In the interview, Teacher B indicated that a poor knowledge of vocabulary was a major disadvantage for candidates in the IELTS reading test. He explained that difficult vocabulary would weaken the readability of a reading text and destroy a candidate’s motivation, sometimes putting undue pressure on a candidate under examination conditions. Teacher B’s statement corresponds with Farr’s claim in section 2.2.2. Teacher B emphasized that academic words, such as specialist terminology used in scientific or medical fields would increase difficulty in text interpretation. The candidates and the teachers made the common comment that faulty understanding of a single word may lead to misunderstanding of the whole sentence or paragraph, leading to the wrong answers being given in a reading comprehension test. Additionally, if
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candidates use improper strategies to deal with unknown vocabulary, they will hardly get high scores.