Somewhere around B2, English stops being about grammar. Your tenses are fine. Your conditionals are fine. And yet the examiner writes “range of vocabulary limited”, and you have no idea what to do about it, because you already know thousands of words.

The problem is not how many words you know. It is which ones you reach for under pressure. Under pressure everybody reaches for very, a lot, important and problem — and those four words are what a C1 examiner hears as B2.

Here are 40 words that do the work instead. Each one comes with the words it lives with, because a word without its collocations is a word you will recognise and never use.

1. Instead of “very”

• considerably — considerably higher / cheaper / more difficult. “The second option is considerably cheaper.”
• markedly — markedly different / better / worse. Slightly formal. Excellent in writing.
• remarkably — remarkably good / calm / quick. Carries surprise with it.
• increasingly — increasingly common / difficult / rare. The single most useful adverb in academic English.
• utterly — utterly exhausted / pointless / convinced. Only with absolute adjectives. Never “utterly tired”.

2. Instead of “a lot of”

• a substantial amount of — money, time, evidence, work.
• a great deal of — uncountable things: effort, thought, attention.
• numerous — countable: numerous attempts, numerous occasions.
• a handful of — the opposite, and useful: a handful of people turned up.
• widespread — widespread support / criticism / damage.

3. Instead of “important”

• crucial — crucial to / for. “Timing is crucial to the whole thing.”
• significant — a significant increase / difference / factor.
• vital — vital that… “It is vital that everyone knows.”
• fundamental — a fundamental difference / flaw / right.
• pressing — a pressing issue / concern / need. Important and urgent.

4. Instead of “problem”

• an issue — raise an issue, address an issue. The safest word in professional English.
• a setback — suffer a setback, a temporary setback. Something that delays you.
• a drawback — the main drawback is… A disadvantage, not a disaster.
• an obstacle — overcome an obstacle, a major obstacle to progress.
• a shortcoming — the shortcomings of the current system. A weakness, politely put.

5. Verbs that quietly raise your level

• to address — address a problem, address concerns. Deal with, but grown-up.
• to undermine — undermine confidence / an argument / someone’s position.
• to acknowledge — acknowledge a mistake, acknowledge that…
• to highlight — highlight the need for, highlight a difference.
• to accommodate — accommodate a request / different views / a change.
• to anticipate — anticipate problems, anticipate demand. Expect, with preparation attached.
• to implement — implement a policy / a change / a system.
• to undertake — undertake research / a project / a review.
• to contribute to — contribute to a discussion / to the cost / to the problem.
• to rely on — rely heavily on, cannot rely on. Note the preposition. It is not optional.

6. Ten more that examiners notice

• a discrepancy — a discrepancy between the two figures.
• a tendency — have a tendency to, a growing tendency.
• a compromise — reach a compromise, a reasonable compromise.
• an assumption — make an assumption, challenge an assumption.
• a distinction — draw a distinction between.
• feasible — a feasible option, technically feasible.
• reluctant — reluctant to admit / to spend / to change.
• ambiguous — deliberately ambiguous, an ambiguous answer.
• inevitable — it was inevitable that…
• counterproductive — it would be counterproductive to… One word, whole sentence saved.

How to actually get them into your speech

Take five, not forty. Choose five from this list that you could have used in the last week. Only five. A list of forty words learned once is a list of forty words forgotten twice.

Learn the collocation, never the word. Crucial on its own is a dictionary entry. Crucial to the outcome is English you can say. The phrase is the unit of learning, not the word.

Write one sentence about your own life for each. Not an example sentence — your sentence, with your job and your Tuesday in it. Words attach to memories far better than they attach to definitions.

Then force yourself to use them. Say your five words out loud in the next conversation you have, even clumsily. A word you have used once is yours. A word you have only read is a word you will recognise on a page and never produce out of your own mouth.

Why this is what separates 6.5 from 8

If you are sitting IELTS, CAE, CPE or FCE, look at the mark scheme. Lexical resource is a quarter of your score, and by C1 level almost every candidate’s grammar is broadly accurate. Range and precision of vocabulary is where the marks actually move. The same is true, less formally, in a job interview: nobody notices your past perfect. Everybody notices whether you said “it was a big problem” or “it turned out to be a significant setback”.

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Written by a working English teacher who got tired of watching good students sound stiff.

Related: 60 English collocations that instantly make you sound more natural · Why your English sounds wrong