IELTS Reading Tips | 9 Tips for Band 9

the ielts reading test is a race against the clock any small change that you can make to your exam strategy can have a huge effect on your score in today's video we're going to be looking at nine tips to help you with the ielts reading test coming up [Music] welcome my name is eli and i run the website englishprotips.com where we help students get ready for the ielts test now in today's lesson we're going to be looking at nine tips to help you with the ielts reading test but before we do that it's important to know some information about the reading test so first of all you have one hour to do the test in the test you'll find that there are three sections so three passages or three texts that you have to read and in those three sections you'll find 40 questions in total now each question is worth one mark and you don't lose marks for incorrect answers so it's always worth guessing if you don't know the answer you can write the entire test in capital letters if you want remember you don't have extra time to transfer your answers at the end when the test finishes the test finishes now you also need to know that it's there's a different reading test for the academic and general ielts this mainly has to do with the kinds of texts that you'll find in the test the general ielts tends to have say things like articles on choosing the best builder or articles that you will find in everyday reading however in the academic ielts the passages tend to be longer and slightly more complex and they tend to be on academic topics although you don't really need to have any academic understanding in order to read and understand these texts there's also a difference in what score you need to get to get your desired band score for example in the academic ielts school you would only need to get banned sorry 30 out of 40 in order to get banned seven in the general ielts you'd need to get 34 out of 40 in order to get band 7. so you can see that here and also here okay let's get stuck in let's look at some of the tips to get band 9 in the ielts reading test the first tip is to structure your approach i'll show you what i mean um so as i mentioned there's three sections to the ielts reading test in each section there's a certain order that i would do things in first of all i would glance at the questions so glance means just to look quickly at the questions don't get stuck into them when you glance at the questions just identify the question type after that read the text quickly this is also referred to as skimming while you're reading the text quickly you're going to highlight or underline things like names dates names of theories or location things that help you to understand the layout of the text this is also going to help you answer the questions later on you also want to make a note whether it's on the piece of paper the question paper or a mental note on the layout of the text so what you find in each paragraph the purpose of this skimming is to help you know what part of the text you're going to read in detail when you answer the questions now the final part is to actually tackle the questions themselves so when you're reading through the questions underline words in those questions that help you to understand what the question is asking you to do or what the difference between the different options is we'll be able to practice that together okay so number one structure your approach and i recommend this three part structure tip number two is well if you don't know the answer skip it i'll show you what i mean remember there are or rather for most question types the answers will come in order so for example look at this question we need to find a word from the text to complete this summary so what you'll find is that the answer to question 21 will be more or less at the top of the text below that you'll find 22 23 and 24. so the answers come in order now as a result if you don't know what the answer to question 22 is just skip it and move on to 23. by answering questions 21 and 23 you'll have a better idea of where in the text the answer for question 22 is you can always go back and look for the answer afterwards now i did say that most question types have the answers in order but that's not always the case so there are certain question types that have the answers in order so things like multiple choice true false not given or also yes no not given sentence completion summary completion match sentence endings short answers and labeling questions however there are still some questions that don't have the information in order for example matching headings or matching information or matching features questions as a result it's important that you understand which questions you'll find in order in the text and which ones you will not now question number three is to understand these question types so all of the question types that i mentioned here you should have um practiced before now the best the best way to practice this is actually just to do past paper questions and make a note of which question type you are answering when you're doing your practice reading tests that way you're going to become more familiar with those question types a good idea is also to under identify which question types you struggle with and spend more time on those question types as a little clue it's usually true false not given and matching headings that most students struggle with but it might be different for you so practice and find out which ones you find easier and which ones you find more difficult tip number four is to work on your speed reading okay so how can we do that well first of all we can read the question first now when we're reading in our first language we always have a purpose for reading for example if we're reading a dictionary we're going to have a different approach when compared to reading a novel for example when we're reading a dictionary we're just going to scan all the words to try and find out what it is we're looking for when we're reading a novel we're going to take our time so that we can imagine the scenery and what's happening to the characters the ielts test is no different you should read the questions first to identify how you're going to tackle the text are you going to scan through the text quickly to look for names or are you going to work out which part of the text has the answer and read that part in detail so by knowing this we're going to be able to read more quickly the second thing is don't try to understand everything you read remember the purpose of the ielts reading test is to get a high score not to understand everything in the text so even if there's parts of the text that you don't understand if there aren't questions related to that text it doesn't matter don't spend time rereading parts of the text just to fully understand it spend time answering the questions another thing that you shouldn't do is to sub vocalize unless you're reading for detail now sub-vocalizing is when you read and you're speaking the words out in your head so for example you might notice small movements with your tongue now people have found that when we sub-vocalize while reading we don't read as quickly so only sub-vocalize if you're trying to concentrate on a particular part of the text that you think has the answer otherwise don't sub-vocalize practice this before your test number four don't re-read sentences okay so remember when i said to skim read the text before you answer the questions don't find yourself rereading sentences that you don't understand the purpose is just to get a general understanding of the text however when we're reading for detail which is when we've identified the question and we're looking for the answer for a specific question at that point yes reread sentences to try and make sure that you fully understand the text and you're getting the right answer the final tip is to do a lot of practice tests you can't avoid this if you want to get a high score and you want to be able to read quickly in the ielts reading tests you need to do lots of tests you need to be familiar with the types of text and the type of questions that appear in this test okay tip number five try different time allocations i'll tell you what i mean so as you'll know there's three sections in the reading test and you have one hour so it would seem logical that you spend 20 minutes on section 1 20 minutes on section 2 and 20 minutes on section 3. right wrong section three is the most difficult section one is the easiest so as a result some students try to spend only 15 minutes on section 1 20 minutes on section 2 and then they give themselves 25 minutes on section 3 and in that way they are giving themselves more time for the tricky passages and the tricky questions in fact some students even do section three first they know it's the most difficult so they go straight to section three and afterwards they do section two and one you can choose the order that works for you the important thing is that you decide on this before your ielts test don't decide this on the day do lots of practice and find out what works for you now throughout this lesson i've emphasized the importance of skim reading which is what we do before we start focusing in on the questions i would recommend that you can skim read passage one so section one in two minutes passage two in three minutes and patches passage three in three to four minutes practice this before your real test maybe even use a phone or a clock to time yourself to make sure that you are skim reading and not reading for detail tip number six be careful of spelling mistakes now some people who do the ielts test on a computer do this they copy and paste the answer from the text into into the questions and in that way they're not going to have a spelling mistake however if you're doing the paper-based ielts reading test make sure that you don't make any spelling mistakes in the test you'll lose marks and this is a silly way to lose marks in the test although it happens all the time number seven if you really don't know yes you can just guess the answer you're not going to lose any points if you get them wrong in fact i would suggest that you consider leaving the multiple choice and true false not given questions till last and i'll explain so this is a multiple choice question this is a question where you have to find a word in the text and this is a true false not given question so if you guess the answer for a multiple choice question well you have four options sometimes just three and in that case you have a 25 25 chance of getting the answer right just by guessing similarly in true false not given there's three different options it's either true false or not given so by guessing you have a 33 33.333 percent chance of getting it right however if you guess in the sentence completion or summary completion task you have less than one percent chance of getting it right because there's so many different words that because they could possibly be in the text so if you know that you struggle with completing an ielts reading test on time and many of you do consider leaving the multiple choice and true false not given also yes no not given till last okay number eight practice at home probably the most important tip in today's lesson in fact this is yash who got a band 9 in the ielts listening test and when i spoke to him i said how did you get such a high score in the ielts listening test and he said this i did the cambridge practice tests so many times that i knew all the answers by heart now bearing in mind there's 16 tests or 16 books of cambridge practice tests and each book has four tests and i know he also did some extra tests on youtube as well so that gives you an idea of how many tests yash did in order to get band nine in the ielts listening test so how can we practice at home okay well i recommend three different stages of your practice stage one is all about skill development and this is what we're going to focus on when we have say three months before or more than three months before our ielts reading test in this stage we're going to take one passage at a time so one section at a time and we're not going to give ourselves a time limit the purpose of this is to become familiar with the kinds of texts and kinds of questions that appear in the test so we're going to do passage one and then we're going to look at the answers and focus on which questions we got wrong and why we're trying to learn from this experience we're also going to look holistically so on a whole about which question types we find most difficult so do we struggle most with yes no not given or matching headings or summary completion the whole point is we become and more analytical and more conscious about our learning process we're also going to record any new words that we learn so for example in our vocabulary book we're going to write down any new words that we learn okay in stage two of our learning and this is going to be when we have for example two months or maybe between one and two months left in this stage we're going to do one whole test at a time and we're going to time ourselves so we're going to give ourselves one hour and we're going to do the full ielts reading test in its entirety we're going to track our progression so what did we do what did we get when we did cambridge ielts book 16 test one what did we do when we did cambridge ielts book 16 test two and we're going to map our progress and hopefully it will be progress hopefully we'll start to see higher scores coming out again we're going to be analytical which questions did we get wrong and why and we're going to continue to record new words okay stage three is right before we have our ielts test so for example one week to one month before our test we're going to focus on doing all of the tests in the same day so we're going to be doing the listening test the reading test and the writing test at the same time the purpose of this is to build our stamina and of course we're also going to be checking that we get the answers right or wrong and why we're getting some of them wrong okay for this i suggest that you use the cambridge offici the official cambridge ielts books so remember if you're doing the academic or general ielts test there's going to be a different book that you need to buy so work out which one you're doing and get all of those official cambridge books they are invaluable practice finally tip number nine is to read extensively now most of you or some of you will know that there's a difference between extensive reading and intensive reading okay so extensive reading is when we read a large amount of material for a general understanding so we're not consulting the dictionary we're reading lots of different texts with the purpose of getting a general understanding of those texts intensive reading on the other hand is when we have shorter texts but we want to fully understand everything in those passages so for example we can answer lots of different types of questions about the passages so um the ielts test is more similar to intensive reading we're tested on our understanding but when we read for pleasure for example when we read all of the harry potter books because we want to find out what happens to dumbledore we're extensively reading now i recommend extensively reading books or novels or articles that you're interested in things like all of the harry potter books or perhaps reading the economist to find out what's going on in your country or in the world okay um now another student that got a band nine is this guy this is ahmed he's from syria and he also got band nine in the ielts reading test he said this i read articles every day i read the articles i wanted to read extensive reading and i read for enjoyment first good extensive reading after that i would read again to learn the new vocabulary so he reads extensively and then he afterwards reads intensively for the purpose of learning language okay so the important thing is that we create a habit of reading in english so for example i like to read last thing at night before i go to bed i also like reading very early in the morning find the times that you like to read and get into a habit of reading english regularly important is to find books and articles that you want to read so articles or books that you're interested in you're not just reading just to learn the language this is very important as a result you'll probably read novels for example i was recently speaking to a student that um liked to watch the film first and then afterwards to read the book because they found that if they already knew roughly what happened and the rough storyline they um could understand the book better and they actually enjoyed it more similarly read news articles that you're interested in for example i was speaking to a nutritionist that likes to read nutrition articles in science journals in english great okay the final thing is read braided readers now graded readers are readers that have been um novels that have been changed slightly so that people without a fully proficient level of english can understand them now this is a great website that you can find graded readers in what you can do is divide by um or sorry filter the books by level so for example if you've got a beginner level an intermediate level an advanced level or a proficiency level and you can also browse through the books to find the books that interest you most so for example you can find things like um animal farm by george orwell or maybe elon musk's biography the idea is you find the books that interest you most and you make a habit of reading these books regularly all right i hope you've enjoyed this lesson and i'm looking forward to hearing all about your approach to reading remember we always have discussions in the facebook group as well and this week we've really been talking a lot about um what kind of methods we have for reading what we find difficult about reading and what we also like to read in english so come and join the facebook group if you haven't already best of luck with your studies and i'll see you in the next lesson bye then [Music] you

Channel: English Pro Tips - IELTS Preparation

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Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022