Recently quite a few students have complained to me about the fact that they don’t like to read lots of text (blogs, articles even, lessons) about IELTS study and preparation as they find lots of reading boring. While I find their honesty very refreshing, I really wonder if they have the right approach to the exam.
While video is a great way to learn online – unless you do the actual physical tests of listening, writing, reading and speaking there is very little chance of getting a high band. This is because IELTS is a skills-based exam and just knowing about the techniques and strategies is not enough to get you a good score in the exam. With skills-based learning you must do the tasks and practise the techniques in order to improve. IELTS isn’t fact-based so just watching and taking notes will not really help with your performance. Yes, it’s vital to know how to do things but unless you actually do them there will be little improvement.
How can you learn to drive a car without getting into it and physically learning the pedals, controls and moving in the street? Or how can you learn to play the piano without having a keyboard to practise on and practise regularly? These are skills based pursuits and languages are no different. The more you speak and listen the better you will become at them. Also, the more you read and write the better your reading and writing skills will be. Part of the test is reading and you have to read a series of texts some of them quite long and yes, maybe boring, but if you don’t engage with them you will not be able to get a high band.
It is a fact of IELTS life that you must read so video alone won’t be enough.
Knowledge + effort = success
There are things to do to make the reading less onerous if it really is a problem.
- Work on just one Section at a time
- Work on particular question types – the ones which are most challenging for you
- Don’t just do IELTS reading – find something that you are interested in. Perhaps a hobby or something work-related that way it will be more easily accessible and also interesting to you
- Break down the text – don’t try to read a whole article at once read 2 or 3 paragraphs or set yourself a time-limit of 15 or 20 minutes (the length of an IELTS reading section or Task 1)
- Alternate your video lessons with written lessons such as blogs and articles – these often give more detail and they will help you to ‘get more into reading’
Another important point is that once you do more reading you should find that it helps also with writing, The two are connected. If you understand and are aware of how texts work and can therefore answer all the reading questions well then you should be able to write better as you will understand how to put a text together.
So , win-win all around!!
Whatever you do to ease yourself into reading, it is vital that you actually do it. Reading is the one section of the test that I receive the most questions about so it is a problem for many people and I suspect many of the issues are around the reluctance to actually read something in detail and in its entirety. The fact is you have to do the reading test so ‘suck it up’ and get practising reading.