IELTS Reading - Key points
1. Answers to the questions come one after another, meaning that the first question will have its answer at the beginning of the text, the answer to question two will come after it and so on. Follow this pattern to avoid unnecessary searches. However, rarely there are questions that deviate from this pattern. In this case, you will have to go back and seek relevant information in the part of the text that you would otherwise ignore. Always keep this in mind.
2. To answer the questions, you don’t have to read the whole text. As a matter of fact, you simply won’t have enough time to. Instead, you look at the questions first and underline keywords. After that, you can use either scan reading or a combination of both to find question-related sentences.
4. It is clearly stated on the official IELTS web page that Reading sections come in order of ascending difficulty i.e. Section One is the easiest of the three, Section Two is more difficult and so on. In spite of this test-takers often find themselves making as many if not more mistakes in the first section. This can be attributed to the so-called “adjustment period”, during which your mind adapts to the task.
During the exam, you can’t afford to waste too much time on a single question. If you get stuck – just move on to the next question, you might have time later on to return. Concentrating on a single question fruitlessly will wear you out both physically and mentally, which in turn will affect your overall performance in the remaining part of the exam. Remember, you cannot compromise your results because of one hold-back. At the very worst you would be guessing the answer, which is much better than wasting five or more minutes on it.
2. To answer the questions, you don’t have to read the whole text. As a matter of fact, you simply won’t have enough time to. Instead, you look at the questions first and underline keywords. After that, you can use either scan reading or a combination of both to find question-related sentences.
Sometimes you will need to look at the previous or the following sentence. In any case, this will drastically reduce the time required to complete the task, as you won’t be reading the whole text.
3. Both general and academic texts are likely to have a vocabulary that is unknown to you. As you prepare for your exam, it is advisable to underline any unknown words to look them up later. Prior to that, try to guess the meaning of it.
It can be difficult but using the context of the sentence you encounter it in and the adjacent ones you can make a pretty accurate educated guess. Remember, you might have to use this technique as it is nearly impossible to know every single word in existence, especially when it comes to academic texts which are full of specific vocabulary.
4. It is clearly stated on the official IELTS web page that Reading sections come in order of ascending difficulty i.e. Section One is the easiest of the three, Section Two is more difficult and so on. In spite of this test-takers often find themselves making as many if not more mistakes in the first section. This can be attributed to the so-called “adjustment period”, during which your mind adapts to the task.
During the exam, you can’t afford to waste too much time on a single question. If you get stuck – just move on to the next question, you might have time later on to return. Concentrating on a single question fruitlessly will wear you out both physically and mentally, which in turn will affect your overall performance in the remaining part of the exam. Remember, you cannot compromise your results because of one hold-back. At the very worst you would be guessing the answer, which is much better than wasting five or more minutes on it.
