Listening · Unit 2: Common mistakes
L09: 30 words Bangladeshi students misspell in Listening
Target band 6 to 6.5
You heard the word. You understood it. You typed it. And you still lost the mark. Why? Because you wrote accomodation instead of accommodation. In IELTS Listening, a spelling mistake makes the whole answer wrong. No half marks. This lesson gives you the 30 words that catch our students again and again.
Why this matters
Many students lose two or three marks in every test only because of spelling. That's often half a band. And it's the easiest half band to win back, because the same words come up again and again.
The 30 words
Look at the tricky part of each word. That's where people make mistakes.
| Word | The tricky part |
|---|---|
| accommodation | double c and double m |
| government | the n before m |
| environment | the n before m |
| necessary | one c, double s |
| Wednesday | the silent d |
| February | the r after b |
| library | the r after b |
| restaurant | "au" in the middle |
| beginning | double n near the end |
| business | "busi", not "bisi" |
| temperature | "pera" in the middle |
| separate | "par", not "per" |
| receipt | the silent p |
| colleague | the "ague" ending |
| questionnaire | double n |
| equipment | never add an s |
| knowledge | silent k and "dge" |
| opportunity | double p |
| recommend | one c, double m |
| appointment | double p |
| convenient | "ven-i-ent" |
| guarantee | "ua" after g |
| maintenance | "ten", not "tain" |
| architecture | "ch" sounds like k |
| vegetable | the e in the middle |
| comfortable | "fort" in the middle |
| conference | "fer" in the middle |
| laboratory | "bora" in the middle |
| parallel | double l in the middle |
| occasionally | double c, one s |
Why these words are hard for us
In Bangla, we mostly write words the way we say them. English doesn't work like that. Some letters are silent, like the d in Wednesday. Some double letters make no sound difference at all, like the double m in accommodation. So you can't spell these by sound. You have to learn how they look.
How to learn them for good
- Five a day. Learn five words each day. In six days, you're done.
- Say the letters out loud. "A-C-C-O-M-M..." Your mouth remembers what your eyes forget.
- Write them from dictation. Ask a friend to read the words, or record yourself. Then write them without looking.
- Make your own list. Every time you misspell a word in a practice test, add it to a notebook. Your list matters more than mine.
A small relief
British and American spellings are both accepted. Colour and color are both fine. Centre and center are both fine. Just don't mix them in a strange way, and don't invent a new spelling.
Try it yourself
Find the mistakes. Some words are correct.
- accomodation
- goverment
- Wensday
- necessary
- equipments
- libary
Show the answers
1) accommodation. 2) government. 3) Wednesday. 4) correct. 5) equipment. 6) library.
Honest note
This list won't cover every word. The test can use any common English word. But these 30 come up often, and fixing them builds the habit of checking spelling carefully.
Your task today
Take five words from the list. Write each one five times while saying the letters out loud. Tomorrow, test yourself without looking.