‘Equivalent’ is a noun meaning ‘equal to’ and can also be used as an adjective. It came into English via the French language during the 1500s and was originally used to refer to people; particularly powerful people, to day that they were of equal worth. Today the usage has changed. It can be used to talk about any two things that are of equal value.

Examples:

• At the moment the currencies are the same and one Singapore dollar is the equivalent of one Australian dollar.
• One hour of walking is equivalent to 20 minutes of hard exercise on a bike.

Collocations: When you learn new vocab, make sure that you note collocations too. For this group of words some collocations are:
enable to, enabling device
have energy for, get energy from
enforcement of, law enforcement
single entity, legal entity
the equivalent of, equivalent to, equivocate on

Check the meanings of the words if you don’t already know them. Check the meanings of the various forms as sometimes they are different. You can check them at Time4english by clicking the words (http://www.time4english.com/aamain/lounge/awl.asp).

Vocabulary for IELTS – Academic Word List 52

Complete the sentences below with the correct form of the word.

1. Some houses with solar panels actually produce surplus _______________. (energy, enforce)
2. A good IELTS result ______________ a student to study at a university in an English-speaking countries. (enable, entity)
3. Twins in utero sometimes don’t behave as separate _______________. (equivalent, entity)
4. IELTS 6 is _______________ to B2 on the CEFR scale. (equivalent, enable)
5. When dealing with large numbers of people law _______________ is critical. (energy, enforce)

Answers (in the wrong order)
4. equivalent   5. enforcement   1. energy   2. enables    3. entities