IELTS Writing Task 1 gives you a chart or a diagram. Then, it asks you to write an essay with at least 150 words to describe the given chart. That’s why we need to add more words related to figures and trends to our vocabulary. Do you know that there can be a lot of words and phrases describing stability?

In this article, we will give you full information about such words. This will help you know more different words you can use in your writings. That can bring you closer to achieving lexical resource points – which accounts for 25% of total points. At the end of the article, we will share some tips that can help you remember these words. With these tips, you don’t have to worry about forgetting vocabulary due to exam stress.

What makes eJOY’s list of phrases describing stability different

Instead of giving you a list of words with their meanings, we’ve been working hard to put in other necessary information. We also give you some examples of how you can use these words. Putting these words and phrases in certain context will help you recognize the differences between them. As a result, you will remember them more easily. This table includes:

Pronunciation

If you know how to write words, but don’t know how to pronounce them you will still easily forget those words, and won’t be able to use them in formal presentations or even in daily conversations. That would definitely be a waste.

English definition

When we learn new English words, we tend to look up for only the meaning in our mother tongue. That habit is bad for the language learning process, as you can only learn English with your first language mindset. That would be a major block to making your lexicon broader and knowing how to use words.

It’s important to remember that Vietnamese and English are two different languages coming from different cultures. It can be hard to fully understand the meaning of a word and use them fluently. To be able to do that, you should learn both English definition and your mother tongue meaning.

Languages go hand in hand with culture (Source: Pexels)

Past form of verbs

The data you see in IELTS Writing Task 1 are usually taken from the past. That means you need to pay attention to tenses of the verbs.

Some verbs in English are irregular verbs. That means the past form of them is not the original verb with an “-ed” suffix like the regular verbs. For instance, the past form of “keep constant” is “KEPT constant”. Adding past forms of the verbs reminds you to pay attention to irregular verbs.

Examples

The final column of the table includes examples of how to use these words. This part helps you use the words correctly and naturally like native speakers. So don’t miss this important section.

Words and phrases describing stability

No.	Vocabulary	Pronunciation	English definition	Past form	Examples
1	maintain	UK /meɪnˈteɪn/ US /meɪnˈteɪn/	to make something continue in the same way or at the same level	maintained	We have been able to *maintain* prices for our customers at their current level.
2	remain	UK /rɪˈmeɪn/ US /rɪˈmeɪn/	to stay in the same place or in the same condition	remained	Most commentators expect the basic rate of tax to *remain* at 25 percent.
3	level off	UK /ˈlevl ɒf/ US /ˈlevl ɑːf/	If a rate or amount levels off, it stops rising or falling and stays at the same level	leveled off	House prices now seem to be *levelling off* after the steep rises of the last few years.
4	flatten out/ off	UK US /ˈflætən/	to stop rising or falling, and stay at the same level	flattened out/ off	1) A fall in house prices is unlikely; prices are more likely to *flatten off. 2) If the housing market continues to* *flatten out* or even decline, we’re in for some tough times.
5	stagnate	UK /stæɡˈneɪt/ US /ˈstæɡ.neɪt/	to stay the same and not grow or develop	stagnated	1) Their economy was *stagnating*, while Japan and Asia’s “tiger economies” were booming. 2) Millions of people have watched their incomes *stagnate*.
6	stabilize	UK /ˈsteɪ.bəl.aɪz/ US /ˈsteɪ.bə.laɪz/	to cause something to become fixed and stop changing	stabilized	In China, the policy of one child per family was introduced to *stabilize* the country’s population at 1.6 billion.
7	keep constant	UK /kiːp ˈkɒn.stənt/ US /kiːp ˈkɑːn.stənt/	to keep something the same	kept constant	Unlike density-dependent limiting factors, density-independent limiting factors alone can’t keep a population at constant levels.

References

Some other phrases also used to talk about stability, a state of unchanging, no fluctuation

keep stable/steady/unchanged/the same level
remain/unchanged/steady/stable/constant
stay the same/stay constant at
maintain the same
no change in
level out at
on a level with/at

How can you remember those expressions?

To master words and phrases describing stability, you need to:

Write them down in your notebook
Practice constructing sentences with those words
Repeat the word learning process until you can use them fluently

However, this process might not be simple for some of you. Being too busy with work and have too little time might be the main reasons. Or maybe, you get discouraged by the boring and seemingly never-ending note taking process.

Let me share with you a very useful tip. With technology developments these days, you are just one click away from all of these steps.

My 4 steps of enhancing IELTS vocabulary

S1 – Download eJOY Extension on Google Chrome.
S2 – Select the new words, double-click on them or click and drag to look up for your mother tongue and English definitions.
S3 – Click +Add to save the words with the suitable meaning in your online Wordbook.
S4 – Play games with those words regularly.

Use eJOY extension to look up words — Looking up words using eJOY Extension

The special thing is, you don’t need to worry about when you should come back to the words. The eJOY extension already helps us do that thanks to the improved spaced repetition algorithm. When you’ve done studying some words, as you move on, the previously learned ones will soon be forgotten. The solution to that problem is simple. Just when you’re about to forget some of the words you learned, eJOY will remind you to come back to them every day.

eJOY reminds you to study — eJOY reminds you to learn words everyday

Not only that, our development team also links eJOY extension to Youtube videos that contain the words you’re learning. That way, you can practice using such words within the context that the natives usually use.