IELTS grammar: how to use quantifiers in IELTS for optimal results

You probably know some quantifiers, even if the word ‘quantifiers’ doesn’t mean much to you.

Quantifiers are words that go before nouns and show the quantity. But quantifiers are NOT numbers – they are used INSTEAD of numbers.

Here are a few examples of quantifiers:

All – all students, all water

A lot of – a lot of men, a lot of research

Plenty of – plenty of resources, plenty of information

Some – some apples, some coffee

Quantifiers can be countable, uncountable or both – it means some of them can only be used with either countable or uncountable nouns, and others can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns. They can also be formal or informal. You should know that, to choose the right one!

Quantifiers need to be memorised. Yep, there’s no way around it. But hey, your time investment in remembering them will produce a better IELTS score!

In today’s lesson video Adam, the ex-IELTS examiner with 10 years of experience that we partnered with, tells you everything you should know about quantifiers and gives you plenty of examples.

Click here to start the lesson and do a quick quiz

In the lesson click “Watch” to watch the lesson and then click “Think” to answer 5 questions on it.

If you make a mistake, the lesson will take you to the correct answer in the video. Video hints work on desktop computers, on mobile devices you will just see the correct/incorrect answers.

Quantifiers are important for reading and listening – quantifiers and their synonyms can be found in the Reading texts and also in the Listening recordings or questions.

In the IELTS Speaking and Writing using them earns you extra points for Lexical Resource. Go here to check YOUR own Speaking score.

The IELTS Writing Task 1 Academic is where they really help you get a higher score. They are also useful for Writing Task 2 because inevitably you will need to talk about the majority of people, or how much something affects a particular group, etc. A range of synonyms-quantifiers will drive your score up.

We often include the entire list of words from the video here, on the blog, but for this lesson we won’t. Why? Because your vocabulary will benefit from watching the entire video, pausing it and writing the quantifiers down. When you write words down, it helps you remember them, and you need to memorise the quantifiers – so this exercise will help you.

Enjoy the lesson, and by the time you’ve finished watching it, you should have a list of quantifiers. To make this list even more useful, add a note next to each quantifier whether it is countable or uncountable, formal or informal.

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