Make the most of your Reading test:

look out for the title, headings and any special features such as capital letters, underlining, italics, figures, graphs and tables make sure that you understand the questions and follow instructions carefully pay attention to timing; do not spend too long on one passage or question do not try and read every word; remember, you are reading for a purpose if you do not know the answer to a question, attempt it but do not waste time; move quickly onto the next one do not panic if you do not know anything about the subject of the text; all the answers can be found in the text 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 do not worry if there is a word that you do not understand you may not need to use it check your spelling be careful to use singular and plural correctly focus precisely on what you are asked to do in completion type questions 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 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 attempt all questions; there are no penalties for incorrect answers, so you have nothing to lose check your answers

1. Beat the fear read as much as possible

My first suggestion is to read as much as possible. By this I dont mean do endless IELTS practice tests, 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 dont understand every word. Confidence is a very important concept in IELTS. If you look at Daily Exercises, you will find lots of possible exercises for you. The idea is to find something that interests you and read. Thats all.

2. Improve key skills skimming and 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. You may sometimes see advice saying that you dont need to read in detail. Incorrect. Bad advice. You shouldnt read the whole text in detail but you will need to parts of the text in detail if you want to get the right answer. Put simply, skimming and scanning are useful skills to help show you where the answer might be: reading in detail tells you what the answer is. You might want to look at this post on improving your reading speed.

3. Time management experiment to see what works

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. Much the best advice here is to experiment and try different approaches and see what works best for you. See this earlier post on time management.

4. 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. Mistake. Why? 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. Make sure that the question says what you think it says. You will normally save yourself 2/3 marks this way.

5. Learn the exam know the different types of questions

There are 8/9 different types of reading question that examiners may use. Before the exam, you should make yourself familiar with each type of question as they are slightly different. What I suggest is that you look at my

series of tutorials on the different types of reading questions as a first step to see what the question types are. The next stage is to experiment and see what techniques you are going to use for each type of question. This may mean that you approach different types of questions differently.

6. Train yourself, dont test yourself

One common mistake candidates make is to practise exam questions too much. Exam practice is important to learn the timing (3 above) and learn the question types (5 above), but that does not mean that every time you practise reading you need to do it in exam conditions. My suggestion is that you do some open book tests where you can see the answers as you do the questions. This way you will learn how examiners set questions and how to find the answers. If you just test yourself, this may not happen. How often and when you do this training will depend on your preparation programme.

7. Learn how to underline

This is a very specific piece of advice. You may believe it is wrong to write in books and generally Id 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: 1. 2. 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 as a check (see 4 above) 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.Id only add that less is more: if you underline too much, it can become confusing.

8. Beware word matching be careful with key words

One very common mistake is to match a word in the question with a word in the text and to think you have found your answer. It is almost never that simple and I am tempted to say that if the words do match, then that is not your answer. What you are normally looking for are either synonyms (words with a similar meaning) or paraphrases (short bits of text that say the same as the question. One reason candidates make this mistake is that teachers (myself included) tend to say look for key words in the question. This is helpful advice to show you where the answer might be and which paragraph it might be in. After that you need to go back and read the whole question carefully to see what the answer is.

9. 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. This can be very helpful in the exam if you are a quick worker who goes through the questions once for the easy ones and then a second time for the harder ones. If you have answer 4 underlined (see 7 above) and answer 6 underlined then you know where answer 5 must come. One word of warning. In certain types of question (eg paragraph matching) the order of the questions are jumbled.

10. 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 provided you dont spend too much reading and you have notes/underlinings afterwards. 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.

However, thee is always a third way. Life is not black and white. It is quite possible to decide to use different strategies for certain question types. In paragraph matching you are going to have to read the whole passage, so you might decide to read first then. In the short answer questions, you might decide you look at the questions first. As ever, you decide. The only bad piece of advice is the one that tells you you must do it their way. Ignore them. The only right way isa the way that works.

11. Fill out the answer sheet

Okay, this is an eleventh tip. Practise filling out the answer sheet before you get to the exam. Too many avoidable mistakes are made this way. Id go further: whenever you practise IELTS reading, use an answer sheet. This is what I do with my classes. Two points: 1. 2. when you go through the answers in your practice book, make sure that you have written the answer exactly as it is in the book anything else will lose you the point you need to fill out your answers in the 60 minutes. They dont give you any more time.

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Tips for the Reading test

Answer all questions. There is no negative marking for incorrect answers. The reading test is considered by many to be the most difficult part of IELTS. And with some justification. 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. Start by reading the How to prepare for IELTS - Reading test manual at the Hong Kong City University site to familiarize yourself with the test, the types of questions that are asked and strategies for answering them. The key to doing well in this part is practice. Read newspapers, magazines and books. Try and improve your reading skills and speed. Do the practice tests in Cambridge IELTS 3. The most important thing to understand is that the test does NOT assess your comprehension of the paragraphs. It does NOT test how well you have understood the passage. It tests specific skills called Scanning and Skimming. 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. The sections get progressively more difficult. Aim to spend about 15 to17 minutes on Section 1, 20 minutes on Section 2 and 23 to 25 minutes on Section 3. If possible, keep some spare time to check your answers. I would suggest ( and this is how I did it ) that you first read all the questions quickly to get an idea of what type of information is required and whether scanning or

skimming (or a combination of the two) is called for. As you read the questions, use a pencil to underline important information such as dates, places and names. Once you are through with reading all the questions, skim over the text and underline / mark important parts. If you see any information relating to the questions, mark it straight away. You may even be able to answer some questions as you read. Answer the questions one by one with the help of the underlined parts of the text. Having read the text once, you will find it easy to find specific information by scanning. The answers usually appear in the text in the same order as the questions. That is, the answer to question 4 will be earlier in the text than the answer to question 5. This need not always be true. It may apply to each question type rather than to all the questions taken together. The answer to MCQ 2 will appear before that to MCQ 3 and the answer to Matching question 2 will usually appear earlier than that to Matching question 3. However, the answer to MCQ 3 may appear before the answer to Matching question 2. This will not apply to questions like "In which paragraph does this information appear?" and "Yes / No / Not given". For these question types, the information may be scattered randomly anywhere in the paragraphs. As soon as you find an answer, write it against the question on the question paper. It is not always a good idea to try answering questions in the order in which they are asked. Read the instructions for each question very carefully. If the question specifies that you must not use more than three words in your answer, stick to three words. 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. Do not get stuck on any one question. If you can't get the answer, move on. You can always come back later.