- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- IELTS Reading Tips »
- 5 tips to help you pass your IELTS Reading test
5 tips to help you pass your IELTS Reading test
IELTS Reading can often be an area that poses great challenges for students. On the one hand there are a lot of questions to complete and the texts themselves can be quite difficult and on the other there is a time constraint which can at best add some stress to the exam and at worst, cause students to panic.
The key, as with everything in IELTS, is to be well prepared. Knowing all the techniques is important but unless you practice these they won’t help you a lot. ‘Reading about’ is not the same as ‘being able to do’.
Here are 5 things that you must get good at in order to do well in IELTS reading
- Learn how to identify key words in the question – usually there will be more than one. Make sure you choose words like, only, most, everyone, always etc. as well as words that will help you locate the place in the text.
- Make sure you look at the grammar of your answer – so many students get the answer wrong because they forgot to change the word to suit the grammar of the sentence (especially in some 2/3 words answers and summaries).
- Grammar is also important when looking at paragraphs for the headings question. Be very aware of words like however, but, nevertheless etc. – these introduce a ‘contrast’ which means that what you are currently reading may be the opposite of the reality. Negatives also need watching either in the question or the answer – they can be very tricky and you need to look more carefully at exactly what is written.
- Skimming and scanning are important skills but make sure you understand why you are doing them. You scan for your answers by finding the key words across the text. Skimming is looking for an overview.
- . You must finish all the passages to be certain if a high band. Panic often sets in in the reading and you need to make sure this doesn’t happen. Knowing the strategies and practising them (this is the most important thing) will help you to get faster at finding the answers.
Reading takes some practice and patience but once you have mastered getting the answers the speed will come and you will do it effortlessly.
Popular posts
Translate »