IELTS Reading: The Tips that No One Tells You About
By Boreychenda Ouk, ACE Teacher
Reading is the most popular of the four macro skills tested by IELTS, but this does not make it the easiest. As an IELTS Get Ready teacher, I meet with new students almost every week and hear complaints at each session including:
“I don’t even understand what I was reading.”
“How do I get a high score in reading?”
“I can’t seem to focus at all, what should I do?”
“What is the different between Yes/No/Not Given?”
“How do I find the headings?”
In this article, I will not give you an overview of the basic rules of the IELTS reading test. Rather, I hope to show you what went wrong during your last test, using the five common complaints above.
There is one clear and important thing that most candidates tend to forget. There is nothing wrong with not understanding every single word of a reading passage. Do not put yourself down or demotivate yourself. It is a reading task. Your job is to skim and scan to find the answers, not to translate the whole passage.
It is not easy for candidates, especially first-timers, to attain a high score in IELTS reading, but it is not impossible. To improve your score or prepare for your first test, read and use the suggestions below.
Never spend 20 minutes on one reading passage. Give yourself up to ten minutes at the end of the test to check your answers carefully. You will usually be able to spot at least a few mistakes that you had not noticed earlier.
Relax and sleep for eight hours before the test day. If you are lacking sleep and you force your brain to read non-stop, your brain will lose focus. This explains why some students say they cannot remember what they have read and have to read passages again.
Read the questions and skim and scan reading passages. Again, you are not here to translate or summarise reading passages. Skim and scan for an answer and then move on.
Always look out for keywords. When you read the questions, decide what the keywords are and underline them. Scan for your keywords in the reading passage, and be aware that synonyms will be used.
Practice, practice, practice. Nothing beats practice. Even if you have received 100 pieces of advice, you still need to practice and apply that advice. Read at least three pages per day for one month, and feel yourself improve.
During my own preparation for the IELTS reading test, I found Yes/No/Not Given or True/False/Not Given and Matching Headings tasks to be the most challenging ones.
With Y/N/NG or T/F/NG, you have to be clear about WHEN to answer YES, NO or NOT GIVEN.
Answer YES when the sentence you are looking for has the same meaning in the reading passage, with synonyms and grammar structures the only differences.
Answer NO when the sentence you are looking for has the opposite meaning in the reading passage.
Answer NOT GIVEN when the reading passage does not discuss the point that you are looking for.
For Matching Headings tasks, there are three steps.
Step 1: Read the given headings.
Step 2: Underline the keywords in each heading.
Step 3: Read each passage and scan for any keywords that match the headings.
Step 4: Repeat.
Remember to give yourself time. If you cannot find the heading, read the passage again and look carefully for the keyword or main idea that might point to the correct heading.
I hope you achieve the IELTS test score that you desire. Best of luck!