IELTS
MODULE: READING
TIPS
You have to read 3 long sections, each with multiple paragraphs, and answer 40
questions (13 to 14 per section). Unlike the listening test, no extra time is given at
the end to transfer your answers to the answer sheet. Time can be a major
constraint since you only have an hour to finish the test.
Beat the fear – read as much as possible
Our first IELTS reading tip is to read as much as possible. By I mean, do as much
general reading as possible. I suggest you focus on reading short articles on topics
that interest you or on topics that are common in IELTS – newspapers and
magazines are a great resource here.
One reason why this is such a good idea is that many candidates freeze in the
reading believing it is too hard and so fail to get their band score. If, however, you
read enough “native English” before the exam, you will become more and more
confident in looking at texts where you don’t understand every word. Confidence
is a very important concept in IELTS.
Improve key skills – skimming, scanning and reading in detail
A major problem in the exam is the length of the texts and you will not have time
to read them all carefully. You need to train your speed reading skills so that you
can read as efficiently as possible. 2 skills here are skimming which is reading
quickly for general meaning and scanning which is looking for specific
information.
Scanning is what one does, for example, when looking for a phone number in a
directory. You know the specific information you are looking for and you go down
the page quickly to find it. This technique is used when answering questions such
as multiple-choice and matching. You scan the passage to quickly find the
information mentioned in the question. Once you find it, you get the answer from
the passage and write it against the question.
Skimming refers to reading a paragraph quickly to get an idea of what it is about,
without trying to understand its details. This technique is part of the initial
reading (see below). It can be modified (reading a little slower) to answer
"Provide headings for the paragraphs" , "In which paragraph does this information
appear in the text?" and "Author's views" type of questions.
You may sometimes see advice saying that you don’t need to read in detail. That
is a Bad advice. You shouldn’t read the whole text in detail but you will need to
read parts of the text in detail – if you want to get the right answer.
Skimming and scanning are useful skills to help show you where the answer might
be: reading in detail tells you what the answer is.
Time management – experiment to see what works
Pay attention to timing; do not spend too long on one passage or question.
Because the texts are so long you need to have a definite strategy for how you
manage your time in the exam to make sure you finish on time. This means
deciding:
How long you look at the text before answering questions
How long you spend on each question
How long you spend on each group of questions
How long you spend on each text
Do you leave time at the end to go back at look at unanswered questions?
There is a lot to consider here. You will find books and websites that insist you do
it their way. They may claim to have a magic formula and that you must do this or
you must do that. Ignore them. Their advice may be good for some people but not
for you.
The key point here is that different learners have different styles and different
needs. The best advice here is to experiment and try different approaches and see
what works best for you.
Focus on the question – avoid careless errors
The texts in IELTS are typically quite hard, so candidates spend as much time as
possible reading the texts. Well, a huge amount of mistakes are made by not
focussing enough on the exact question. It can be easy if you are in a hurry to miss
a word such as “always” or “often”: the problem is those sorts of words can
change the meaning of questions.
There is an easy solution to this problem: it is to go back and look at the question
before you write in the answer. You will normally save yourself 2/3 marks this
way.
Learn how to underline
This is a very specific piece of advice. You may believe it is wrong to write in books
and generally I’d agree with you, but IELTS is different. A very strong suggestion is
that you should underline words in the text in the exam. There are at least two
reasons for this:
if you underline key words in the text, it can help you organise the text and this
will save you time in the exam
if you find an answer, it is sensible to underline the part of the passage that
relates to the question and to write the number of the question next to it in case
you find a better answer later
How you do this will depend on you and your style. Some people underline
different types of words in different ways. I’d only add that less is more: if you
underline too much, it can become confusing.
The questions follow the text – normally
This is a very practical piece of advice and could save you a lot of wasted time.
Typically, the questions will come in the order of the text: so the answer to
question 3 will come after the answer to question 2
The questions or the text – which do you read first
There is no one right answer here.
Text books tend to advise you to read the text quickly first so that you know how
the text is organised. This helps as you will save time later by knowing which
paragraph will contain the answer. This can be a good approach, particularly for
high level candidates.
Many teachers say that you should read the questions first and not read the
whole passage. There is logic here too. Normally, you do not have to understand
the meaning of the whole passage to answer the questions, so why waste time
reading it? This approach can work, especially for lower level candidates who
might not understand too much of the passage anyway.
The only right way is the way that works.
Mark Important Keywords
Look out for the title, headings and any special features such as capital letters,
underlining, italics, figures, graphs and tables
Do not panic
Do not panic if you do not know anything about the subject of the text; all
the answers can be found in the text. If you do not know the answer to a
question, attempt it but do not waste time; move quickly onto the next one.
Check spellings and meanings
The word(s) you use must be taken from the Reading text; you must not change
the form of the word(s) in the text. Also, Check your spelling. Be careful to use
singular and plural correctly
Focus precisely on what you are asked to do.
If the question asks you to complete the note ‘in the….........’ and the correct
answer is ‘evening’, just use ‘evening’ as your answer; note that ‘in the evening’
would be incorrect.
Word Limit
Pay attention to the word limit; for example, if you are asked to complete a
sentence using no more than two words, if the correct answer is ‘silk shirt’, the
answer ‘shirt made of silk’ would be incorrect.
Answer all questions.
Attempt all questions; there are no penalties for incorrect answers, so you have
nothing to lose. There is no negative marking for incorrect answers.
True/False/Not Given
The toughest questions are the True / False / Not given and Yes / No / Not given
ones. Practise doing these questions till you are confident. Make sure you do not
answer True / False for a Yes / No question and vice versa. Such an answer will be
considered wrong and fetch no marks.
Overview
Get an overview of a text before dealing with the questions. Do this by reading
the title and subtitle as well as focusing on the beginnings and ends (but not JUST
the first and last sentences) of paragraphs. This helps you process the information
in a text (and thereby answer the questions) more quickly.
