IELTS Reading Preparation Strategy - Reading Fast and Slow

hello and welcome to this IELTS reading preparation tips video lesson I'm Alps masterly and today I'd like to share an IELTS reading tip with you how to practice reading fast and slow if you don't understand what I mean yet no problem I'm going to tell you exactly what I mean in this video so let's get started first I'd like to give you some basic advice for IELTS reading to improve your IELTS reading test score you need to improve your overall English ability this is something you really really need to understand it's useful to know about the test but only doing sample test after sample test after sample test after sample tests will not help you much if you're only testing yourself this is very common with some people so if you're trying to take 20 sample tests before your IELTS test because you think that's the best way to prepare sorry but that is not the best way to prepare you need to improve your overall English ability of course knowing the test is important and it's useful to know about the test what kind of question types there are what you can do to save time here and there but if you're trying to jump from a 5.5 to a 7 for example that's about your English ability not about your test ability alright so in this video series I am going to give you various tips on how to improve your reading test ability and also your overall English ability through reading some videos will focus on test techniques and others on general reading preparation advice alright I'm very excited for this IELTS reading video series and I hope you are too let's get started with today's topic reading fast and slow so first I'd like to talk about one technique that I call reading fast now by fast I don't mean like superfast it doesn't need to be like skimming and scanning I don't need skimming and scanning I'm not talking about skimming and scanning okay I'm talking about first testing testing yourself testing your own reading when you first start preparing for the IELTS reading test it can be good to take a few sample tests take 2 to 3 reading sample tests this can help you learn what your current level is IELTS reading sample tests are mostly not for improving your reading skill they're for telling you about what level you are right now and one more thing while I'm talking about sample tests sample tests can be very different in their levels and in how much you know about a particular topic so don't just take one sample test and think oh I got a 7 that's not good enough take two or even three or sometimes four about 4 is the maximum you need to really understand this is about your level right now okay you need to understand what your current level is and you can time yourself during these tests if you want to do the 60 minutes you can do the 60 minutes if you want to time yourself and see how long it takes you at a natural speed you can do that too but definitely mark how much time it takes you to complete each section write down how much time it takes you also mark any questions that take you a particularly long time when you're doing your sample tests if you think you run into a really difficult question and it's taking you a long time just make a small mark by that question a small line or circle or something like that so that you can go back later and look at this question and look at the question type and see is it just this question what is difficult about it is it the vocabulary is it the question type did you have trouble finding the answer in the IELTS reading passage you need to examine what you're having difficulty with so you can understand what you need to improve your IELTS reading and again analyzing your speed and accuracy on certain question types can help you understand where your strengths and weaknesses are this is why when people ask me Li what should I do to improve my reading I can't just answer well you should do this there's no magic solution like that because everyone's strengths and weaknesses are different of course there are some common themes most people that don't have a high reading score don't have a strong vocabulary but in if you really look in detail then everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and it's difficult to give advice that works for everyone finally when possible make sure you use high quality reading text from the Canberra IELTS series I'll include a link in the description I recommend this book series just because they produce the highest quality sample tests I've used other IELTS books and in my opinion compared to the other IELTS books Camryn's IELTS series does a much better job so that's what I recommend all right great next let's talk about a reading slow technique now again by reading slow I don't mean reading slow it's nothing like that but I mean taking your time not being in a rush don't worry about time instead of reading fast I could write reading while timed for the last slide and instead of reading slow I could write reading while taking care to find new vocabulary reading tests are an amazing source of new vocabulary after you've used an IELTS reading test for testing yourself for doing the reading fast part examine all of the vocabulary from it don't let the test go to waste make sure you look at the test and grab every piece of vocabulary you can get from it all of these nice synonyms and antonyms and collocations which are words that go together and set phrases and high-level academic vocabulary IELTS reading has fantastic vocabulary and if you use your reading test to improve your vocabulary it will be wonderful and your score will definitely go up in the future if you just test yourself sorry your score is probably not going to improve that much but if you take the reading test and you examine it and you grab all of the great vocabulary in it then yes in time your score will definitely go up all right next take a look at our video lessons on vocabulary for academic reading for an example of how to use an IELTS reading test to find new vocabulary okay I'll include a link in the description our next technique is another reading fast technique but this time it's not about the test it's not about IELTS even this is reading for pleasure now by reading for pleasure I don't mean that you should go out and read lots of fiction books well if you like to read fiction books okay you can go read fiction books or novels or stories that's fine but since we're preparing for the IELTS test you should probably stick to subjects that are likely to be on the IELTS which include economics history science these kinds of topics so the more you read the better your reading skill will become and that's why I recommend you read for pleasure as well as for the IELTS you definitely should use IELTS test to help your vocabulary and help you understand your score but in addition to that you can also read articles in magazines in science magazines in economics news articles and things like that that can help your reading as well there are many different free websites that have the kind of reading that will be on IELTS tests and I'll include some down in the description of this video find articles that interest you if you can and read them for pleasure if you don't find anything that interests you if you're not naturally interested in IELTS style topics like science or geography or history well choose which one you find the least boring the most interesting out of your choices sorry but the IELTS is the IELTS they don't have super interesting reading topics usually but sometimes they do and hopefully you can find some reading that interest you and if you can find articles that have an audio version as well reading and listening at the same time is great practice as well of course you don't want to do this every time because you need practice doing only reading because that's what the IELTS is but definitely if you have the audio and you have the text in front of you it can help you absorb the information and understand more words more grammar and just make the reading process more enjoyable as well alright so that's one reading fast tip and again we have the recommended websites down in the description of this video another reading slow technique is to read more than once so reading something more than once can be very helpful for language learning read the same article three four five even ten times if you can the language will become more familiar too and much easier for you to remember for your next test or even for your writing or your speaking if you read something once it's very likely that you'll read it and then you'll just forget it but if you read it for five even ten times well the chances of you remembering this language and being able to use it eventually are much much higher I know it can get boring reading four or five or even ten times so again if you can find an audio version of the text well then maybe you can read it once and then listen to it and then read and listen to it and then listen to it again and then read it again and through this process you can read the same thing many times and really remember these grammatical structures and the vocabulary and this great stuff that's in each article that you're doing and again just to reinforce the point you will be able to remember the vocabulary and grammar from the article much better and your overall reading skill will in proof so let's review and I'll give your action step for this lesson first we fast take IELTS sample test sometimes to measure your current level not to improve your reading skills next read slow use old I'll sample tests to learn new vocabulary and grammatical structures and if you want an example for this check out our vocabulary for academic reading video lessons next read fast number three find articles that interest you and read them often for pleasure if you can and then read slow reread the same articles or sample tests many times over and really really understand it and try to remember it if you want to memorize something sometime you can do that too and your action step for today I want you to choose two of these methods one fast and one slow and do them both today this is my challenge to you for this lesson today all right can you do it I really hope so let me know how it goes and tell me down in the comments did you do it how did it go was it helpful for you I want to know alright thanks so much for watching this video lesson I really appreciate it and I hope it's useful for you please subscribe to our YouTube channel you can find us at youtube.com slash IELTS master and I hope you have a fantastic day thanks so much

Channel: IELTS Master

Views: 259,221

Keywords: IELTS Reading, IELTS Strategy, IELTS Master, IELTS Preparation, IELTS Tips, IELTS Vocabulary

Id: CnFCTofQbJo

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2017