified IDP IELTS Trainer with an 8.5 overall IELTS score.