IELTS Band 7+ Reading Mini-Course: Day 3

hi everyone Chris here from IELTS advantage with lesson three of our band 7 or above IELTS reading mini course so all through this week we produced a bound 7 or above mini course on reading so this is lesson 3 if you haven't watched lessons 2 & 1 definitely go back after you watch this and watch lessons 1 & 2 because they all kind of connect together so let's get going with lesson 3 so before we get into it let's just recap on what we did this week so on Monday we looked at lesson 1 which is the the key factors that will get you a 7 or above in reading and vocabulary and on how important vocabulary is and how to improve your vocabulary so if you haven't watched that go back and have a look lesson 2 which we did on Wednesday was all about the different reading skills how to use them some skills that you might not be aware of what they are how to use them on test day so that's really really important as well and then unless or today and Friday we are looking at strategy and we can summarize the whole course by looking at this so what we looked at on Monday was most students are looking for tips and tricks and hacks and shortcuts and I know that it's really tempting to think that these are going to work but the reason why they don't work and the reason why students fail a lot is because they ignore the things that are a lot more important the most important is mindset and we'll be looking a lot of at the end of this lesson we're looking at why that is so important vocabulary if your vocabulary is not out a certain level you're not going to be able to get a score that you you want skills that we did yesterday if you're unsure about how to use those skills what they are and what order to use them and most importantly that you are practicing those skills and improving those skills on a daily basis you're going to really struggle and today we're going to look at strategy how to have a step-by-step strategy for all the different types of questions how these can help you and we're going to do a little demo and today so this is going to be an interactive lesson so if you are watching live get ready to post in the comments your answers and we're gonna help you out with that and that's really gonna help you activate the knowledge that you have learnt this week so why strategy why not just go into the test like most people do with no strategy whatsoever so this is a good quote a fool with a plan is better off than a genius without one this is really really applicable to not only the IELTS reading test but the writing test speaking test on the listening test you can get two students of let's say there are identical twins and they've had exactly the same experience on their English level is exactly the same but one of them has a plan and the other one doesn't have a plan one of them has a strategy and the other one it doesn't have a strategy the one that does have a plan one that plans out everything has a thinks in a strategic way about everything and prepares in a strategic way and does the questions on the reading test in a strategic way I would bet that that student is going to get a higher score than the one that doesn't the other reason why you need a strategy for the reading test is there are so many different types of reading question matching information true false not given yes no not given matching heading short answer matching names diagram labeling matching sentences summary completion multiple choice questions I'm on and on there even more than that so why do they have so many of these questions like when you were learning to read in school they might have just given you some multiple choice questions or some comprehension questions why are they giving you all of these different types of questions well think about why you were doing the IELTS test you're doing the IELTS test on the reading test specifically to prove that when you move to an english-speaking country move to London or Toronto or wherever you want to move to that you will be able to understand English when you're reading it and reading is not just testing one small thing that multiple choice questions or comprehension questions it's you're going to be tested in a variety of ways so that's what the test does on a test is test different skills different sub skills so you need to be aware of these so because these are all testing different skills and different sub skills they're in different formats you need a different strategy for all of these different types of questions you need to understand what these questions are you need to be able to have a strategy for them learn on strategy apply it to questions and learn from your mistakes and get better using that strategy other reasons why you should use this step-by-step strategy because many of you will look at this I'm thinking like that's just way too much work I just want to get AB and seven or I just want to get a band-aid I don't want to do all of this can you not just teach me one strategy for all of the different types of questions well no because there's so many benefits to having a step-by-step strategy for each type of question number one it's a proven framework so the I'm not saying my strategies are the only strategies to use there are other ones and there's variations on other ones as well and I'm not saying a mine or the best or anything like that but what I will say is the students that I work with on my course under use these strategies they get high scores they we've helped thousands of students get the scores that they need and these strategies do work so you don't have to use mine you could use an other teachers but make sure you trust that teacher and that teacher knows what they're doing and they have to judge them on the results not what they tell you in their marketing number to practice in a standardized way so this is important because you want to practice in the same way over and over again when it comes to reading it's one of the key things you'll be doing during your practice is looking at your mistakes analyzing your mistakes I'm thinking about why you got those questions wrong so if you're using a standardized strategy it's taking out one of the variables that could be going wrong if you're using that standardized strategy you know that strategy was not the problem maybe you haven't learnt it effectively yet that could be a problem just practicing in a standardized way which removes one of those variables to worry about and it also means that if you practice in a standardized way you know exactly what to do on test day on test day you're going to have a million different things to think about and worry about why not make one thing how do you answer the the reading questions with strategy for that one less thing that you have to worry about and then you can just focus on finding the answers and then you can move on and get the score that you need hopefully it also saves a huge amount of time a lot of the strategies the reason why they exist on there the whole reasoning behind them is to save you time and to make sure that you get everything done on time and you know the reading listening on the writing test time is always a factor so you can be more efficient on test day and more efficient when you're practicing all the better so hopefully that convinces you why you should have strategies for all of these different different types of questions ok so what we're going to do now is we're going to look at a step by step strategy for matching headings not what I've done is I've taken just the the the most important essential elements of the strategy the one that I teach my students is is a little bit more complicated has a few more things added to it but for the purposes of this lesson I've just stripped it down into the essential things so we're going to look at a step by step strategy for matching headings bear in mind this is just the strategy for matching headings it is unique for matching headings the ones for this one this one this one this one this one they're all different so don't look at this one and think I'll just apply this to every question no that's thinking about it and completely the wrong way so please don't do that and then email me in a month saying you failed your test that's not what we're doing here so how would we go about matching headings so what I'm going to do is look at this and explain why we do these things so as we said each of the different types of question they're different so the first thing we're going to do here is skim the text first so some questions you're going to look at the text first some questions you're going to look at the questions or the options first for matching headings you're being tested on your ability to understand general meaning so that's the most important thing that you're going to do and to understand the general meaning of each each paragraph you're going to skim so you're not going to scan so again coming it down to do you understand these skills do you know how to use them so skimming the text first is going to really really help you understand the whole text and if you're doing this question if you see this question on the paper do this one first because it will enable you to understand the general meaning of the whole text and and that will really help you with this subsequent question so if you have like true false not given after or multiple-choice or something like that it will help you do that so again it's about being strategic about thinking about what skills to use about you know what is the best way for me to use my time on test day and what we're gonna do when we skim the text and skimming doesn't mean just read the first line in the on the last line means read the whole thing quite quickly what we're going to do to help us understand the general meaning is we're going to create our own heading for each paragraph alright the reason why I get students to do this is for two reasons when you tell a student to skim they will read it very very quickly but not really think about the meaning and a lot of students think skimming just means reading quickly well skimming means reading quickly to get the general meaning so a lot of people will leave the second part I they will read quickly but not really understand the general meaning so if you do that you're wasting your time you may as well not have done it so you know some strategies will will get you to do stuff but they're actually wasting your time there's no reason to do those things so what we're going to do is create our own headings and that will force us to really understand what we're doing another thing with skimming is many students read too quickly so skimming doesn't mean read as quickly as possible it means quick you know read quite quickly that's difficult to say read quite quickly in order to get the general meaning of what's happening so that will force you to do that the other reason the second reason why we do this is it helps us find the correct answer because a lot of the time not every single time but a lot of the time when you create your own heading then step to read the headings they will match up if not exactly nearly exactly the same so do you think that's the correct answer most likely it is so second one read the headings so we're not reading the headings first or we're skimming the text first then we're reading the headings but we're not trying to find the correct answer yet what we're doing is we're understanding those headings so if you don't understand the headings you won't be able to match them it's pretty simple and highlight any keywords or any information in those in those headings that will help you match up so we're not matching up yet number three we're matching up we're matching the most obvious headings the ones that you've created your own and are the same or nearly the same so what this is doing what this step is doing is it's helping us with time and being a bit more strategic about how we're doing the question because let's say there are four possible answers and two of them match immediately that means that has cut your workload by 50% and the ones that are a little bit more difficult you'll be able to focus all of your time on that and be able to hopefully figure out the correct answer and a more efficient strategic way so yeah so as you can see these strategies we don't just like wake up in the morning and think like what can we put together like what can we just throw together to satisfy students each step is the thought art each step is there for a reason so if you're working with your teacher and they are giving you strategies a great way to learn from them is ask the teacher why do we do this step why do we do this second one why do we do that instead of that and the teacher should be able to explain that to you and by understanding it you'll be able to absorb it and use it better and during practice on on test day so number four write possible headings so let's say we have answered two out of the four options and we're left with two other options the two options that were unsure about were not a hundred percent about right possible headings beside the remaining paragraphs all right so try and match those up and look at the paragraph and look at the headings and then you'll be able to look at in detail so now we're switching from skimming to close reading so we're looking at in a lot of detail we're looking at the paragraph we're not skimming it and we're trying to understand the general meaning and match that to the heading and then we need to make a conclusion you have to decide an answer and move on to the next one all right have the confidence to conclude I'll move on to the next one and if you apply that strategy it is going to help you but the number one thing to remember is you can't just read this and immediately improve to advance seven like that's not how it works you need to put it into practice like I can't watch Barcelona this weekend and watch like the best footballers in the world and then become an amazing footballer I would have maybe if I watched them and tried to do the things they do over and over and over and over again I would improve as a footballer but you know unless you do the thing you're not going to be able to improve so what we're gonna do now is I'm going to show you two paragraphs alright so we're going to replicate on Facebook life what the what we would do on test day so what I need is participation from you guys and in the comments what you're gonna do is you're gonna tell me the heading of the paragraph because remember we're going to create our own headings so I'm going to show you two paragraphs and I'm gonna ask you to create your own heading so just one sentence alright if you had to create a heading for this paragraph what would you write and put it in the comments so take you know take two minutes take three minutes and to read it quite quickly so probably wouldn't be spending that I'm at the time but you know it is a demo it's not the real test so we'll give you let's say two minutes and then what we'll ask you to do is decide the answer based on four options that we have here there's a bit of a delay with Facebook so it's getting shorter is it so should be okay though but we're doing this live so forgive us if there's a bit of a delay so okay what I want you to do so this is from the New York Times it is a movie review from a bar from the New York Times and about Mary Poppins take two minutes read that should be able to see it yeah read that and create a title for that paragraph I'll give you two minutes to do that [Music] you you to come up with your own title okay one more minute and write your title below doesn't have to be anything complicated just keep it simple the first thing that you can think of don't get lost in the words you don't understand just read it very very quickly remember we're skimming it and try and write something and don't be shy about making a mistake or anything like that everybody makes mistakes good Abhishek first person that's right you or answered on okay so we have melody song a lot of you're saying disap disappointments Oh song anything else comparing sign track I can't write all your ideas down but I'll write a few of them down try and get a the power of song song review good okay so all right very good well done and you'll see lots and lots and lots of other and suggestions in the comments we're gonna do one more and then we'll look at four options for headings so so look at this one so again try and do this one a little bit quicker not because I want the video to finish quicker but you're not remember you're skimming you're not looking at things in too much detail okay quick not too quick no too slow okay 30 seconds remember you're doing it as quickly as you can you're not reading in too much detail don't get lost in any of the vocabulary you don't know [Music] okay I'm right your ideas not what if you had to write one title for this paragraph what would you write okay so we have some ideas here improvement of character story about Mary Poppins a lot of you're saying fighting for rights hi to improve character and character comparison so interestingly some of these are about character and some of them are about a lot of you said like fighting for your rights and stuff like that so you probably just looked here a lot of you maybe have just looked here and seeing one thing fighting for your rights I'm picked up on that so is this the general meaning of the whole paragraph or is this just one part of the paragraph what is the overall meaning is it about character we don't know let's find out so let's keep that that's alright I'll not drop it doing all right so here are four options and I know this is not like this is not the real test do not comment like in the real test we wouldn't do this this is a lesson it's not it's not a mock test or anything like that so looking at what you thought were the the titles looking at these four options match four or two of these out of the four to the paragraphs so let's start off with paragraph one so I'll give you a second just to read these so how the movie compares to the original performances of the actors a review of the sign track the screenplay is poorly written okay this is some it might be very very obvious so when you do use this technique some of them will be really really obvious some of them not so obvious remember we don't use this technique to get a hundred percent of them immediately correct that will be way too easy but it's about being strategic and helping us as much as possible so let's have a look here out of the four song review melody song disappointment with a song comparing the sign track the power of song all of these titles that you came up with are there any out of the four that are very very obvious let's have a look and let's have a look at your three yeah so this one is paragraph one okay so let's have a look at the other one character comparison improvement of character story about Mary Poppins fighting for rights how to improve character any here so how the movie compares to the original mmm unsure it could be that one performances of the actors does character mean the same as actors but the performances of that probably not it's probably not that one the screenplay is poorly written screenplay could be about character so who decides on the character or the people writing the screenplay so it could be this one so what would we do now so let's go back to the strategy so much most obvious headings we've done that already right possible headings beside remaining paragraphs and close reading and so let's go back here let's delete this so let's delete these ones because these ones don't really help us okay so let's delete them and what we're going to do now is have a look so how how movie compares the original that's the first one so we'd write this beside it white okay so that's the first one and then the other one is a screenplay is poorly written now what we can do is we're not going to be skimming this we're not going to be scanning this we're going to be looking at it in more detail to find out which one of these two is the correct answer so also you have to remember original original also what you have to remember is vocabulary how's your vocabulary so you need to understand what original means you need to understand what screenplay means okay this if you don't understand what these mean then you can't compare it to this so when we were talking about earlier on this week when we were talking about how important vocabulary is now you're starting to see why and then there's also a lot of vocabulary in here that is going to be a little bit tricky let's look here warbling militantly suffragettes even something like this even something like this so unless you were aware of what these mean then you're going to struggle a little bit so improving your vocabulary is going to help so screenplay is there anything about the screenplay here let's have a look in a little bit more detail let me know in the comments what do you think is there anything about the screenplay not really but does that mean that we can automatically woops choose this one know how a movie compares to the original so we need to make a hundred percent so again we need to think about it a little bit more carefully so if we have a look here let's put this in green notably in the 1964 movie didn't write it that way and did not approve of this improv movement to the character so it's more about talking about the differences between the 1964 movie which is the original movie and this present movie that's where the general meaning of the whole paragraph so then we can tick we can pick that one so hopefully you can see that by being a little bit more strategic about things it helps us find the correct answer and helps us find the correct answer a little bit more efficiently so let's have a look yeah so all of you seem to be on the right track excellent okay so as you can see like most of you were able to do that but most of you if you did the test today you would get a lot of you would get those questions wrong because you're not able to apply that strategy you have to learn it so let's have a look no to recap what we did this week so at the start of the week we talked about why most students are looking for tips and tips are not going to help you we looked at vocabulary we demonstrated that again today why that's so important we looked at skills we also demonstrated why that is really important to understand what skimming is and how to use it and to practice it and scanning and close reading and we looked at strategy today but the most important one and the one that we haven't really talked about that much this week is mindset so let's talk about that because it is the most important thing so let me ask you this we could get two students exactly the same students and they're given the exact same information the info there's let's say they join the same course and they get the exact same teacher and they look at the exact same you know online information the information in this equation does not change that variable in this equation does not change at all this is also exactly the same all right but one of them gets a 7 or above and the other one gets below a 7 why is that well let's look at it a little bit more detail so here we have the person who got the score they need it and here we have the person who got the score but they you know that they weren't hoping for let's compare their mindset so this student wants to learn things properly and they want to actually improve they want to they understand that the reading test is a reading test and they need to improve the reading they need to improve their reading skills strategy their vocabulary they need to improve this student just wants tips and tricks all right that's all they're interested in just tips and tricks number 2 this student knows that it's going to take time in order to improve they can't do it immediately they also know that it's going to take effort it's going to take hard work they're going to actually have to do the things that they have been taught on watching YouTube videos or videos on on Facebook is not work all right it's not effort that's the only part of it number two they the student who unsuccessful student let's call them they want it no they want it immediately they want all the problems solved in a YouTube video they want all the problems solved on a you know a blog post that's 50 words long they think that there's some sort of secret that they're going to learn from a blog post it's going to solve all of their problems number three the happy student the one that got the scores they need they're aware of their weaknesses they're aware of the different things that are important they are aware of how important vocabulary is strategy is skills are they're aware of how to use those things and how to prepare them number three they're just the unhappy student is not aware of any of these things they're clueless they're going in and they're doing the test over and over and over again I'm being like why did I fail they do it so if you're doing the same thing over and over again is anything going to change no and before strategic the happy student is strategic not only about with their preparation but what they're doing on test day number four they believe in luck and they believe in hope all right these are the two most dangerous words that can ever come out of your mouth when people say I'm hope I hope I'm lucky next time pretty much guaranteed they're gonna feel all right luck and hope has nothing to do with it all right it's these things about learning what to do doing it properly putting the effort in becoming aware of what you need to do and doing those things number five the happy student learns from their mistakes and sees their mistakes as an opportunity to improve every single mistake that they make they're like this is great I can analyze this mistake and learn from it so I don't make it in the future and if I the unhappy student just quits alright they stay give up on moving to the country of their dreams getting the job of their dreams they're like oh it's all so difficult and it's all somebody else's fault when it's nobody else's fault but theirs so the key here the key variable is mindset all right same person with the same information but different mindset one's going to get a 7 or above one's going to get below a 7 one thing that you can learn that I'll teach you that we teach our VIP students when it comes to not only reading but it really really is applicable to reading is this flywheel all right these are things that you need to be doing and these reinforce each other so in order to learn something first you need to learn what to do so this is what you've been doing this this week watching these three lessons if you haven't watched what's the other lessons go back and watch them you need to learn what to do first then you need to do those things so most people watching this video will watch it and say that was really really good and then do nothing about it alright you need to put it into action all right there are no books on like how to drive a car better how do you learn how to drive a car you do it okay I'm sure there are some books that you know show you how to but you need to get behind the wheel and do those things but just doing it is not really going to help you you need to get feedback on what you're doing the driving analogy is really good like do you learn how to drive a car by driving by yourself hopefully not because you'll probably kill someone you have someone sitting beside you constantly giving you feedback saying you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong you're doing this wrong fix it and by doing that you're going to learn even more and then you're going to be able to do it again get more feedback learn even more that's one thing that we do with our students and one of the reasons why we have more success stories than any other IELTS course in the world because it does work some courses just teach you to learn things like most YouTube channels some people just provide practice materials which is useless because without feedback you're not going to actually learn anything in the first place so if you only learn one thing from this week learn that and that's really really going to help you so thank you very much for watching these lessons and that's it for the the reading stuff that we're doing this week hopefully you find it useful please give me your feedback in the comments let me know what you thought about these lessons lessons one two and three did they help you most of these would have just been about raising your awareness about the things that are going to cause you to feel and the things that are going to cause you to pass I know there's no pass and feel grid and IELTS but there is you know you if you don't get the score you need you're gonna fail basically and okay so let's how we look to you for any feedback or any questions one of you saying can anyone give me information about this online course okay so what you can do is you can email me here's my email address Chrissa dial to advantage calm if you need extra help and you know if you need help doing these things feedback on your work and you need someone to guide you and show you how to get the score you need then you can email me if you want all right so send me an email and I'll be able to help you write and if you have any other feedback or whether it's positive or negative and feedback and let me know in the comments and we read every comment if you have a question you can put it in the comments as well and we will try to and get back to you as soon as we can thank you very much guys have a great weekend and to anyone doing their test tomorrow good luck in your test thank you very much bye bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 43,494

Keywords: IELTS, IELTS Advantage, Chris Pell, www.ieltsadvantage.com, IELTS Band 7+ Reading Mini-Course: Day 3, IELTS Reading, IELTS Listening, IELTS Speaking, IELTS Writing, ielts test, ielts new, international english language testing system, english, grammar, in this lesson, ielts tips, learn english, band 7, lesson, vocabulary, teacher, english teacher, english grammar, speaking

Id: uR_iHqcEeuw

Length: 39min 53sec (2393 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2019