The Number 1 Way to IMPROVE Your IELTS READING Scores

everyone Chris here from IELTS advantage Cobb and in look at the number one way IELTS reading scores so many of you need high IELTS reading scores many of you might have done the test before and your reading scores are not as high as you'd hope for this lesson is really really going to help you okay so there are many different ways that you can improve your reading scores we're going to in the next slide look at the most common ones but none of those actually help your reading scores as much as the math that I'm going to share with you today and the great thing about this method is it's free you can do it at home by yourself you do not need a teacher you can do it anytime and it is extremely effective a way more effective than any of these okay so number one do lots of practice tests so lots of you think that in order to get a higher higher IELTS reading score just do lots of reading tests practice is important to a certain extent but not nearly as important as you think doing lots and lots and lots of practice tests is not really going to improve your reading scores significantly why is that well that the analogy I always use is I have a friend who grew up on a farm and his dad had a car and he used to drive the car around and around and around the farm and he failed his driving test over and over and over again even though he had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours behind the wheel of a car he kept failing his test why is that because he had really bad habits no one had ever corrected him or pointed out his bad habits he had no idea how to actually drive a car safely same with doing a lots and lots and lots of practice tests if you don't actually analyze your mistakes or no one is helping you with that you might be doing the wrong thing and you have no idea so the unfortunate thing about students who say things like I've done every single practice test I can on my scores don't improve the sad thing about that is their scores don't improve which is sad the sadr thing is they've just wasted their time so don't fall into that trap of thinking that practice tests are going to work they will help you they are part of your your your preparation but only a very very small part number to get help from a teacher not a teacher is going to help you with you know telling you about the different skills used teaching you about the different types of question maybe give you some strategies for those questions that is helpful however a teacher is not going to be able to give you direct feedback on your performance in the reading test why is that so there's a big difference between writing and reading so writing and speaking your producing language so words coming out of your mouth or writing on a piece of paper and that's something that the teacher can give you feedback on you know this grammar is wrong this vocabulary is wrong improve your structure there's something to go on for the teacher for reading on listening you're receiving language you're not producing any language so there's nothing really for the the teacher to give you feedback on the teacher would have to physically go into your brain and see your thought processes to figure out what was actually going on and right now I we don't have the ability to do that so a teacher can help you to a certain extent but the technique and I'm about to show you is way more effective than even a teacher sitting beside you number three follow a strategy so there are many many many different types of reading question on my VIP course what we do is we give each student a different strategy for each different question and strategies are very very very helpful but they are only part of the puzzle they are only a small part of your preparation strategies alone are not going to fix many of the weaknesses that you have and they are good and but they're not going to fix everything number four tips and tricks do not work alright you're not going to automatically trick your way or read some tip and automatically become a better reader or improve your vocabulary or anything really tips and tricks do not work they are very attractive because they're easy but they do not work number five read lots of books no reading is very very important if you want to get better at reading read alright it's it's important that that is part of your preparation but reading alone is not going to help you as much as reading consistently and using this next strategy so this next thing that I'm going to teach you is the most effective way to improve your IELTS reading scores and it's a five-step process step 1 get some real practice tests so tests that have been produced by Cambridge they're real IELTS practice tests Cambridge English IDP British console look on those websites or by the books get some real practice tests do two or three tests I did this lesson on Facebook and the students asked what this meant so I put this in do two or three tests under exam conditions all right do not look at the answers do not look at them before you start them do them in the time allotted for a normal reading test do not cheat in any way that is really really important if you don't do that you've just sabotage your your your preparation your progress step 3 honestly correct them so be very honest in the same way that your real IELTS test is corrected if one letter is at a place that is wrong if the word is kind of the same that's wrong unless it is correct it is exactly how it is in the answer key it's wrong so honestly correct it do don't give yourself extra marks or cheat in any way step 4 is the most important part all right this is the part that you need to focus on the most analyze your mistakes okay so what does that mean that means looking at every single incorrect answer and thinking about deeply think very deeply and take a long time this is not wasted time this is an investment of time think deeply about why you got that answer incorrect it might be very quick if it's just a spelling mistake but if it's something to do the strategy or vocabulary or meaning or you know synonyms or something like that it will take you a long time to think about it but it is absolutely essential that you write down the reason and I would get a book and sit down and write each reason on a piece of paper or multiple pieces of paper because you want to start to recognize patterns you want to start to recognize your common weaknesses or your common mistakes and that is where you're going to end the process which is work on your weaknesses so let's now look at some common weaknesses and we can talk about how to improve those so here's these are just some common weaknesses it's very very rare that students need help with everything and as I said you're looking for patterns alright you're looking for example if 90% of your mistakes are spelling mistakes that is a very very important thing that you need to pick up on because you don't need help with reading skills or vocabulary or strategy or specific questions you just need to improve your spelling that might sound unrealistic and but I have had students who were wonderful at reading great reading skills grateful Cabul Airy but their spelling was often nuts was that was a reason why they were fairly the reading test and but by getting them to follow that process they were able to improve their spelling and they jumped I had one student jump from bond 5 to bond 8 just by improving their spelling does that mean that if you improve your spelling you're going to get a higher score and maybe probably not you probably need help with something else you are an individual this is what the whole process is about figuring out your individual weaknesses so it could be that you just need help with reading all right you are not very good at reading in English yet so you need to practice more reading you need to focus on getting better at skimming scanning looking locating information within a text and undecided deciding meaning deciding what the score and what the correct answer is and number two vocabulary many of you are not failing the Ted the reading test because of reading skills you're failing the reading test because of vocabulary the reading test is a vocabulary test as much as it is a reading test so vocabulary synonyms especially are going to help you to locate the answer so if you have a problem a time management often the problem the problem is not time management the problem is vocabulary you just can't find the words fast enough or if you're getting a low score it might mean that you just don't understand the words or the difference between words so improving your vocabulary is going to improve your scores and and but you need to figure out if that is your particular weakness strategy you might be really good at reading your vocabulary is great your spelling is great but you're very you're just unfamiliar with all of the different types of reading and question and you need a little bit of work on strategy and or it could be a specific question that you have a problem with I've had lots of students who are you know quite good at reading the vocabulary is good the strategy is good their spelling is good but every time they see a true false not given question or a matching headings question or a multiple choice question or a short answer question they get all of those questions wrong or nearly all of them wrong so I had a student the other day and we went through this process and they did three different tests they did them under exam conditions and we wrote down the reason why they failed and we established a pattern the pattern was they get all their true false not giving questions wrong on all their matching headings questions wrong and we spoke about it and they said yeah every time I see those questions I just panic I can't do them I hate them I'm not good at them and I said actually it's not that you're not good at them you're just not good at them yet and we need to focus on these questions and when we focused on these questions they went from about 6 to about 7.5 because the these questions were their weakness does this mean these questions are your weakness maybe maybe not you need to carry out this process which is free which you can do is very simple it's very straightforward and you can then work on your weaknesses and then get the scores you need and that is the most effective strategy for improving your reading scores and if you do that I pretty much guarantee that you will see an improvement but most of you watching this will not do it most of you watching this or just watching YouTube and you'll go and watch another YouTube video and expect that to help you improve you're not going to improve by watching YouTube videos you're going to improve by taking action alright this requires you to take a lot of action that's going to take you about 30 minutes that's going to take you three hours that's gonna take you another hour and a half that's gonna take you four or five six hours that's gonna take you weeks and months to do it's very simple but it's not easy but what is the alternative the alternative is you look for tips and tricks and hacks you fail the test then you look for more tips and tricks and hacks you fail the test then you do that over and over and over again and you've just wasted months of your life you've wasted thousands of dollars when all you had to do was just put in a little bit of hard work and then you'll get the scores you need very very simple but not easy I know it's not easy but what was ever achieved without hard work alright so any questions guys if you have any questions I will answer them for you hello Chris how are you very well thank you please give me some more useful tips or tips do not work please give me more tips second person I always get stuck but between giving headings how to improve that okay one second what I'll do you mean matching headings so let me okay so let me just make sure that I'm not getting caught up here alright so na in the test for matching headings questions you're gonna get a list of headings okay this is simplified version to teach to teach this lesson okay so you're gonna get a list of headings and then you're gonna get the tip to the text okay so the text is gonna be different paragraphs okay so the paragraph one paragraph to paragraph three okay so when you see a matching headings question do not look at these first okay do not look at them first just ignore the headings completely what you should do is then read these and do not skim them too quickly okay if you skim too quickly you're just wasted your time because you you haven't really learned anything and you haven't really looked at the meaning the general meaning of these so read these quite carefully not in too much detail you don't want to waste your time but quite carefully and the key thing is is create your own heading so if you had to create a heading for this paragraph we remember without looking at these what would your heading be that is going to force you to look at it in enough detail I really think about the general meaning so what you're going to do is create a heading create a heading okay so you're going to have heading for these paragraphs then because you have created your own headings it's going to be very very simple for you to match these headings with these if you do that you'll be amazed at how many of the headings that you created are the same exactly the same or nearly the same has the list of headings and how highly easy is that going to be to match the headings if you've already created those headings it becomes much much much much easier you still have to think about them check the headings look especially look for headings that have similar meanings and but if you do that it becomes much much easier so that was an extra little mini lesson on matching headings that looks like a mess but that's back to okay so a lot of you have decided to speak different language from English and I have no idea what any of you're saying so well done is bad bad handwriting and correction and sentences reduced barks if your handwriting is so bad that the examiner cannot read it of course that is going to lower your marks not because about handwriting it's because the examiner has no idea what you just put on the paper and so that is an issue however most of you think that untidy handwriting is going to lose you marks no it's not you do not need beautiful handwriting do I have beautiful handwriting no what I fail the test hopefully not okay what time is it it's ten past okay so we'll try and find another question okay so there's a whole lot of people speaking some language that I don't understand so that's very difficult to find questions if that's the case you're free to write whatever you want guys but help me to help you okay so since we are talking about reading let's finish off with a reading question so palm veer says how to manage my time and complete the whole reading on time okay so let's look up Google for this one so Google you saying both the fastest man in the world I don't know if he stole the fastest woman but he was anyway thanks pretty fast okay let's look at some of these images for Usain Bolt finishing on the hundred meter line okay so we've got Usain Bolt easily winning the race breaking the world record and then you have all of these guys behind him finishing second third fourth fifth do these guys need time management tips or not so is is their problem the fact that their time management is not very good or is it something else well hopefully you answer the question it's something else the reason why these guys are finishing behind you saying both there's not because their time management needs needs improving it's because they're not very good or not good at running compared to Usain Bolt I nearly said that they were not good at running they're the best in the world at running but they're not as fast as Usain Bolt this is a very good analogy for time management in the reading test most of you think that you need time management tips you don't you need to get better at reading if you improve your reading skills if you improve your vocabulary improve your spelling improve your strategy practice the test you don't need time management tips you just need to get better at reading same as these guys they do not need time management tips they need to get better at running they need to run faster but against you saying both that's pretty much impossible anyway okay so that's pretty much it guys if you need anything else go to my website IELTS advantage com if you go to aisle to Vantage column you'll get all the free help that you need if you need us to help you with your IELTS preparation we do have a range of courses and services Chris at IELTS advantage com you can email me we can discuss whether you would be a suitable student for our courses we only work with a very small number of people I can't guarantee then I'll be able to work with you but we can chat about it if you want to child thank you very much if you've enjoyed this video subscribe so that you can get our next video which is on Monday and if you have any suggestions for videos feel free to comment below and I'll look at those suggestions and try and be as specific as possible we'd love to hear your suggestions for future lessons thank you very much and see you again soon bye bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 1,093,370

Keywords: IELTS, IELTS Advantage, IELTS Test, English, live lesson, Band 7, www.ieltsadvantage.com, IELTS Writing, Chris Pell, lesson, IELTS listening, Practice tests, ielts listening, international english language testing system, ielts speaking, grammar, listening, ielts tips, The Number 1 Way to Improve Your Reading Scores, The Number 1 Way to Improve Your IELTS Reading Scores., IELTS Reading test, reading, IELTS tutorial, e2 jay IELTS, IELTS Liz, IELTS Reading tips and tricks

Id: Q_iv4wRuZpM

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018