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Dealing with the IELTS Reading Test
Here is a strategy for the IELTS Reading Test. This works and is the best way to do the test quickly and accurately.
It does, however, need lots of practice to get it going well and you really do need to practice just knowing about it is not enough to change your score.
My reading strategy:
- Look at the title and any subheadings to get an overview of the passage.
- Skim through the 1st paragraph – this should introduce the whole text like the introduction in your writing introduces your main ideas.
- Now go straight to the questions and start to work through them one by one
- Underline the key words there are 2 types location and content – the location words will help you to find the place in the passage (these will be number, names, specific vocabulary or content nouns), the content words will give you the answer (these will be the other words with the exception of the, a etc..)
- You will usually have more than 1 key word maybe 3 or 4 and it is important that they are all found together – don’t be seduced by one key word
- Sometimes the key words will be synonyms or paraphrases of those in the text
- Be especially careful of words like most, many, everybody, nobody as these may be the key to the answer
- Be careful also of negatives as these can be very tricky and the text will normally be the opposite of the question and vice versa
- With Y,N,NG try to make the question statement into a proper yes/no question so that you are looking for the answer yes or no. If you can’t answer yes or no then it will be NG.
- No/false is always a contradiction and NG means we don’t have enough information to answer the question
- With headings if you are not sure between 2 or 3 choices the choose all of them and go to the next paragraph by process of elimination you will find the correct one
- You will never have to read the whole passage there is not enough time and to do this wastes time as there will be parts of the text that you don’t need to answer the questions.
- If you can’t find the answer then mark the question so you know to come back and move on – you can come back at the end of the section, again at the end of the test and finally when you are transferring your answers – so don’t worry.
When you begin to use these techniques don’t worry about timing in the reading. In my experience getting the right answers is the most important thing and once you can do this with more ease then the speed will come automatically.
When you check the answers MAKE SURE that you understand why your answer wasn’t correct – this is very important for your understanding of exactly how to locate the correct answer next time.
Take your time – if it takes 2 hours that is not a problem as long as you are finding the correct answers. This will pay off and once you are clear what to do you can start to reduce the time it takes. Try to allow extra time for passage three. Remember that passage 1 shouldn’t be too hard so don’t ‘over-think’ the answers just keep moving on and use your instinct if you really can’t find the answer.
If there are specific parts of the reading and specific types of question that you are finding challenging tell your teacher so they can go through these with you this is where you are ‘leaking’ points and you should your efforts in these areas. Sorting out a difficult question type will add marks to your score and that is how you improve your band.
Building up your score by addressing the areas you lose marks is the way to improve. If you simply keep going through test after test you will not make a big difference to your overall score and you will find that your results just keep going up and down.
There are additional techniques for each type of question and understanding these as well will ensure that you get the right answers.
You can find more information and practice of all these techniques in my online programme IELTS Step By Step
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