A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE FOR IELTS PREPARATION

Read Extensively: Read as much as you can and as often as you can. Get into the habit of reading a variety of text types that cover a range of topics. This could include English newspapers or news websites, novels, magazines and journals, short stories, non-fiction books, information sheets, essays, and blogs. Make sure that whatever you read is from a reputable source so that you are not exposed to bad writing that contains errors. Make sure that the type of texts you are reading are of a similar level of difficulty to those that appear in the IELTS Reading test.

Develop Your Vocabulary: The more extensive your vocabulary is, the easier you will find it to do well in the IELTS Reading test. The reason for this is that you will require a wide range of vocabulary to be able to clearly understand each reading text. You must also be aware of synonyms and paraphrasing if you are to identify the information required to answer the questions correctly. You can find new vocabulary to learn from IELTS practice reading texts.

Develop Your Reading Skills: Skimming and scanning are two of the most important reading skills required to do well on the IELTS Reading test and can be applied to all task types. Skimming means reading a text quickly to get a general understanding of what it is about. One way of doing this is to read the first and last sentences of each paragraph, as these often contain a summary of the information contained in the paragraph. Scanning means looking quickly through a text to locate specific facts or pieces of information. It is important for you to be able to find information quickly and accurately to do well in the Reading test.

Practice Makes Perfect: As you are preparing for the IELTS Reading test, make sure that you familiarize yourself with each task type and that you spend time practicing those task types that you are having the most difficulties with. If you know what is expected of you as soon as you read the instructions, you will save valuable time during the test itself.

Identify and Eliminate Common Errors: After completing a reading practice exercise or practice test, note the type of errors you made when answering the questions. Did you use more than the specified number of words? Was your spelling incorrect? Did you make a grammatical error? Were you confused by a distractor? Record and classify your errors and spend additional time working to eliminate them.

Look at the title of the text, any headings/subheadings, and the first line of each paragraph to get a general idea of what the text is about.

Next, read through the questions for the first reading text and start thinking about the information you need to find (name, place, number, word, etc.). Highlight any key words in the questions. Using this technique will help you to complete the questions more quickly.

Try to identify words and phrases in the questions that may be paraphrased in the reading text and make a note of them. Keywords in the question will help you to locate the answers in the reading text but these will often take the form of synonyms or paraphrasing. Don’t waste time looking for exact matches in the text. Remember, you should be matching meaning rather than words and phrases.

Look carefully at the questions to determine what information you need to find in the text and the format in which you should present your answer. Remember, if you fail to follow the answer format, your answer will be marked incorrect. For example, if you are asked to respond using ONE WORD ONLY and you use two words, your answer will not receive a mark.

Don’t assume that you know an answer before you have finished reading the text. Your own knowledge of a topic has no relevance here — IELTS is a test of language not subject matter. Use only the information from the reading text to answer the questions.

Stay focussed – your aim is to find answers in the text, not to read and understand every word.

Don’t spend too long on any one question. If you can’t find the answer after a minute or so, highlight the question for review, and move on. Type your responses into the answer boxes as you go.

Don’t overthink your answers. If you have found what appears to be the correct answer in the text, then it most likely is the correct answer. Don’t second-guess yourself as this will cost you valuable time.

Don’t leave any answer box blank – marks will not be deducted for an incorrect answer. If you are not sure of the answer to a question, make an educated guess.

Remember to keep an eye on the clock while completing the Reading test. You should spend around 15 minutes on Text 1, 20 minutes on Text 2, and 25 minutes on Text 3.

Read the instructions carefully and be sure to stick to the word limits specified for each task.

Read each question carefully and pay particular attention to qualifying words such as ‘mainly’ or ‘sometimes’.

Do not spend too long deliberating about the answer to a single question – each question is worth one mark. A good, general rule is to spend no more than one to one and a half minutes on each question in the Reading test.

Don’t leave blank spaces on the answer sheet. You will not lose marks for incorrect answers. If you don’t know the answer to a particular question, make an educated guess.

For most of the IELTS reading task types, the questions appear in the same order as the information which is presented in the text. If you have correctly answered questions two and four, you should easily be able to locate the part of the text that contains the answer to question three. Exceptions to this are the matching tasks where the questions are presented in a different order from the information in the text which contains the answers; and diagram labelling or summary completion tasks where the answers will generally be found in one section of the text, although not necessarily in the same order as the questions.

Remember your task is to locate the answers to the questions in the reading text — not to read the whole text in detail and try to understand every word. Most of the questions test your ability to locate specific information and then understand the sentence or sentences that contain that information. If you try to read the whole text for start to finish, it is likely that you will run out time to answer all the 40 questions.