Sometimes ‘acronyms’ can be helpful to remember things so I have come up with one for IELTS reading – SSS (sounds like a snake) but it stands for Simple - Systematic - Successful!
Simple
Reading isn’t difficult but it is often made difficult, in my opinion by students making ‘a mountain out of a molehill’ in their zeal to find shortcuts, tricks and speedy results. In my experience these things don’t really exist in language and all that happens is that you end up ‘tied in knots’, ‘none the wiser’ and with a low score. There is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and tackling the issue head-on. So keep it simple – like this:
- Look at the main title
- Look at the sub-title
- Decide what the topic is
- If you are still not sure skim the first paragraph – you only need an overview
- Now go to question 1 and choose your key words
- One will be for the location in the text
- Others will be to enable you to find the answer
- Now find the place in the text and read the WHOLE sentence
- Pick the answer
- Move to the next question
- Can’t find the answer? – Leave it, move on and come back later
Systematic
Don’t play games. Start with passage one work through the questions and then go on to passage 2 and afterwards passage 3.
- Passage 1 is the easiest and to complete this quickly will give you confidence
- To complete passage 1 in around 20 minutes means you have 1/3 done – again confidence
- You are unlikely to put answers in the wrong place
- It’s logical to go from A to B to C etc. and will result in less panic
- Developing a systematic process means that in the exam you will focus on this and not have time to get into any kind of ‘state’
- You will also realise that there is plenty of time to do this
- This will keep you calm as you simply ‘follow through’
- You’ll not be afraid to leave and question
- You’ll not be afraid to come back later
- You might even start to enjoy the reading 😊
Successful!
- It stands to reason that this will be the result
- Once you start to see the answers ‘pop out’ at you, you will know that you have ‘cracked ‘ the reading and your scores will climb
- Very soon you won’t need to spend so much time on your reading as every test will produce the same result and you will be ready for the reading in the exam
- If your technique is strong and you can achieve a few marks above what you need then even in a ‘hard’ reading you should still get the result that you want
I have seen these results happen for students over and over so I can assure you that this is the very best way to approach the IELTS reading test.
So next time you try a reading test, remember the 3 SSS and keep it Simple, Systematic and you’ll be Successful!