IELTS Reading TIPS

IELTS Reading – 10 top tips
For many academic IELTS candidates reading is the hardest paper and the one which
requires most training. Here I suggest some different ways to make that training as
efficient as possible. These pieces of advice are fairly general and are designed to help
you think about the best way to train yourself in IELTS reading and how to avoid some
common mistakes.
1. Beat the fear – read as much as possible

My first suggestion is to read as much as possible. By this I don’t 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 don’t 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. That’s 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 don’t need to read in detail. Incorrect.
Bad advice. You shouldn’t 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, don’t 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 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:
1. if you underline key words in the text, it can help you organise the text and this
will save you time in the exam
2. 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.I’d 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 don’t 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. I’d go further: whenever you
practise IELTS reading, use an answer sheet. This is what I do with my classes. Two
points:
1. 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
2. you need to fill out your answers in the 60 minutes. They don’t give you any
more time.

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IELTS Reading – 10 top tips

1. Beat the fear – read as much as possible

 how long you look at the text before answering questions

See this earlier post on time management.

6. Train yourself, don’t test yourself

7. Learn how to underline

8. Beware word matching – be careful with key words

9. The questions follow the text – normally

10. The questions or the text – which do you read first

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