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IELTS Reading – It’s all about Key Words?
Students often ask me how to improve their reading and although there are several techniques that I teach and help students to perfect, the one thing that always makes a difference is the use of Keywords.
Key words help you to locate the place in the text where the answer lies AND to pick out EXACTLY which part of this group of sentences is the one that you need for the correct answer.
Finding the place in the text is the first part of your task and the Keywords that you need to do this are ‘Location’ Keywords. These will typically be numbers, dates, names from the texts, nouns which describe the topic, specific phrases that are about the topic – they will all contain content related to the theme of the text. By using these keywords you should be able to locate the place you need to answer the question.
Sometimes your chosen Keyword may be mentioned more than once. The second group of Keywords will help you to discover which of these places in the text is the right one for the question you are answering.
This second group of Keywords ‘content’ Keywords will include the question words (how many, who etc.), more content words and, most importantly, many seemingly insignificant words that you may overlook like most, many, everyone, less fewer etc. and finally any negative words (these can be very tricky so be careful – remember the passage will have to say the opposite of the question)these words are often the key to the answer (especially in Yes, No Not Given and True False, Not Given). Students often either overlook these words or forget them once they start to look for the answer.
Once you have the Keywords (and there will normally be at least 2 or 3 and maybe 3 or 4) you need to find these words together within a sentence or two. Remember that often you will find synonyms of these words and not the exact words themselves. Don’t be seduced by one word – look for all of them close together as they are in the question if possible and then you can be certain that the place is right.
If you only find ONE Keyword then the chances are that you are NOT in the right place. Look again using your location Keywords and see if you can find a better place.
Now you have to be mindful of finding the exact part of the sentence or sentences that you need for the answer. Stay with your Keywords again here – they will help you. Keep going back to the question and reading it again so you are absolutely sure. You may think that this is a waste of time but in my experience once students start looking for the answer they forget the detail of the question and just get caught up in the Keywords – the Keywords are not the answer – they are there to help you find the answer.
This may seem like a lot of work and in the beginning it will take a little time. But I can guarantee that once you have practised this many times you will be able to find your answers really fast and with much better accuracy and will improve our score.
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