Managing the time in IELTS Reading and Writing is one of the issues that IELTS students bring to me the most. It seems that for many IELTS students the BIG problem in both IELTS Reading and Writing is often making sure they complete everything in the time available. As this seems to be such a big topic, I thought it would be a good idea to suggest some ways in which this can be solved.
So, here are 5 good strategies for dealing with the fact that you have a time limit in both the reading and the writing parts of the test.
1. There is plenty of time
From where you are now this may not seem like a possibility but believe me once you are able to consistently achieve your target score or better still slightly above this you’ll see that there will not be any time pressure any more. The people who devise the reading and writing tests allow time for you to achieve the score that you need. If you are looking for Band 6 then your level of English should allow you to get enough correct answers in the time. If you require Band 8 then the exam setters assume that your English level is enough to enable you to achieve this within the hour.
If you cannot do this then you need firstly to check your language level, with no time restriction - can you get most of the answers correct? If you can them what is missing are strong techniques and reading skills. If you cannot, then your English level is perhaps not quite strong enough yet to achieve this. This should tell you what you need to do to improve your situation.
2. Move quickly
You have 1 minute, approximately, per question. If you spend 5 then you are potentially losing 4 questions. The likelihood is that these 4 questions will be at the end of the test where they are more difficult and where you may need a little more time in any case. It is not worth spending more time on questions in passage 1 at the expense of questions in passage 3 if you are trying to achieve 34 out of 40. If you work efficiently then you should have time at the end to go back and check any questions you are still not happy with and if you don’t, then it’s better to lose one or two questions in passage 1 than jeopardise the whole of passage 3 which is what can often happen.
Often you will find an answer as you search for others. Also as you work through questions such as matching the more you answer the fewer choices there are so it will be easier to match any you can’t find straight away if you keep going and manage to match the later choices.
3. Use common sense
I remember once working on a reading with a very high-level student who got completely stuck on question 3 in passage 1. I couldn’t understand what the problem was as the answer was very clearly in the first line of the text. When I checked the reading with her it transpired that she adhered to a rule she had learned that said if question 2 is in paragraph 2 then question 3 must be after this. I didn’t see any justification for such a rule and once she looked back at the first paragraph the answer to this questions (and also a few others) became obvious. Why should it be expected that all questions are in chronological order? The important thing is to understand the text and the way in which information is presented in it, not an arbitrary set of rigid rules that have no real basis. Be very careful of such rigidity – use the questions and the text to locate the answers and also use your common sense.
If the question is about a process and the information about this process is located in the 2nd paragraph then surely that is where you will find it – not in a paragraph about statistics even if it means going backwards in the text. Be open to anything. Using key words means that this is all possible so key words and common sense will help you far more than any so-called ‘rules’.
4. Don’t be a ‘headless chicken’
So many students I meet rush off into the text searching frantically for the answers without any strategy. Other students skim through the whole text without knowing what they are looking for. Both of these are ‘headless chicken’ strategies – running round in circles with no clear direction!
Only read to discover information you require. Reading with no purpose is a waste of time and as you know time is short. You need to use every precious minute well.
Searching for answers randomly in the hope that you will see it is looking for a ‘needle in a haystack’ and one of the most time-wasting activities you can do in IELTS reading.
Have good, clear strategies that will help you to locate the information quickly and accurately so that the answer will be clear.
4. Make sure the answer fits
Don’t try to squeeze an answer into a question if it doesn’t make sense (back to common sense). Often students will find one key word in the text and simply assume that this must be the answer even if it doesn’t make sense. This is the danger of choosing just one key word. There is nothing else to test it against. Make sure you have 3 or 4 key words and if you can find all of them then you can be more certain about the answer.
Where the answer doesn’t really fit check and see if the keyword you have chosen is located somewhere else as well – you will probably find that in the second location more of the words in the question are present and the answer is more obvious.