IELTS Reading Time Management

everyone Chris here from IELTS advantage comm and welcome to our first live YouTube lesson and so this is a new thing for us and what we decided to do was kind of bring our classroom onto your phone or onto your PC so we've created this new studio with you know nice lighting and a nice board so that we can do more live lessons for free for everybody and we're not going to be giving away everything for free and but what we're going to be doing is at you know three or four lessons a week we're gonna try and do them at the same time every week and this lesson is our first lesson so it's a bit of an experiment but the great thing and that we can do now is we can stream to you in like 1080p really high quality streams on YouTube and we can teach you on the board don't teach you all the different things and also we can interact with you so on the phone I can look up my YouTube account and I can see all your questions and your comments and all those different things so if it's working okay comment below and let me know that you can hear me and you can see me on everything and we'll also be doing a live Q&A session at the end of this so if you're joining us live stick around until the end and we'll be able to answer any of your questions ok so let's get going so today's lesson is all about time management and time management and particularly for the IELTS reading test a number of you requested this lesson because the number of you said that two things are happening number one you're not getting to the end of the reading test on time so that's obviously causing you to lose lots of marks because either you just don't get none enough time to answer all the questions or you're answering them really really quickly so you don't get to you know look at the text properly and look at the answers and consider them and properly the other thing and this is probably a more common problem is that you're really stressed out in the middle of the reading test so you see that the clock ticking by and the stress levels continue to rise and when that happens our brains just don't function very well especially and the frontal part of our brain that deals with you know reasoning and logic doesn't really deal very well when you're stressed out so this lesson is going to focus on helping you with time management helping you lower your stress levels on test day and helping you to get the test done on time and so let me we have a first over first comment and it comes from guru Shan thanks very much for the first comment on our first YouTube live lesson so I'll be looking at the comments and at the end so if you have any comments just let me know feel free to comment below the video and I'll get back to you at the end so looking at a lot of the information out there on IELTS reading time management and out there on the internet and in books and different sources and there's it's the same approach again and again and again what they are trying to do and what students want are time management tips so do time management tips worked well if they worked you wouldn't really need this lesson if they worked you'd be able to just look at a bunch of tips go and do the test and get the score you need obviously these time management tips don't work and I want you to think about it this way imagine Usain Bolt so Usain Bolt you probably know who that is I hope that you know who that is the fastest man in the world or is he still the fastest man in the world no he brought in someone else broke his record but anyway a very very fast runner 100-meter runner and imagine the people finishing behind Usain Bolt so people that finished in second third fourth fifth did they have time management issues or did they have running issues that they really just weren't as fast as Usain Bolt or think about someone doing a marathon race the person finishing first do the people finishing behind him do they have time management issues do they need time management tips or do they need to become better runners it's exactly the same with IELTS writing if you are not finishing the test on time or you're really under pressure and really stressed out it you do not need time management tips and I'm not going to give you time management tips because they don't work you have to think about it in a completely different way you have to get better at reading your reading skills have to improve your knowledge of the test has to improve your knowledge of the different questions has to improve and we're going to look at that in this lesson so let's look at some of the key things that you need to think about when it comes to IELTS reading time management so the first thing that everybody talks about is skimming and scanning if you go into any IELTS classroom in the world if you look at any IELTS website everything to do with IELTS reading time management will be skimming scanning all you have to do is skim a lot and scan a lot and you'll finish the miraculously finish the test on time and get the score you need it's not as simple as that what I see is a lot of websites and a lot of teachers just telling students you skim then you scan then you find the correct answer that it's a little bit more complicated than that and you need to think about it differently so skimming and scanning are very useful in terms of time management because they save you a lot of time because inherently they allow you to get through the text much much faster but does that mean that you just skim and scan and get everything done really really quickly and then you'll get the score you need no you have to think about it a little bit more strategically or not like everything that I teach I try and get people to think about it and you know in a more strategic way so let's look at two questions as examples so the first question is matching headings where you'll be giving given a list of headings and you have to match those to different paragraphs in the text a different question is true false not given or yes no not given where you're given a list of statements and then you have to say whether those statements are true false or not given or yes/no or not given now these are two questions and they require two different types of skimming and scanning or they require a different approach to skimming and scanning so matching headings you'll be doing a lot of skimming because you have to get through the text it's a very long text and you also have to get a general idea of each paragraph in order to match that paragraph to the text or to the the heading so if you go really really quickly and you won't understand it but if you read every single word you'll run at a time so you're looking for a balance there and that's where skimming comes in where you're reading it quite quickly to get the overall idea of each paragraph and then you can hopefully match those ideas those titles to the list of headings but if you apply that strategy that same strategy to true false not given you're going to get into trouble because you're using a different strategy because it's a different question so for true false not given what you'll be doing is you'd be looking at the statements and you'll be looking at those and thinking about synonyms and thinking about the key words within that statement and then you'll be scanning so you'll not be skimming so much you'll be scanning for the location of where the answer is so as you can see these are just two of you know there are multiple choice questions sentence sentence completion questions yes no not given true false not given matching headings labeling a diagram labeling a table all of these different questions require a different mix of skimming and scanning so you need to be aware of the different types of questions and you need to have an individual strategy for all the different types of questions because you're going to be using a different strategy for true false not given versus multiple choice mutton versus summary completion versus matching headings all of them are testing different sub skills and skills and you need to have a different strategy for each of them and if you learn on strategy that is going to help you get everything done not quickly so they the goal shouldn't to do the test as quickly as possible the goal should be to complete each question properly Anna strategy will allow you to do that and allow you to address each question and find the answer properly and in a time efficient manner you shouldn't really think about how can I do it as quickly as possible because if you do it that way you probably make lots of mistakes the other thing is you need to be aware that the reading test is as much a vocabulary test as it is a reading test so when I work with my students what I'll get them to do is I'll get them to analyze their mistakes so they'll be doing a reading test with me and I'll ask them look at your mistakes and try and establish why you made those mistakes and often it will be nothing to do with time management they will think it's to do with time management and they'll say to me you know I need some time management tips I'll say no actually think about why you got that question wrong the reason why they got that question wrong was because their vocabulary just wasn't as good as it needs to be yet so someone with a you know a nice wide-ranging vocabulary that understands everything they need within the passage within the text they'll be able to quickly identify where the answer is quickly think about synonyms think about the meaning of different words on they'll be able to quickly establish what the meaning it or what the answer is if you are you know a little bit lower in terms of vocabulary what you're going to be doing is you're going to be struggling because you won't be able to find where the answer is in the text because you don't understand the words you won't be able to identify the correct answer because some of the different let's say multiple-choice there's three different options and each of the different options is quite similar and meaning so you don't really understand what to do so that's going to take you extra time so in order to improve your time management a key thing is you need to improve your vocabulary just like the analogy I used with Usain Bolt the guys finishing behind Usain Bolt they didn't need time management tips they need to become faster runners so if you need with time management on the reading test maybe it is because you need just need to improve your vocabulary the proving of vocabulary is going to improve your performance on the reading test but it's also going to improve your performance on the listening test on the readings are on the writing test and on the speaking test so it's really worthwhile trying to improve your vocabulary in that way the second thing is or the comment not the second thing one two three four fifth thing these live lessons if I make any mistakes I can't edit them out so there you go everybody makes mistakes and so obviously you need to practice and so one of the frustrating things is when I get a new student and we would talk about you know the skimming and scanning and we look at each question I'd give them a step by step strategy and some students not all students but some students will look at the strategy that I give them once and I said step by step you know step one do this step two do this step three do this they'll look at it one time try and do one set of questions and you're like that doesn't work of course it doesn't work like could you learn how to drive a car by getting one lesson could you learn how to tie your shoelaces by just trying it one time what you need to do is when you have strategies for these specific questions you need to do a lot of practice you need to learn how to apply those strategies to practice questions and just like driving a car you know if when you start first started driving a car you had to think about you know the acceleration and the accelerator and the brake and the gears and the mirrors and you had to consciously think about everything but as you practice now when you start and when you start a car just go away in the car without even thinking also a critical part of practice is reflection so if you are I got one student yesterday and she emailed me and she's like I only got 17 correct and I'm going to fail and that's you know I can't I don't know what to do I said okay calm down the most important thing when you're practicing especially if you get a lower band than you're expecting is to reflect on your mistakes so look at don't focus on the things you've done you don't well it is you can't analyze those two but the most important thing is you focus on your mistakes so this goes for listening as well as reading you can look at each of your mistakes and try and figure out why did you get that question wrong was it a vocabulary issue was it a spelling issue was it a grammar issue was it timing you were running out of time was it you were completely lost you didn't have a strategy was it because you didn't understand the different types of question what was it and then you can focus your attention on the patterns that will emerge so for many students for example it will be spelling or it will be vocabulary and then you can attack that problem but it's really important that you do reflect on that and then finally you have to read all right so a lot of students when it comes to time management they come to me and they say please give me time management tips I want you to give me ten time management tips and I say when was the last time you read in English for an hour and they say never it was like well how are you going to do that for an hour on test day so that would be like again Usain Bolt maybe you saying doesn't do any training for six months and he gets a little bit fat and he doesn't you know his muscles start to deteriorate does he need time management tips or does he just need to get back on the truck and start him running a bit more if you're having time management issues it might be that you just don't read enough you should be reading every single day in English if you're hoping to get one especially if you're hoping to get one of the higher scores like it's amazing how many students come to me and say I want to bond eight point five in an IELTS reading and but I don't want to do any reading practice and and it doesn't have to be boring IELTS practice tests it can't be anything that you're interested in so if you're interested in cricket read about cricket if you're interested in gardening read about gardening if you're interested in I don't know life video streaming read about that whatever you're interested in read for you know 10 15 20 minutes a day I'm not far more effective than what most people do which is wait you know a week before their tests and then panic and I'm okay I better start reading my prepare you know realistically realistically you need you know weeks months some people in even eight years before they're able to get the score that they need but that's much much better than failing the test I was on face book life but 30 minutes ago and there was a guy said he's failed the test 15 times so would it be better is that guy out of prepared properly and put the work in rather than just repeating the test over and over and over again because luck good fortune hope none of these things are going to get you the score that you need but doing things properly and preparing properly well okay so let me see if we have any questions wow we have a lot cool it's the first time we've ever done this and we actually have questions which is good and so let me get some other questions this is the first time I've ever used to YouTube life so I'm trying to get through all the questions trying to look through them go Sean says thanks a lot Tahir says hello would you like to give long free lessons about writing this month would you would you like to give long free lessons and that's what I kind of do every day and him so he yes all right so what I'm gonna do before I go into the Q&A session is I'm gonna set you a task and this task is really really going to help your reading scores they is the task that I give all my students the very first day that they start and start with me on my courses this is what I tell them to do this is what I'm going to tell you to do it's free you can do it at home anytime you like you can don't need the help of a teacher and it's really really going to help you so task 1 so number 1 what you to be showing me ads on my own stream so number 1 and get free practice tests you'll find these at the British console IDP IELTS org you can just google them you'll find many many many free reading practices just Google reading practice tests make sure you're using practice tests from real sources if you use fake practice tests that are not produced by Cambridge or IELTS or the British Council or IDP they're probably way too easy or way too hard so don't use fake practice tests but it's really easy to find them online and number two do two or three tests under exam conditions so don't cheat and you know have Google open and have a dictionary with you and take you know three hours to do one test and do it in one hour do it and without any help because the next stage is it's really really important that you get a real sense of where you are at the moment alright so number three you're going to analyze your mistakes and you're going to analyze your mistakes in two ways number one by question type so this most of the time this applies doesn't apply a hundred percent of the time but for many people they have particular problems with particular types of question so for example if all of your true false not given questions are correct then that's not a question you should really you know worry about too much but if you do two or three tests and all of your matching heading headings questions are incorrect then where do you think that your time and your attention should go you should focus on the questions that you know you focus on your weaknesses for every aspect of IELTS focus on your weaknesses first so once you identify any particular question types that kind that cause you problems then you can strategically start to focus on them number two think about why you made those mistakes so think about was it vocab was it grammar was it time was it strategy because that again was it spelling that again will allow you to strategically attack your weak areas so if you're looking at your mistakes and you know like eighty percent of your mistakes are spelling mistakes then that's a really really good thing because now you know the reason why you're not getting the score you need you could focus on improving your spelling and by doing that you're going to improve your score if it was vocab and grammar then you need to focus on none if it was timing and strategy you need to focus on that but if you do that task on you know it'll take you four or five hours and you know it's a lot of work to do but you could do it and over or you know a couple of hours in the evenings each night this week it is really going to make a huge difference to your awareness of your weaknesses and allow you to improve okay so that's pretty much it in terms of the lesson let me see if there are any questions not that one no either there are no questions or I'm not seeing the questions but there was one question I seen from Tuck here it says hello would you like to give are you saying any questions okay cool and just let me check if everything is working okay 52 people watching so hello to the 52 people watching if you have any questions or anything like that then let me know and I'll be able to answer them for you and if not I will go and I'll look at your questions I do post below and I'll come back maybe tomorrow and try to answer them for you just by typing in the answer I'll give you guys a few more minutes so let me - give me any other questions that you have and also in the comments let me know what you think of these YouTube lessons did you find them useful would you prefer Facebook the old lessons that I did where I just pre record everything do you think the live element is good let me know what you think either good or bad if there's anything you don't like feel free to tell me and even better if you don't like something tell me so that I can fix it oh there's a bunch of questions so if you can say this no questions loads of questions all right top shot all right so let me see so the first question is and I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing any of your names here Keerthana Chris are we allowed to scribble underline on the question paper of course you can yeah do whatever you want you paid for it so do whatever you want there and on the answer sheet obviously try and keep things as legible as possible so that the the person for your reading tests with the person and correcting it can see clearly what you what your answer is do your on strategy for matching headings so I'm not going to give you the full step-by-step strategy because it's very long and I don't want to give you a strategy you can miss essential parts of it but one quick strategy for matching headings that works really really well on I've worked on this with a lot of students and they've all said that it really helped them is when you see matching headings questions don't look at the list of headings first look at the text first so the paragraphs first so don't look at the headings the list of headings at all and what you want to do is look at each paragraph read it skim it read it quite quickly but read it enough so that you are able to create your own heading beside each paragraph so what you want to do is read the paragraph and then quickly scribble if you had to think of a heading what would you write and even if you don't think that it's accurate but just just do it do this in practice it really does work and then at the end you will have a list of your own headings and you'll be amazed at how many actually much the head the list of headings and then it's really simple to just match those up so that works really really well try that but you need to practice it don't do that for the first time in the test don't try new things for M for the first time in the new test so Robin that was your question as well Mohammed I wonder about the order of the questions in the reading task sorry it keeps showing me ads I must turn the ads off sorry if you're getting ads too and so some questions some types of question on the reading test the answers will be in the same order as the questions and in others they'll be in different orders off the top of my head I don't know 100% what those what those different types of questions are but they're on my website you can go and have a look IELTS advantage comm slash reading and it's listed there so you can have a look there you see any more a lot of you asking about how to generate ideas for an essay and so that's kind of a whole lesson in itself and I might do that you know this you know later this week or next week about how to generate ideas and I want to do a full lesson on that I don't want to give just quick advice but what I always say to students is don't brainstorm brainstorming is the number one reason why you cannot generate effective ideas that's what 99% of teachers will tell you 99% of IELTS teachers will tell you brainstorm all you have to do is just brainstorm and then you'll get the ideas if that worked and you know most students wouldn't have a problem with it but it really doesn't work there's another technique there's another thing that you can do that it's much more effective I'll make a whole lesson or not so if you want me to do that put it in the comments or like the video and if you want to keep up to date with everything make sure you subscribe to this youtube channel hit the bell and then when I go live again you'll get a notification let me see children that can you explain the strategy for true false not given you'll find it on my website you'll find it on aisle 2 advantage column / reading so or just Google IELTS advantage true false not given it's up there Eunice what's the what's the easiest IELTS test general training or academic it totally depends on you and how hard the way that your brain works so the biggest difference between academic and general training is writing task 1 so for general training it is writing a letter for academic it's analyzing a data source or a process or a map or something like that and writing a report on it some people really like academic task 1 because that's you know they like charts and graphs and stuff like that someone like me I don't really like charts and graphs and data so I would prefer general training but it's totally up to you but the answer to that question is not really within your control because whoever you're applying to will tell you that you have to do one test or the other so you probably don't have a choice but if you do have a choice I have a look at both writing to end task 1 & 4 for general training on academic I'll make a decision based on that because speaking exactly the same listening is exactly the same toss two writings the same reading the text is the texts are different so general training general texts academic academic texts but the style of questions is the same the strategies and stuff are the same so have a look they're coming right answers all in capital letters reading a reading test listening test yes no problem corinthis skimming scanning any other strategy skimming and scanning is not a strategy so skimming and scanning are two sub skills and so the three sub skills reading sub skills that you need to worry about are skimming so that is reading something quite quickly to find the general meaning of it so if you're in a bookstore and you're looking at the back of the book to just get the general gist of of what the book is about or you're reading the news and you're just looking for gist to see what it's about that's skimming scanning is when you're looking for specific information so time table so if you're at a train station and you're looking for the next train to Paris you're going to be scanning for the word Paris then scanning for The Times and that's how we use that but the most important sub skill is close reading so reading the text actually carefully because that's where the answers will be revealed so a big mistake is when you tell a student just skim just scan and then you'll get the scores you need because you're ignoring close reading you're also ignoring the fact that different questions require different elements of skimming and scanning so they're not strategies they're sub skills and I hope that answers your question how can I improve my speaking without a partner very good question use one of these all right so you should have you know you should have a smart phone but it's likely that you will have some sort of phone that has a recording app on it and so it's obviously not as good as having a partner and what you really want is to have you know an IELTS teacher a good IELTS teacher doing mock tests with you and giving you feedback but if that's not available to you a really good technique and everybody should do this who's practicing or preparing for the speaking test get your phone get some practice and real IELTS speaking practice tests a full practice test read each question and then answer the question like you would in the real exam then listen back so that's the essential part of it listen back and think about the fourth marking criteria so pronunciation fluency and coherence grammar and vocabulary think about those things particularly pronunciation was everything you said clear and easy to understand fluency could you speak at a natural pace without many pauses and hesitations grammar were you making many grammar mistakes or was your grammar quite accurate vocabulary were you making lots of vocabulary mistakes or was your vocabulary quite accurate did you have enough vocabulary to discuss each of the different topics and questions if you can answer yes to a lot of those questions then you're doing quite well and but listening back to your performance will raise your awareness of particular problems that you have so everybody should do that whether they you know have no money at all and they can't afford a teacher or they have the best teacher in the world doesn't matter you should do that let me see and someone whose name I can't pronounce a passage three is mostly filled with research papers and thesis and it is very hard to get over it okay so like I don't understand exactly what you mean but I'm gonna guess that you mean that there are lots of words that you don't understand in not part of the reading test first of all that's totally normal you will never ever nobody will ever look at an IELTS reading test paper and understand a hundred percent of the words even people who are native English speakers they will look at some of the words and be like well what is that about the reason why that is is because when let's say you're from let's say you're from I don't know for sure but based on your name let's say you're from India and when you move from India to let's say you moved to London how many new words everyday are you going to see in newspapers on TV on billboards listening to people interacting with people there will always be new words that you don't understand so what the IELTS reading test and the listening test are doing is they're testing your ability to be comfortable with communicating in English while at the same time not understanding a hundred percent of the words that you see or that you hear because that's real life that's how you what you're going to have to cope with you move to wherever you're going to move to but there are different strategies that you can employ that are deploy that will help you deal with that so number one just accept that you're not going to be able to understand every single word I don't understand every single word I see in an IELTS reading test if it's a really academic scientific paper you know not every English speaker knows every single word in the English language even though some of you think that English teacher should be able to do that but we can't number number to get used to guessing meaning of new words from context so during your preparation this should be part of your preparation so when you see a new word let's say you're reading a newspaper article and you see a new word don't immediately look up the meaning guess the meaning from the context that it surrounds the word the different words around that word the sentence around that word the paragraphs or the whole context of what's happening around that word and get used to deep to guessing that and then if you still can't guess it then you could look up the meaning expand your vocabulary and that will help you okay so Babu my exam is on the 12th of May good luck bubble if you need anything just let me know um Stephen Quigley IELTS is a scam 100% money monster okay Stephen thanks very much for your input and okay guys thank you very much guys and I think that's all what time is it I have to go yeah I'm gonna go I think that was pretty successful for our first Youtube live lesson but let me know what you think about it and and if you're watching the recording this feel free to comment and let me know how you get on with this task it would be really interesting if you guys went away and did this task and then told me which questions you have a problem with and why you're having those particular problems and that will be really interesting and yeah subscribe like if you liked the video and to the person that says that who was he that is the scam and maybe don't like it you can dislike it if you like that's for free to do that if you want and but to the rest of you and feel free to subscribe and hit the bell so that you'll get notified we're going to be doing a lot more on YouTube and you'll also find us on aisle to advantage calm you'll find us on Facebook IELTS advantage and your finest on Instagram I also vantage thank you very much guys was a pleasure teaching you and if you need anything feel free to get in touch Chris a dial to advantage calm thanks very much guys bye-bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 53,136

Keywords: IELTS, IELTS reading, Time Management, learn english, english, international english language testing system, ielts test, ielts advantage, Advantage, ielts preparation, ielts, english reading

Id: rqU7UggGWes

Length: 37min 51sec (2271 seconds)

Published: Wed May 09 2018