Spotting paraphrase and synonyms

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Academic Reading 30 minfoundation

Spotting paraphrase and synonyms

IELTS rarely repeats the passage's words; it repeats its meaning. Learn the seven ways question writers paraphrase, why word-matching leads you into traps, and how to build a synonym bank that pays off in every question type.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

Recognise the main paraphrase techniques: synonyms, word families, opposites with negation, active/passive, general/specific, numbers in words and restructured sentences
Explain why options that copy the passage's exact words are often distractors
Notice changes in strength (suggest vs prove, contribute to vs cause) that change an answer
Predict likely paraphrases before scanning
Build and review a personal synonym bank from your own practice

How question writers think

When an IELTS question writer prepares a question, two habits matter for you:

The correct answer is usually paraphrased. The question describes the key sentence using synonyms, a different grammar structure or a more general word.
Wrong options often recycle the passage's exact words. A multiple-choice distractor may copy a phrase from the text but attach it to the wrong idea, the wrong person or the wrong time.

So a perfect word match should make you more careful, not more confident. In completion tasks the answer word itself must be copied exactly from the passage, but the sentence around the gap is still paraphrased, so you have to recognise the meaning first to find the right word.

Seven paraphrase techniques you will meet

Technique	Passage says	Question says	Watch for
Synonyms	The town's population doubled.	The number of residents rose twofold.	Single words and phrases with the same meaning
Word families	the rapid expansion of cities	cities expanded rapidly	Noun ↔ verb ↔ adjective: expansion / expand, economy / economic
Opposite + negation	Few participants completed the course.	Most participants did not finish the course.	An antonym plus not: rare = not common; failed = did not succeed
Active ↔ passive	A team at the University of Dhaka developed the test.	The test was created by university researchers.	The doer moves into a by phrase or disappears
General ↔ specific	rice, wheat and maize	cereal crops	Category words: vehicles, devices, staff, institutions
Numbers in words	48% of respondents; between 1990 and 1999	almost half of those surveyed; in the last decade of the twentieth century	Fractions, decades, centuries, 'doubled', 'trebled', 'a quarter'
Restructured sentences	Although solar panels are expensive, they last for decades.	Solar panels are durable despite their high cost.	although ↔ despite; because ↔ due to; led to ↔ was caused by

Worked example: peeling back the layers

Passage: Contrary to popular belief, the overwhelming majority of the city's early settlers did not arrive by sea; most travelled overland from neighbouring provinces.

Statement (True/False/Not Given): Few of the first inhabitants came to the city by boat.

Answer: TRUE. Not one important word in the statement appears in the passage, yet three paraphrase techniques connect them.

Synonym'early settlers' = 'first inhabitants'.
General ↔ specific'by sea' = 'by boat'. A boat is the specific way of travelling by sea.
Opposite + negation'the overwhelming majority… did not arrive' = 'Few… came'. If almost all did NOT come by sea, then few DID.
What a word-matcher doesScans for 'few', 'inhabitants' or 'boat', finds none of them, and wrongly chooses NOT GIVEN. The information is there; only the words have changed.

Word-matcher vs meaning-matcher

Word-matcher (band 5.5)

Passage: While the new drug reduced symptoms in most patients, researchers were surprised to find that it had little effect on those over the age of seventy.

Q: What surprised the researchers?

A the drug reduced symptoms in most patients B older patients responded poorly to the drug C the drug worked faster than expected D younger patients reported side effects

Chooses A because five words match the passage exactly.

Meaning-matcher (band 7+)

Finds the signal 'surprised to find that' and reads what follows: 'it had little effect on those over the age of seventy'.

'had little effect' = 'responded poorly'
'those over the age of seventy' = 'older patients'

Chooses B. Option A is true, but it is not what surprised anyone. It is the expected result, introduced by While.

Option A is a classic distractor: true information, exact words, wrong question. Always ask 'does this option answer the question?', not just 'is this in the text?'

Starter synonym bank: high-frequency IELTS paraphrase sets

Core meaning	Words the passage may use instead
go up	increase, rise, grow, climb, expand, double, soar (= rise sharply)
go down	decrease, fall, drop, decline, shrink, dwindle, plummet (= fall sharply)
cause	lead to, result in, give rise to, trigger, bring about, contribute to (= partly cause)
be caused by	result from, stem from, be due to, arise from, be attributed to
show	demonstrate, reveal, indicate, illustrate, confirm (strong), suggest (weak)
important	significant, crucial, vital, essential, key, major
problem	issue, challenge, difficulty, obstacle, drawback, setback
help	assist, aid, support, facilitate, enable, benefit
old / earlier	ancient, former, previous, early, traditional, historic
new	modern, recent, novel, innovative, contemporary
many / most	numerous, a large number of, the majority, the bulk of, widespread
few	a handful, a minority, scarcely any, rare, a limited number
say / believe	claim, argue, maintain, assert, hold the view that
try	attempt, seek to, strive to, endeavour
change	alter, modify, adapt, transform, revise, shift

Practice: recognise the paraphrase

8 questions

1
Match each technique to an example of it (passage → question).
Synonym
Word family
Opposite + negation
Active ↔ passive
General ↔ specific
2
Match each passage expression to its paraphrase.
roughly a quarter
the 1990s
trebled
a handful
the majority
3
Which statement is the best paraphrase of: 'The scheme was abandoned after three years owing to a lack of funding.'
4
Which word is NOT a possible paraphrase of 'cause' in the sentence 'Heavy rain can cause landslides'?
5
Passage: 'Early results suggest the vaccine may reduce infections.' Statement: 'Research has proved that the vaccine reduces infections.' Is the statement a fair paraphrase?
6
Choose TWO sentences that mean the same as: 'Only a minority of the students owned a laptop.'
Select 2.
7
Passage: 'the rapid industrialisation of the region'. Question: 'The region rapidly.'
8
Which sentence means the same as: 'The manuscript was rediscovered by a librarian in 1952.'

Answer every question to check.

Build your own synonym bank

1
Harvest after every practice
For every question you check, write the question words next to the passage words that matched: first inhabitants → early settlers. These are real IELTS-style pairs, which makes them more useful than any word list.
2
Organise by meaning, not alphabet
Group all your 'cause' words together, all your 'increase' words together, and keep topic sets (environment, health, technology). You will see the same families again and again.
3
Learn whole word families
economy, economic, economical, economist, economically. A question can switch the form, so learn the noun, verb, adjective and adverb together.
4
Note strength and collocation
Mark weak vs strong words (suggest vs prove, contribute to vs cause) and note natural partners (heavily congested, widely believed).
5
Review with spaced repetition
Vocabulary items from each Abroadway lesson go into your flashcards automatically. Add five of your own harvested pairs every week.
6
Test yourself in reverse
Cover the passage column, look at a question word, and say three ways a passage could express it. This is exactly the skill the next tip uses.

Predict the paraphrase before you scan

Before you search the text, spend five seconds asking: how else could the passage say this?

Question: The government was slow to respond to the crisis.

slow → delayed, late, did not act until, took months, was criticised for its hesitation
respond → react, act, take action, intervene
government → the authorities, officials, the state, ministers (all likely paraphrased, so this is a poor scan target)

Then scan for something stable (a name, a date, the word crisis or a synonym such as emergency), and when you find the area, you will recognise 'officials took almost three months to intervene' immediately as the matching idea.

This habit turns a passage full of 'missing' words into a passage full of recognisable meanings.

Paraphrase practice: every question in different words

14 min11 questions

Work at exam pace. The timer is a guide — it won't stop you.

Paraphrase map for the practice (study after checking your answers)

Q	Question wording	Passage wording	Technique
1	people who kept animals; first known users	local shepherds; earliest recorded use	General ↔ specific; synonyms
2	soon after it was discovered	for more than two hundred years… only in 1779	Time contradiction (FALSE)
3	owned by the English government	guarded; criminal offence (no ownership stated)	Related words, missing information (NOT GIVEN)
4	could only be used with high-quality graphite	could come from impure graphite	Opposite + negation (FALSE)
5	made it possible to produce… different hardness	allowed manufacturers to control the hardness	Synonyms + restructuring
6	made a large profit from selling	the patent was later sold	Partial match (NOT GIVEN)
7	is based on a Greek expression that means	from the Greek word meaning	Synonyms
8	a higher proportion of clay	the more clay in the mixture	Comparison restructured
9	not a true invention	rather than a genuine invention	Synonyms + negation
10	war had prevented France from obtaining	at war… cut off from supplies	Synonyms + cause restructured
11	hardly altered for over two centuries	changed remarkably little since Conté's time (1795)	Synonyms + number into words

Final quiz: paraphrase in action

10 questions

1
Which sentence is the best paraphrase of: 'Attendance at the festival fell by nearly a third in 2019.'
2
The majority of the respondents said they rarely used public libraries.
Most people surveyed visited public libraries frequently.
3
The new law was introduced in 2015 following a campaign by local residents.
The law was passed after pressure from people living in the area.
4
Although coffee was first cultivated in Yemen, the plant itself originated in Ethiopia.
The coffee plant originally came from Yemen.
5
Passage: 'Researchers observed a sharp decline in bee populations.' Question: 'Bee populations sharply.'
6
Choose TWO sentences that mean the same as: 'It is unusual for the plant to flower in winter.'
Select 2.
7
Passage: 'Lack of sleep may contribute to weight gain.' Which statement goes beyond what the passage says?
8
Match each list to the general word a question might use instead.
doctors, nurses and paramedics
laptops, tablets and smartphones
schools, colleges and universities
floods, cyclones and droughts
9
In a multiple-choice question, one option repeats a phrase from the passage word for word. What should you do?
10
Find and correct the mistake:
The government's decide to build the bridge was widely welcomed.

Answer every question to check.

Key takeaways

Words from this lesson

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paraphrase

verb / noun/ˈpærəfreɪz/

to express the meaning of something using different words; a restatement in different words

ভিন্ন শব্দে একই অর্থ প্রকাশ করা

The question paraphrases the passage, so look for the same idea, not the same words.

synonym

noun/ˈsɪnənɪm/

a word or phrase that means the same, or nearly the same, as another

সমার্থক শব্দ

'Obstacle' is a common synonym for 'problem' in IELTS passages.

deposit

noun/dɪˈpɒzɪt/

a layer or amount of a mineral, metal or other substance found naturally in the ground

খনিজের মজুদ বা স্তর

A rich deposit of graphite was found in the hills of north-west England.

misnomer

noun/ˌmɪsˈnəʊmə/

a name or word that is wrong or misleading

ভুল বা বিভ্রান্তিকর নাম

Pencil 'lead' is a misnomer, because pencils contain graphite.

ingenious

adjective/ɪnˈdʒiːniəs/

very clever, original and inventive

বুদ্ধিদীপ্ত; উদ্ভাবনী

Mixing graphite with clay was an ingenious solution to a wartime shortage.

invalid

adjective/ɪnˈvælɪd/

not legally or officially acceptable

অবৈধ; অকার্যকর

The court ruled the patent invalid because it was not a genuine invention.

substitute

noun / verb/ˈsʌbstɪtjuːt/

a person or thing used instead of another; to use something instead of another thing

বিকল্প; প্রতিস্থাপন করা

Cut off from English graphite, France needed a substitute.

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