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Macmillan Collocations Dictionary in IELTS  Using the Macmillan Collocations Dictionary in IELTSSam McCarterThe Macmillan Collocations Dictionary (MCD) is a valuable resource for anyone using English in anacademic or professional context. It shows how the most frequent words in English typically combinewith each other, and with other words, to form natural-sounding chunks of language – and this is whatmakes it an especially useful tool for people taking the IELTS exams.There is an important distinction to be made between IELTS (the International English LanguageTesting System) and other exams. The purpose of IELTS is not to to test students’ knowledge of theEnglish language, but to assess their competence in using it. Students are not awarded a pass or fail, buttheir scores are reported on a scale ranging from 1 (‘Non-User’) to 9 (‘Expert User’).The word User is critical. Rather than testing students’ knowledge of grammar or of specific vocabularyitems, IELTS evaluates their ability to use the English language in the completion of tasks (within fairlytight time limits) in the four main skills of Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. This focus ontesting competence rather than knowledge has implications for students and teachers alike, especiallywith regard to learning vocabulary.Let us take, for example, a student who is about to take IELTS, and who has a reasonably largevocabulary, say of around 7,500 words. A vocabulary of this size is a desirable asset for anyone aiming toachieve a score of 6.5–7 in the academic version of IELTS. But learning words from vocabulary lists is notenough. If our imaginary student has no awareness of how words work naturally together, s/he will beat a disadvantage compared to someone who may have a smaller vocabulary (say 5,000 words), but who isable to use those words effectively by combining them in natural-sounding collocations..What this illustrates is the importance of learning to use vocabulary, at speed, across tasks within thefour main skills. This will improve fluency, clarity of expression, and naturalness – and hencecompetence in general.The need for such flexibility in manipulating words to create the kinds of combination that a fluentspeaker would produce naturally is what makes the Macmillan Collocations Dictionary an idealcompanion for students as they prepare for the IELTS exam.How producing natural collocations can help IELTS studentsThere are two aspects of vocabulary that illustrate the relevance of collocation and the value of adictionary like the MCD:• the relationship between frequency and ‘coverage’: research shows that the most commonEnglish words make up a high percentage of everything we read or write. The most frequently usedwords (the top 2,500) account for almost 80% of all text, while the 7,500 most common words make upover 90%.• The relationship between frequency and collocation: the more frequent a word is, the morelikely it is to enter into ‘partnerships’ with other words, forming combinations which convey a sense ofnaturalness and style.This has implications for processing information in the four main skills tested in IELTS download READ BOOKS BOOK DOWNLOADINDG 80%