IELTS Reading strategies that ABSOLUTELY WORK! 7.5 - 9.0 strategy

hello and welcome to the ielts multi-step program my name is lanrie and i'll be your uncle throughout this journey today we're going to be focusing on the reading section of the ielts test so be it the academic model or the general training model this is a very important video that you need to watch as the reading test is one of the most significant areas where a lot of test takers have issues over the years i've discussed with a couple of people who have taken the test or who are intending to take the test and when you ask them what are the quest what are the challenges that they find with the ielts reading usually features most prominently specifically areas like true false not given questions or questions that require them to match headings or to match sentence endings today i will be sharing with you strategies that have been proven to move you from wherever you are to an instance band 8.5 or band nine and this is something that thousands of students have taken and have tried it and they have assured us that it works today you will be one of the lucky ones who will benefit from this repertoire of strategies and steps that you can take to ensure that you achieve your desired success in the ielts test so let's get right into it the reading section in the ielts is most and first and foremost not a comprehension passage but an information extraction exercise i'll take that again the reading test in the ielts is not a comprehension passage it's not a comprehension exercise it is more of an information extraction exercise and what does this mean if you're a non-native speaker of the language or non-native user of the language who schooled in one of the commonwealth countries like nigeria or any other part of africa chances are that when you studied english language put in high school or at the university level there was much focus on your comprehension skills comprehension as the word implies involves understanding in-depth understanding of a piece of information given in the reading in in the reading format but for the ielts comprehension is not our aim what you most significantly need to do is to be able to extract relevant information that answers the question so what implication does this have for a reading test it means that when you get into the exam hall and you get your question paper what you do in the first ten to five minutes that you get your question paper is not to sit down relax and read the whole passage word for word to comprehend or to understand the information there that is not what you should do chances are that out of the passage that contains 2000 words all the information that you need to answer all the questions said on that passage would be not more than 500 words so sitting down to read and digest the whole passage before you start answering the question could also be termed as a waste of time today i will be taking you through how you can actually interact with the information in the passages in minimum time and also ensure that that time that you spent on interacting with the passage is enough for you to answer all the questions stick around and you will get that the second thing that we'll be dealing with today is scheming and that is significantly tied to the next thing which is scanning skimming and scanning are the two most important skills or strategies that you need to deploy to ensure that you pass the reading section of the ielts test i will also be taking you through practical steps on how to scheme a passage and how to scan it for relevant information beyond that we will be dealing with two specific question types that have proven to be problematic to thousands of test takers over the years the true false not giving or yes no not given type of questions and the questions that require you to match for the matching types of questions you could be matching headings you could be matching sentence endings you could be matching names to views or claims that were made in the passage whichever type of matching question that you get in the ielts the strategies or the or the steps that you need to take to answer them successfully are quite similar and i will be taking you through a detailed practical exercise on how to apply those strategies you don't want to miss that also too finally we'll be looking at answers and proximity answers and proximity require to question types that usually come from a specific section of a passage be just one paragraph or two succeeding paragraphs the type of questions that fall under answers and proximity are forms notes table completion and process of flowchart completion if you get these type of questions in your reading passage or in your reading text in the ielts chances are that the information that you need to answer all these questions are situated in a specific part of the passage and not just thrown away haphazardly finally we will look at sentence completion questions as these depend significantly on your grammatical knowledge why for sentence completion questions where you are asked to put maybe a one word two words or no more than three words and or is a number to complete the sentences you need to ensure that the answers that you choose that you extract from the passage must grammatically complete the sentence this is where your knowledge of grammar or your knowledge or your language competence skills will be tested i've seen a lot of candidates make mistakes in this part of the reading test as they choose answers that might be correct but do not grammatically complete the sentence this is the first tip that you need to know for this any answer that you're going to be choosing to complete a sentence in the ielts must grammatically fit in with the surrounding words in the sentence must grammatically complete that expression if you are choosing the if you are doing the test and you are choosing the right answer and the right answer that you have chosen does not grammatically fit in into the question sentence it means that you are still on the wrong track and not yet settled on the right answer the right answer in the ielts will be grammatically appropriate in this context or in the sentence in which you need to put it in this is a very very important skill it's a very very important tip that i will be elaborating later on in this video so we will begin and go through all these tips and all the steps that i have listed out but the first and the most important one is to look at the structure of the reading test what does it entail how does it look like knowing what the structure of the reading test is all about will be significant in our understanding of the strategies that we will deploy later on like i usually say in these videos in the ielts multi-step videos i would advise you to please try as much as possible to take some time to interact with the questions in the ielts itself before you start watching these videos or before you start using the strategies in these videos ensure that you have seen an actual ielts test these can be assessed by going through the official british council website or the official cambridge education website or the official idp australia website you have sample questions there that will give you a simulation of what you will face on the day of the exam itself knowing what the structure of the test is all about is part of the preparation that you need to ensure that you succeed when you do take the test itself so what is the structure of the reading test in the ielts for the academic and for the general training models the reading test is different significantly different in fact reading is one of the areas where the change or the differences between the academic model and the general training model is most pronounced for the academic model you will be dealing with three passages three long passages which will ensure which will entail that you will have three sections for the reading test if you're doing the academic each passage contains between 2 000 words to 2500 or 2 700 words and you were expected to answer 40 questions in total under one hour or in 16 minutes each question carries the same mark and this has been highlighted or been outlined in the introductory video to the ielts multi-step program each question in your reading test carries one mark which means that for you to achieve maximum success in the reading test you need to answer all the questions any question that you leave on answered is an automatic zero or wrong score for that question any question that you attempt by putting at least even a random option gives you at least 45 to 35 percent chance of getting it right so you do not leave that exam hold without filling in all the questions for the reading test it is one of the easiest ways to set yourself up for failure if you leave questions unanswered just because you do not know them or because you do not understand them guess if you do not know them for the general training model you have more than three passages but the good news here is that they are shorter so in the section one of the general training um reading test you have three to five short passages these can vary you could be given uh advertisements you could be given just short descriptions of products and you could be given um descriptions or like a shadow for a train station or for a travel guide all these are going to be really really short and the five short passages or three short passages combined together may not even meet up with the word count for one academic passage the second section of the general training reading test contains two fairly long work-related passages and the last section in the general training model contains just one passage that is drawn from an academic context this is very similar to what you would find in the academic model for the reading test which is why i always recommend that whichever one you are taking whichever test you are taking either the academic or the general training model you should at least find at least one time that you practice with the academic model why is this it is more difficult and the skills that you need there are still relevant for the general training model because the last passage that you will become that you'll be facing in the general training model is the same as what you have in the academic model so it is not a waste of practice with the academic model as there are even more practice materials for the academic test takers than for the general mood for general training test takers like i mentioned earlier both general training and academic model contains 40 questions that you are expected to answer within the one hour duration the difficulty increases in the order of progression as you progress the questions get harder questions and section 1 are easier than questions in section 2 while the questions in section 3 are usually the toughest in the reading test each reading text will have will involve at least three to four different question type so for the academic model you've question your passage one might have three to four different question types that will be assigned to it section two also has three to four different question types assigned to it same with the section three that's the passage three for the general training model also they ensure that all the passages that you all the passages that you will be given will have different question types assigned to them which means that each test taker leaves the exam hall answering at least five different question types which is why you need to practice as widely and as varied in a varied manner as much as possible so that you are you touch on all the different question types so that on the day of the exam you will not be found wanting or you will not get there and be shocked by question type that you have not encountered before it's a very significant tip you need to practice well before the day of the exam so that you can have an a fair idea of the plethora of question types that is assigned in the reading section of the ielts test so what are the skills that are tested in the reading test there are several skills tested but the most important one is your information extraction skills how well can you extract relevant details or relevant information from a given body of text to answer specific questions that are set once you can do this or once you can do this very well you have a very significant chance of succeeding in the ielts especially in the reading part so which skills are tested identifying the writer's overall purpose is a skill that is tested what is the reason why this author wrote this particular passage what is the reason why this also discussed this particular topic in this passage these are type of questions that fall on that writer's overall purpose you will also be tested on your ability to follow key arguments in a text follow key arguments in a text you could be given an academic passage where you have that talks about a scientific challenge or a scientific concept and you have five or six scientists giving their different claims or different views on that particular topic in the passage you will be tested on your ability to follow who said what about what and what is this person's particular stand to the particular concept that is being discussed this type of question could be a matching question where they give you a series of names six names and they give you six sentences and they tell you to match who said what to the person who said it this or this simply like i mentioned earlier tests your ability to follow the key arguments or the main arguments in the particular text you'll also be testing your ability to identify opinions and attitudes opinions and attitudes you will also be tested on your ability to locate specific information which like i mentioned earlier on is probably the most significant skill that is tested in the reading section of the ielts test you will also be tested on your ability to distinguish main ideas from supporting details distinguishing main ideas from supporting details finally you will also be tested on your ability to extract information to complete diagrams summaries tables or a set of notes these are the skills that are tested in the reading section of the ielts test and you will do well to take your time to rewind this video pause it to look at all the lists to get to run through all these items that i gave you about the skills that i tested and find out where and where are you strong and where and where are you weak so that you can show up your weaknesses and then you can strengthen yourself in the areas where you already have some strengths what is the marking guide what is the marking scheme for the reading test for the general training test you need to get 40 questions right out of 40 for you to achieve a band nine i'll take that again for the general training model you need to get all 40 questions correct for you to get a band name whereas for you to get a band 7 in the general training model you need to get 35 questions correct out of 40 questions for the academic model it is one mark lesser so for you to get a band 9 in the academic model all you need to get is 39 questions right out of 14. for you to get a band 7 in the academic model all you need to do is to get 33 questions right out of 14. so it is significant to note that for the academic model it is mapped a little bit easier than the general training model and why is this the academic model test is quite difficult while the 10 year training model is easier as the text that you're given and the topics that i discuss are usually topics that do not require you to have any in-depth understanding the vocabulary used in the general training model are much more easily accessible as opposed to what you find in an academic model where you could be given subject or profession specific vocabulary that might be difficult for you to understand so let's start with scheming which is the first and most important skill that i mentioned that we will be uh walking through in the scheming scanning um the scheming scanning concepts for the reading test sorry skimming a passage means reading it quickly concentrating on content words like nouns or verbs to find the main points i'll read out that definition again as it is very important that we get a clear idea of the definition before we start using or before we start deploying the strategy itself skimming a passage means reading it quickly by concentrating on content words like nouns or verbs to find the main point it simply gives you an overview of a body of text and also lets one knows where to find information when you skim through a passage you're not reading in depth you're not trying to understand every piece of ink in that passage all you're trying to do is to get the gist to have an overview of the passage and to know how the information is structured where to locate what specific type of information that you need this is what skimming does for you scheming i'll take it again does not mean in-depth reading when are skimming through a passage you will come across words you will come across expressions that you do not understand now is not that time is not the time to stop and try to reason or figure it out no all you are doing is just knowing where those information is located then when you are scanning or if the question requires you to understand that particular word particular expression you can now scan for it locate it and then do an in-depth reading of that particular place skimming a passage should not take you between beyond three to four minutes for each passage if you're taking the academic model you should not take more than five minutes to skim through a passage whereas if you're taking the general training model it should not take you more than three minutes to skim through any passage this is very significant why is this for the academic model of the of the ielts you have three passages and you have 60 minutes uh a clear delineation of the time would give us 20 minutes each for each passage you need to use out of that 20 minutes you're using less than five minutes or at most five minutes to skim through the passage anything that goes beyond that time will cut into the time that you need to answer the questions and cross-check your answers scheming although very important is not something that you need to sit down and do it on for so long it is meant to actually improve and increase your speed not to make you spend or waste so much time when skimming through a passage it also helps you with global understanding questions what are global understanding questions these are questions that focus on the entire reading passage for example questions about what is the author's stand what is the author's perspective of the concept what is the author what is the author trying to say when he says so so thing skimming is the kind of strategy that will enable you to answer those questions easily because when you skim through a passage you end up having an overview and end up having a seeing the big picture for the passage as opposed to scanning where you're only reading a specific part of the passage skimming through will give you an overview and enable you to answer questions on summary general global understanding questions and questions that summarize the whole message in the passage for example find a suitable title for the passage is a question that can only be answered if you skim through the whole passage because this question is talking about you summarizing the whole information in the passage and coming up with a one sentence description for your summary another type of question that could easily be answered just by skimming through a passage is what is the act what is the writer's attitude or view of the subject of the passage these are questions that scheming will enable you to answer when you skim through a passage a couple of things will catch your eye when you're skimming through a passage names will catch our eye numbers will catch our eye and special symbols what do i mean by names if i'm reading through a passage and i see the word egypt or i see the word um or i see the word markers i will definitely pause even if it's just one second or two seconds on that word because it will catch my attention if i give you a piece of paper now that has a passage on it and i tell you to spend 10 seconds looking at that passage and extract five different things that you can see i can assure you that out of 10 people eight of them will extract names as one of the first things that their eye could see why are names so significant one they will be capitalized they will start with a capital letter which means that in the midst of all the surrounding words they will probably be bigger and also they are usually not common english words except for names that are common english words like stone brown rose every other name will stand out because it is not a usual english word another thing that will stand out will be numbers numbers will stand out because they are figures in the midst of words so they will catch our attention finally special symbols like brackets words written in italics apostrophes words written in bold all these will also catch our attention so when you're skimming through a passage you're apart from the fact that you're just trying to get the overview of the passage you're also noticing where this partic where all these things all these details that i mentioned could be located most times seven out of ten times you will discover that those things usually constitute the key words that you will use to scan for your answers very very significant and very important i mentioned earlier that in subsequent videos we will go through a practical exercise on how to use skimming and scanning where i will demonstrate how i would do it and i would advise you to also try it out at home scanning scanning involves searching a text quickly for a specific piece of information very basic involves searching a piece of information a piece of text or a body of text quickly for a specific piece of information how do you use this let's go on when scanning all you need to do is this if i get a passage on the topic nigeria after skimming through the passage i was able to discover that it has five paragraphs and each fight and the five paragraphs are arranged in a way that they deal with specific areas when talking about nigeria paragraph one talks about the history of nigeria paragraph two talks about the political composition of nigeria paragraph three talks about the economy of nigeria paragraph four talks about the tribes in nigeria and paragraph five talks about the future of nigeria all this information are things that i got just from skimming through that passage the first question in the passage asks the legislative houses in nigeria are dash in number and they give you options 8 d 2 4 6 8. where will i go to scan for that answer because i have skimmed through that passage i already have an idea a clear idea of how the passage is organized the legislative out the legislative houses in nigeria would definitely be under the political paragraph if i do not want to make that leap or i don't want to make that leap i don't want to jump to that conclusion what do i do the question says how many are the legislative houses in nigeria what do i do i underline the word legislative houses and i underline the word our menu i will go to the passage and scan for where i saw the word legislative houses once i get to where i found legislative houses chances are that i would find the answer to my information either in the sentence before or in the sentence that follows that particular place where i found that keyword this is how you use scanning identify a keyword in your question and then go to the passage to scan for that keyword but there's a caveat so that most times and this is a very significant tip most times in the aisles the key word that you have underlined in the passage will not be dive in the question sorry would not be directly present in the passage eight times out of ten it will be a synonym or a paraphrase of that particular keyword that you will find in the passage this is why we established at the beginning of this series of videos for the ielts multi-step program that your knowledge of synonyms and your ability to paraphrase is a significant contributor to your success in the ielts when you are scanning you're going to be using or depending on your knowledge of synonyms a lot which is why i always advise candidates to please show up their skills in this area before taking the ielts test itself the number of words per question what does this mean in the reading test there are instructions that usually specify the number of words that you can write for example in questions that require you to fill in the gap in sentences you are usually given a specific number of words to write i have discovered over the years that this is one of the most significant contributors to failure in the ielts a lot of test takers do not read the instructions or they do not interpret the instructions correctly and they end up writing more than the stipulated number of words for a question please as much as possible when you get to a particular question read the instructions read the instructions that tell you the format for answering those questions does the question require you to write down the letters only because the question requires you to write down the words how many words are you required to write to answer those questions the most common instructions that you get in the ielts will be one word only no more than two words and or a number no more than three words and or a number please do not disregard these instructions read them make sure that you understand them before you attempt answering the questions or before you attempt to test itself remember to use synonyms and paraphrases in your search as this will make your answer finding the answer faster for the example that i gave earlier about the passage about nigeria now the person who does not have synonyms or who does not know any synonyms for the word legislative house legislative harvest no name for that would be the parliament right so what you will find in the passage could be the houses of parliament in nigeria are two the senate and the house of assembly or the house of representative in essence your knowledge of synonyms and paraphrasing will go a long way in speeding up your the process of answering questions in the reading section in the ielts synonyms and paraphrasing will make you find your answers faster and speed is an essential element of success in the ielts so you need to as much as possible ensure that you are strong on your knowledge of synonyms if you want to use the skimming and scanning method for the reading test moving on once you've found your answer meaning that after you've identified the keyword in the question you're going to scan for the keyword in the question in the passage once you've located where the keyword is is in the passage you do what do you do you read the sentence before it you the sentence after it your answer is going to be either in the sentence where you found your keyword the one preceding it or the one succeeding it once you find your answer what else do you do once you find your answer like i mentioned you'll be the next line or the first line before it so that you can confirm if this actually is the answer and to also confirm how your answer occurs in the context in which it has been used why is this important word usage is dependent on context word usage is dependent on context the word bad automatically means a negative thing but if it is using a context for let's say for example if you're talking if a person is discussing hip-hop and you're talking about michael jackson and you say michael jackson used the word bad as one of the titles of his songs and in that song the word bad they didn't have a negative connotation in fact it actually meant cool so for example you see a sentence in a passage that says uh we um we we had a nice time eating at the restaurant the salad was bad and with an apostrophe with a exclamation mark there the salad was really bad and this is a conversation between friends where they are using that as um as a slang the word bad day definitely does not have a negative connotation that has a positive connotation but i digress the essence of that digression is just to underline the fact that word usage is dependent on the context in which it is used and you will do well to remember that instead of just taking individual words and giving dictionary definitions to them irrespective of how it is being used in the passage now once you've found your answer do you go straight ahead to just write out the answer no you need to confirm you need to cross check if it aligns with what the question wants now for there are different schools of thought for this some people say you find the answer put it down and you move on some others say you find your answer put it down and you put a star beside it you put a star sign beside it to tell you to remind yourself that you've chosen this answer as your first choice but you still need to do a little bit of confirming or rechecking before you decide on that answer putting a style beside it means that at the end of the reading test which is probably and you have like five minutes to submission and you're reviewing your old answers you would get to that up to get to that question and discover that why did i put a star sign beside it oh it means i want to recheck this and you go back and reconfirm or recheck it or you just say oh yes i wanted to recheck it but now i'm sure that this is the answer i don't need to recheck it and you raise that star sign crossing out wrong answers also helps you crossing out wrong answers uh would lead you to a process called elimination in a question that has four options before i go ahead to start checking all the options yeah if i go if i read the question and i go to the passage to check out my answers and i discovered that two of those options are definitely wrong and do not have any bearing at all to the question that is asked i cross them out what does this do what does this do it reduces the field in which i have to find my answer dealing with two possible options is much more easier than dealing with four possible options remember most of the strategies that you need to deploy for the reading section in the ielts test will be channeled towards increasing your speed accuracy is secondary to speed because if you are given seven hours to take the reading test you will most likely get 40 out of 40 questions you will get all the questions accurately because you've had time to read re-read cross-check and re-check but because you have just one hour to finish the 40 questions speed becomes an essential commodity so you need to as much as possible when you're practicing work on ways to improve your speed how do i find my answers faster how do i confirm my answers faster much more than you focusing on how to get the correct answer only finally do not rely on your own knowledge when dealing with the reading passage what do i mean by this if you're a doctor and you get a passage on how to operate in the theater you do not go in there with the world of your own knowledge and and using that to answer the questions the only thing the only source material that you can or you must depend on for the ielts is the reading passage itself so even if the information in the reading passage contradicts what you know as a doctor as a practicing doctor you do not have any reason or any right to put what you know as the answer there the only thing that can be regarded as correct in the context of the ielts is the information gotten from the passage which means that the passage is your constitution it's your bible it's your quran it's your source material it's your fountain of knowledge i see a lot of people get into the aisles especially when it gets to questions that ask them to confirm a fact or they ask them to confirm a view or a claim which are the true false not given or yes no not given questions i see a lot of people having challenges with this question because their own previous knowledge or their own body of knowledge contradicts or is interfering in the process of deciding if the information given in the question is either corresponding with what is in the passage or it is opposite to what is in the passage or it is not there at all please as much as possible the only source material that should inform your knowledge that should guide the whole process in the reading test is the reading passage itself so what are the common problems that you must avoid things that you should not do at all in the reading section of the ielts test first then reading the text in depth before you answer the questions avoid this and i've stated that reason why you are avoiding this most specifically is because it is just a waste of time you have a 2000 word passage and all the relevant information that you need to answer the 14 to 12 questions assigned to that passage are just 500 words spending 15 to 11 or 12 minutes reading to digest that passage is a waste of useful time that you can use on other passages the second thing that you should not do is not answer all the questions please as much as possible each question carries one mark and to get the maximum scores for the general training model you need to get 40 out of 40 correct any question you leave unanswered is an automatic reduction in your banned score so every question must be answered in the reading section of the ielts any question that you do not know that you are not sure of please guess in subsequent videos i will be sharing some guessing strategies and guessing techniques that will help you make an educated guess or choose an answer that is most more likely to be true or to be correct even without reading the passage or without even interacting with the passage or the information in the passage so well another thing that you need to be very careful of or you want to avoid doing is not reading the whole sentence what do i mean by this you're scanning by reading the question identifying the keyword in the question and then going to the passage to scan to the passage to find where your keyword occurs when you find your keyword ensure that you read the whole sentence in which that keyword occurs or if possible read at least the sentence before it is sent the main sentence itself and the sentence after it do not decide on an answer by just reading a particular phrase or just a particular section of a sentence because there's a likely chance that your answer or the information or that detail may be changed or may be qualified or modified later on in the sentence i have seen this message accounts for a lot of failures in the ielts and i do not want you to fall victim to this so this is a very important strategy or tip that you must review and review over and over again like i mentioned earlier the only way to benefit from these videos is to practice as much as possible watch these videos pause them when you get to an interesting tip or strategy that you need bring out a question paper and find a way to apply that strategy that you just learned and when you find that it's difficult for you to um to apply try it over and over again until it becomes second nature to you the ielts is going to be successful or the ielts is going to be a success for someone who has become a creature of habit you need to practice so well that it becomes an habitual thing for you to succeed in the ielts failure to do this will set you up for as much as possible like i said failure and you do not want to fail in the ielts the readings the reading section of the ielts is one of the easiest paths to pass and you should as much as possible leverage on this to ensure that you get that desired band 9.

Channel: PrepClass IELTS TV

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Keywords: IELTS, IMMIGRATION, MIGRATION, SPEAKING, CANADA MIGRATION, LISTENING, WRITING, READING, CANADA, STUDY ABROAD, RELOCATION, IELTS BAND 7, IELTS BAND 7.5, IELTS BAND 8, IELTS BAND 8.5, IELTS BAND 9, IELTS TV, PREPCLASS IELTS, liz ielts, IELTS SPEAKING, IELTS READING, IELTS LISTENING, IELTS WRITING, IELTS WRITING TASK 1, IELTS WRITING TASK 2, ielts test, ielts listening tips, ielts reading strategies, ielts tips, ielts practice, ielts exam, ielts preparation, ielts sample

Id: dfY6OJb3Las

Length: 39min 52sec (2392 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021