IELTS Band 7+ Reading Mini-Course

hi everyone Chris here from IELTS advantage with a brand new mini course what we're gonna look at today is IELTS band 7 or above and we're going to specifically if I can talk specifically talk a look at reading we're gonna have a mini course this week so we're gonna have three lessons in this mini course lesson number one real reasons why you struggle so we're going to it's really important to look at the things that most students do and the reasons why they are not going to help you so you can stop doing those things we're also going to look in this lesson a highly important vocabulary is on how to strategically improve your vocabulary and we're also going to give you a free ebook and show you how you can download that and that ebook is going to help you improve your vocabulary so I'll give that to you at the end lesson two which is going to be on Wednesday we're going to look at improving your reading skills so we're going to look at things like skimming scanning close reading what these actually mean how to use them in the test so that you can obviously how to improve your reading skills and then on Friday lesson three we're going to look at a strategic approach and for improving your IELTS reading scores so lesson three a strategic approach for improving that and these are the times and dates and everything for what's happening this week so lesson one is going to is obviously you're watching at night at 1 p.m. today 1 p.m. on Wednesday exactly the same time 1 p.m. UK time you can figure that out whatever that is in your own time zone and this way and today we're going to have lesson 2 lesson 3 is going to be on Friday at a slightly different time 11:00 a.m. UK time so you can join us live here on Facebook and you can interact with us I'll be answering questions and everything at the end so why do most people struggle with the IELTS reading test and I'd say most people don't have a real problem with listening in the comments below you'll probably tell me that you do have a big problem and with listening but when it comes to differencing listening and reading I'd say most people are like half a bond or a bond in my experience higher and they struggle a little bit with the reading test so we need to think about what most students do most students who fail the reading test don't get the score that they need what are they doing and I'm gonna show you using this pyramid why that is so at the top of this pyramid if you look at my inbox if you look at my email inbox and you just search for a reading and I'd say each day how many emails will we get each day a thousand but a thousand emails a day let's say a hundred of those or but reading and if you scan those those emails that are just asking for help with reading the majority of them ask for one thing in some in some way shape or form and that is they asked for tips all right so they say things like can you give me some tips to help me improve my reading can you help me with some reading hacks or reading shortcuts or reading cheats or just some little tricks to help me improve my reading score the thing that we always say is no because they don't do not work so what I'd say you know 90% of students are looking for something that doesn't actually help them so if you are doing something and I'm looking for something and using something that doesn't help you are you going to improve No and there are four other factors that are far more important and these are things that students completely ignore and these are things that are actually going to help you so let's look at these things and we'll be discussing them throughout this mini course this week so the first thing is something that we will talk about throughout the whole course we'll touch upon it in every single lesson this week and because it's the most important thing so this is the most important then this one then this one then this one this one not really that important first one is mindset how you think about the test what your attitude is to the test what your attitude is to your preparation what your attitude is to test day will determine your score more than anything else and we'll talk about this throughout the course and it will make a lot of sense so if you're you know typing in the comments what do you mean by mindset by the end of this 3-day mini course it's going to make a lot of sense to you so the other factor that is very very important is vocabulary basically the reading test is not only a reading test it is also a vocabulary test if you your vocabulary is not at the level that it needs to be it doesn't matter how many tips you look at it doesn't matter how many hacks you look at it doesn't matter how many shortcuts you use you're not going to convince an IELTS that your reading skills are at a certain level if your vocabulary is not also at a certain level so look at this today and a lot more detail and we'll give you a free ebook at the end to help you to strategically improve your vocabulary alright the thing that is next on the list skills so obviously it is a reading test and is testing your reading skills but the problem with reading skills is they are very much misunderstood by most students and most students take a very simplistic view of this they think that all I have to do is just skim and then scan and then find the answer and that's it job done it's a little bit more complicated than that so on day two on Wednesday we're going to look at how to improve this and how to understand what these skills are and how they will help you improve your score and the next thing is strategy so you should have a step-by-step strategy for each of the different types of questions why do you need that because the different types of questions are all testing different reading skills and reading sub skills and require a completely different approach so if you're going into the test and just applying the same strategy to every different type of question it would be like you know like a football team applying the same strategy to every single type every single team that they play you need to adjust it depending on who you're playing you need to adjust your strategy depending on which question is coming up so it's but understanding the different types of questions and applying a step-by-step strategy for each of them and thinking very strategically about your whole approach to your preparation and that's what we're going to look at this week but today we're gonna focus on mindset and we're gonna focus on vocabulary okay so it'll copy very important many of you watching this will think like this it's a reading test it really depends on my reading skills it's testing my reading vocabulary isn't that important I would argue that it's probably in terms of systems and skills is the most important thing when it comes to the reading test so number one if you have a wide-ranging vocabulary it's going to help you understand the text if you do not understand multiple words within the within each paragraph or one of the within each sentence it's kind of like if I took a pen and deleted multiple words from each paragraph just rub them out or covered them up if you don't understand that it doesn't matter how good your reading skills are if you don't understand the sentence if you don't understand the paragraph if you don't understand it then it's going to make it very very very difficult for you so the wider your vocabulary the easier it will be for you to navigate your way through the passage to understand it and the answer the question number two having a wide-ranging vocabulary helps you locate the the place the location of the correct answer so when you are looking at the questions it might say one word but the place the when you're scanning the paragraph that you're looking for the part of the text you're looking for it doesn't say that word it says a synonym of that word so unless you understand that word means the same as that and they're both synonyms of each other then you're not going to be able to find the correct answer if you can't find the correct answer the correct location you're going to be floundering you're going to be taking a very very long time to find the location because that is part of the doing the reading test not you can't immediately look at the question and then find the correct answer you have to find the location first so helping improving your vocabulary is going to help with that tremendously number three helps you decide correct answer so you might for example in a multiple-choice question get three different answers with the words in it three slightly different meanings so that's just one example of one question type the three slightly different meanings but you need to understand the different meanings of those words that's just one example out of many many many many others where knowing the vocabulary and knowing the meaning of the words and the difference between the meaning of the words is going to help you find the correct answer so it's going to help you understand the whole text find the location of the correct answer and decide the correct answer so it's absolutely crucial that you work on your vocabulary and that's where we will be giving you the the free ebook at the end so you need to improve your vocabulary that hopefully I have proved that to you that if you want to improve your reading scores first you need to improve your vocabulary so how do you improve your vocabulary so let's look at how not to improve your vocabulary first the worst thing you can do is look at lists all right lists are not going to help you I see this all the time sometimes students will send me a link to some school or a Facebook page that deals with IELTS and it'll say things like you know learn these lists of golden words or diamond words or power words or whatever it is and it's going to help you improve your vocabulary they're not let's look at why that is and so number one for reading it's impossible to predict which words are going to come up in the text the English language is so broad it's so massive that it would you would have to literally look at the dictionary I mean nobody has time to do that to like start at a and go all the way to Z you're just not going to be able to do that so it's a really silly way to try and learn vocabulary for the reading test by looking at a very limited list of words because these word lists could be anything from like you know a hundred words to a thousand words that's not going to cover it so it's a complete waste of time on a lists are not going to teach you the word a hundred percent you're going to have to understand of course the meaning but most word lists only give you like the meaning and a translation which is useless you're not going to understand collocations you're not going to understand synonyms antonyms how it's used in a sentence you need to understand how the word operates in a sentence you need to understand the word 100 percent if you're not doing that it's a waste of time and looking at a list of words and doesn't help you improve your reading skills and so there's a much better way of doing that and I'll show you this in the e-book that we will share with you and you all you have to do is just add your email and then you can will email it directly to you so the best way to improve your vocabulary is to read if you look at any study done on the best way for someone to improve your vocabulary reading is the number one way however just reading is not the answer I can't go and just grab you know any book off the shelf and just start reading it and magically my vocabulary is going to improve my vocabulary will improve a little bit but it's you have to take a more strategic approach to it you so as I said you need to be a little bit more strategic so what we're going to do now is share the e-book with you so let me show you how you can find it so it's on our website so if you go to our website so type into Google IELTS advantage and go to the home page so if you scroll down right to the bottom of our home page you'll see here we've put a little box in for you free IELTS vocabulary ebook and it tells step-by-step exactly what to do exactly what to read how to read how to record your new vocabulary how to review it how to make sure that it sticks in here and you can use it on exam day so all you have to do is just go to the main home page so just type in IELTS advantage go to the home page check your email in there and that's it simple as let's talk a little bit about mindset so as we mentioned tips are not going to help so why is it that tips don't help well you've got the wrong mindset you're looking for a shortcut you're looking for an easy way out you're not going to be able to do that related to this once you download the ebook two things are very very important one it tells you to read a lot so many of you will have the wrong mindset about this because you'll be thinking I don't have time I don't have time to do this well that's exactly the same as looking for a shortcut all right there's no short way of doing this think about anything else that you're trying to improve you can't let's say you want to lose weight you can't really really quickly lose weight or you want to get stronger you can't there's no shortcut of doing that it takes years and years and years of working right or you want to do right you want to become a marathon runner you want to run a marathon you can't immediately go from someone who doesn't run at all to immediately running running a marathon exactly the same here you need to have the mindset that yes you will do it but it's going to take daily practice it's going to take daily work you're gonna have to do it over a long period of time and I'm not talking about like 10 years or 20 years but it's much longer than what most of you are looking for which is an instant solution the instant solution just does not exist in this context the other thing to do with mindset is when you download that ebook it's going to tell you exactly what to do like a blueprint of how to improve your vocabulary but 90% of you we'll read the e-book and think this is great and then do nothing with it ten percent of you or maybe even less will read the e-book and actually do the things that it says to do and that only takes like you can do this in 15 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day it's but it's all just of a scheduling that time and actually doing the work and actually putting it in the work and that is why I put mindset as the most important thing because it doesn't matter what your your teachers are like it doesn't matter what your materials are like it doesn't matter if you don't want to do any work you don't do any work or you have a really unrealistic attitude but and you're just looking for shortcuts and cheats and hacks and things I got so I'm not saying not to complain or saying not to be negative I'm saying that because I want you to improve your scores and that's the best way to do it and that's why we've included this the top of the chart here so that's it for lesson 1 lesson 2 we're going to look at reading skills so we're going to look at skimming scanning unclose reading so we're going to look at exactly what this is exactly what this is exactly what this is how to use them and what combination on how to improve them and that's what we're going to look at on Wednesday so join me at the same time on Wednesday and we'll take a few questions I have about 10 minutes so let me see if there are any questions yeah so one one thing okay one thing a lot of people have missed a lot of you are commenting with your email this is an online forum you put your email in there all right I cannot go and copy and paste a hundred emails all right and then put them in here but you put your own email in there and it's a lovely system and just emails it to you directly so please do that instead of entering your email that's not a very efficient process let me see if you have any questions hello to everybody saying hello and thank you to all the people saying thank you the witnesses where are you located in Northern Ireland in the UK everybody's adding their email address if maybe I wasn't that clear put your email address in there okay so go to the website the homepage step1 step2 go to the bottom step three enter your e-mail simple stick it in that's it someone says don't use foul language please two things number one I didn't use foul language and number two it's my my channel for language if I want and feel free to log off and not look at if you want remember you were talking about people in the comments if so I apologize yeah it just seems to be mass confusion about what to do so that's probably my fault and I apologize if I wasn't clear good question from yes Aman um is IDP changing its attitude about listening and reading because it's so difficult in comparison to the Cambridge test so let me explain how it works IDP the British consul in Cambridge those three bodies they co-owned the IELTS test IDP and British consul they provide the test so they provide the test centers and they mark your tests and everything Cambridge create the tests so IDP in the British Council did not create the test Cambridge do that and then they they send them to IDP in the British Council so your question is our IDP tests like more difficult than Cambridge it's not the right way to think about it because Cambridge are the only people that produce them normally when somebody says like oh that particular test was really really difficult it's probably because you were stressed out under eggs and you were under exam conditions or it could be it's normally something to do with human performance not anything to do with the test so it could be as simple as the breakfast that you had that morning or how much sleep you got the night before these things happen all the time good question Shaheed how much this translation help in improving vocabulary do not use translation at all I know that that's a really difficult thing to accept it's the reason why like if you go to a really really good school if you go to a really good English school the great teachers there once you get to a certain level like pre intermediate basically or even below that they will not allow any translation devices or you to translate anything or any translation whatsoever because it is stopping you from using the language because what you're doing is you're putting a step in between you processing the language and using it because what you're doing is instead of you just looking at a word and thinking about it and using it in English what you're doing is you're thinking about a ward translating it into your own language translating back then thinking about it in your own language and then thinking about it in English and it's just using parts of your brain that you don't really need to use and the problem often is that no two languages exactly match up with each other and so for example I this in my house yesterday my wife is Vietnamese she speaks English brilliantly but one thing that she said was we were talking about food and she said oh it's good for health and I said it's not good for health it's healthy it's healthy see oh sorry sorry sirs I was translating from Vietnamese so from in Vietnamese it's good for health but if you use that translation you're making a grammar mistake and it's not just about grammar it's also about different meaning and context and everything so just like my students used to hit me because I would never allow any translation translation whatsoever I had some students who would leave my class and say I want a different teacher but the students who stayed really thanked me when they were able to actually use the English language a very good question how can I am practice to improve vocabulary in the vocabulary improvement plan the e-book it shows you how to do that and me see you have time few more minutes a lot of you are asking about like how do i improve my vocabulary how to use vocabulary what's the best way to learn vocabulary everything is included and not I don't want to repeat myself over and over and over again but download that read it and use it and you will it'll answer all of those questions a lot of you are asking but my VIP course it's currently closed but you can email me and ask some questions about it and maybe get put on the waiting list my email address is chris at isles advantage com should come up here so here's my email address if you have any further questions or you want to work with us you can send me an email can't guarantee that I'll be able to accept all of you or any of you but you can't email us if you want this is very controversial not about translation a lot of you are saying but if I don't have any translation how am I going to understand the word so let's say for example you you're reading a text so let me put this up so let's say you have what do I put in there we go imagine this is a paragraph but 50 words or something like that there's a word here it's one word order the whole paragraph so where does the fish let's say 50 words and there's one word here which you see and you don't know okay so what most students will do is they will thank you what most students will do is they will simply look up word up and put it into like Google Translate or some sort of translation thing or look at it up in a dictionary that translates your language to that so what happens is you read that you look at the translation it goes in here and I'd here and you will never remember it it's very difficult to remember it you're definitely not going to be able to use it in let's say you're doing the writing and the speaking test you're never going to be able to use it what you would do instead if you weren't using translation what you would do is you would look at the context which is all these words around it and try and guess the meaning based on the words around it then what you would do is look at an English dictionary so just in English and then you would look up the meaning and you can compare what you thought was the meaning with the actual meaning and that is going to help you do two things number one it's going to help you become very very good at guessing a meaning from context you are especially in the reading test but not only the reading test but if you move to a different country an english-speaking country every single day multiple times that you're going to see new words you don't understand so you're developing this skill of guessing the meaning by doing this also the second thing is you're going to remember it all right because what you're going to do and also is after you've guessed the meaning from context is to note that done in a special notebook or an app or something like that record all the information you need there and review it regularly it's much better than looking up the translation and completely forgetting about it so join us on Wednesday I'm glad to stay at 1 p.m. we'll be looking at reading skills and then on Friday at 11 a.m. we'll be looking at taking a strategic step-by-step approach approach to all of the different types of reading questions thank you very much for all your comments one last time if you want the e-book go to main website IELTS advantage go to the bottom whoops and your email and you'll be able to get that and in the comments let me know what you think of the e-book if you have any questions after you've seen the e-book and have a look there and ask any questions you have and hope that you've enjoyed that it's a free lesson so all we ask is that you like and share it or just say thanks in the comments and I'll see you again on Wednesday thank you very much bye bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 57,185

Keywords: IELTS, IELTS test, IELTS Advantage, Chris Pell, www.ieltsadvantage.com, Band 7, IELTS Band 7+ Reading Mini-Course, Reading Mini-Course, Free IELTS Lesson, IELTS reading, lessson, subscribe, english, IELTS help, English teacher, vocabulary, learn english, international english language testing system, in this lesson, tips, live lesson, how to, ielts tips, grammar

Id: 2jqSBroDdeA

Length: 28min 28sec (1708 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019