Understand IELTS Reading in 30 Minutes

you've just found the Ultimate Guide to a reading this gives you step-by-step strategies for all 12 of the questions that you might get on test day these are the exact same strategies that thousands of my students have used to get band nine on their I reading test and at the end I'll also give you two free practice tests and step-by-step walkthroughs for the question so sit back relax and get ready to improve your I reading score so this is an example of a sentence complete question here so for sentence completion you will have sentences they will be incomplete and you need to complete them with a word or words from the text so you would be looking at the text here and then you would be completing these sentences with words from the text so for sentence completion questions the two key problems are not reading the instructions especially about the number of words and Pur spelling so not reading the instructions this is just something that lots of students have a problem with and it's an easy fix it is getting into the habit of really paying attention to the instructions understanding what the instructions are saying and then following that information and then Pur spelling this is because this is one of the types of questions that you are not picking Like A B C or D you actually have to take words from the text and write them out so if one letter is wrong the whole answer is wrong so make sure that you are paying attention to spelling so my advice for sentence completion is number one read the instructions carefully as we've already said read incomplete sentence first all right so you're going to be given a list of incomplete sentences do not read the text first read the incomplete sentences first to understand them then predict the answers what do you think the type of words the type of content what type of words what content is probably going to come up even if your predictions are wrong that doesn't matter because what you're doing is priming your brain to receive the correct information it really does help and often when you make a prediction the exact thing that you predicted will come up or something very very similar now four sentence completion there might be synonyms so again this is why we make predi think of the different synonyms that might come up related to your your predictions but also you're going to next scan for the location of the correct answer there's a principle I want you to learn first which is where before what so during the reading test you're going to be looking for where the answer is first before you think about what is the correct answer so you're scanning for the correct location first where in the text is it and then you're only going to read the section carefully think about what the correct answer is and decide the correct answer but be very careful with your spelling here we have an example of a summary completion question so it will normally say complete the summary below so here is the summary and there's some missing information here and in this particular question it says no more than two words it might say no more than one word or one word only but it will show you a summary and you have to complete that summary with words from the text so for summary completion very similar to sentence completion not reading instructions you will be told you know only write one word or two words pay attention to that spelling is also an issue for summary completion but grammar is more of an issue here this is because when we are predicting we're going to be thinking about is this going to be a noun or a verb or an adjective so good grammar helps us with that but it also helps us complete the summary in a way that makes sense let's go through my advice here number one read the instructions carefully you're going to hear me saying that a lot here read the summary text first it's imperative that you do this first don't look at the text then predict but also think not only what content might be there but what type of words might come up is it going to be a noun is it going to be a verb or is it going to be an adjective if your grammar is strong that will be very very obvious and will help you find the correct answer then scan for location be aware of synonyms remember where before what once you find the location then you can read the section carefully check if the answer makes sense so if you are expecting an adjective and only an adjective will do and you think the correct answer is a n that doesn't make any sense so you need to go back check it and that will help you find the correct answer and then decide on the correct answer put it in and that's you done so these two are quite similar so that's why we've put them together here are some multiple choice questions I'm sure you're familiar with multiple choice questions normally it will be a direct question like here and then it will give you three or four different options you have to choose the correct option now the key problems here is not really understanding the difference between the different options so you will get you know a b c d there will be slight variations in meaning between these three or four options you need to understand the difference between these in order to answer the question properly so there needs to be a lot of focus on the difference between these on top of reading the text and understanding the text so the first thing you're going to do is read the questions read the options carefully first and understand the difference between those that's why we put carefully here then we're going to look at the text but we're not going to read it in detail what we're going to do is we're going to skim the text we're going to read it quite quickly with the intention of understanding the general meaning of the text then we're going to go back and think about the difference in the different options I've put this here twice because this is the most important thing and we want to be strategic and focus on the most important thing then we're going to take each question and we're going to locate the section of the text being aware of synonyms for that particular question so if it's question 24 you're going to look at question 24 look at the information in there look at the text and decide okay this is where the correct answer is I haven't decided the correct answer but I know the location of the correct answer read that section carefully so we find the area then we're going to read that section carefully this is going to save us a huge amount of time because we're not reading the whole text you know there might be six or seven paragraphs we're just focusing in on one of those paragraphs to answer that particular question so it's being very strategic with thought with intention and with time if you are confused think about not what is the correct answer but which options are definitely wrong so going back to our original thing here let's say this one you know is definitely wrong and D is definitely wrong that leaves you with two options B or C then you can focus in on B and C and think what is the big difference between B and C and then check the text again oh it is C so finally read the question and make the final choice I hope hope you're enjoying this video on reading but if you really want to improve your I reading I have a free course for you that is even better than anything that we put on YouTube it's called the ielt reading challenge what it's going to do is give you strategies for all of the different types of questions 100% free and also show you where you can find real reliable practice tests and strategies that will help you constantly improve your ielt reading score if you want to sign up for free just click the link in the description enter your email address and we'll send you all of that information for free now back to the video short answer questions are actually quite rare but you should be aware of them these are similar to comprehension questions that you would have got when you were in school where they ask you a direct question and you have to answer the direct question to short answer questions these are normal straightforward comprehension questions and the big problem here here is that students will rush through the questions and not really think about what the question is asking them so the big problem not understanding the questions it doesn't matter how good your reading skills are if you don't focus in and understand the question you'll never be able to answer it and then not understanding a lot of words phrases within the text so if you don't understand the question and then you don't understand a lot of the words within the text it's pretty much impossible for you to to answer the questions so how can we solve that so read and understand the questions first don't get lost in the reading text read and just focus in on the questions understand what they are asking you within the questions underline any keywords these are normally going to be NES and nine phrases people places objects things things like that NS think of synonyms for those NS and that is going to help you scan for the location of the answer remember where before what once we understand the location we can read the section carefully read the question again because our big problem is not understanding the question decide answer and write it in now you might be thinking I have given similar strategies for a few of these first four question types don't make the mistake a lot of students make which is oh they're all the same and I'll just approach them all the same and I'll skip the video and I won't really think about it that is a huge mistake because very different questions are coming up now here's an example of a labeling a diagram question normally you will be given a diagram sometimes a map but most of the time a diagram and there will normally be arrows relating to different parts of the diagram it is your job to complete these parts so labeling a diagram first keep problem is an inability to cope with the unfamiliar not every student but a fair number of students will look at a diagram and think I know nothing about this thing so the example we gave you was something to do with ships she like I know nothing about ships they're not testing your knowledge of ships they're testing your ability to look at an unfamiliar diagram understanded and related to the reading text why do they do this is it to be mean no it's because you will be doing this every day in your new country you'll be looking at unfamiliar things and you will have to interpret those in English and also not reading the instructions often it will say only use one word or two words or one word on a number or something like that you need to pay attention to this so of course read instructions carefully look at diagram to understand the diagram and don't panic continuing to look at the diagram highlight any keywords look at the spaces where that you have to complete and predict the answer just like you were predicting before scan to find the location read in detail and choose the correct answer and be careful with your spelling here's the dreaded true false not given very common question on the I reading test what it asks you to do is read these question statements and then say in relation to the text are these statements true or are they false or are they not given there are lots of problems with true false not given number one misinformation this is the question that most students worry about therefore this is the question that produces the most amount of content online there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of videos on true false not given most of the teachers making these videos are not examiners they're not highly qualified teachers that means there's a huge amount of confusion and misinformation another big problem is not really understanding what notg given means and that leads to people searching for not-given and really they're searching for something that is not there then it affects the other questions that are going to be asked because if you have less time to spend on these questions you've not only messed up true false not given but you messed up the other questions as well what we're going to do is give you the confidence to look for not given and quickly establish I can't find this this is not given and put not given as your answer another big problem is a failure to understand what the whole sentence means this is a problem because many teachers and YouTubers use a strategy that is what we would call a keyword strategy everything that they teach about I reading is keyword keywords keywords now sometimes keywords are important but most of the time they're not it depends on the question being asked so if you focus in on keywords you will not understand what the question statements actually mean because you are focused on a tiny part of the question statement instead of looking at the entire sentence and that brings us on to our last key problem focus on keywords not only will it mean you don't understand the sentence it will mean that you get lost in the text and you waste a lot of time so what should you do instead so for true false not given read the whole statements first look at the statements read them don't focus in on keywords think about what the whole statement means then looking at the statements once you've understood them think of synonym what might be said in the text in a different way so for example if the question statement was talking about a pen it might mention a writing instrument in the text so if you're really focusing on pen pen pen pen pen you will miss writing instrument or writing utensil or something crazy like that and you'll never be able to move on to this part which is match the statement with the correct part the location of the text because the statement says pen the text says writing utensil or something like that if you are thinking about synonyms and you're open to seeing them then you're going to find them much quicker so once you find the location read the statement again so go back to the statement so you find your part of the text you f you have your statement and then read the text section carefully so don't just find the part of the text and look at the statement and then immediately go like oh that's true or that's not given calm down read the whole section carefully and then you're going to look at the statement and look at that part of the text and think does the meaning match if the meaning matches then it's true if the text says this pen is yellow and the statement says this pen is purple it's false if the statement says this pen is purple and the text says nothing about the color or it talks about it is a very good pen or it is a very expensive pen then we've no idea so not given keep it very very simple this video is sponsored by us I advantage and the I VIP course the I VIP course is the most successful I course in the world that is a fact because we have more b seven eight and nine success stories than any other I course in the entire world we do that by simplifying the whole is process supporting you with some of the best is teachers in the world and being with you every step of the way until you get the score that you need to thank you for making it this far in the video I want to give you 10% off our VIP course all you have to do is just look down in the description you will see our special link that you need to get 10% off just click that and you can sign up if you have any questions about the VIP course always feel free to get in touch with us Chris advantage.com is my email address we answer 100% of the questions that we get hope that you would become a VIP if not enjoy the rest of this free video similar to true not given are yes no not given again you have to look at the text and then look at the question statements and say whether the question statements are yes no or not given so if the statement agrees with the views of the writer contradicts the views of the writer or there's no information for you to really judge what the writer thinks about these statements so same same but different yes no not given true false not given key problems students get confused about the difference between true false not given and yes no not given true false not given is about fact this pen is purple that is a fact yes no not given is about the writer's opinion I believe purple pens are better than blue pens that isn't a fact that is just my opinion so what you're doing is saying yes the text agrees with the writer's opinion or no the text doesn't agree with the writer's opinion so that brings us on to our second problem not understanding The Writer's opinion because if you are just looking for facts and you haven't trained yourself to look for what the writer is saying or what the writer believes then you're never going to be able to decide if it is yes no not given similarly to true false not given too much time looking for something that's not there and then finally confusing writer opinions with other people's op opinions so the text will give you the writer's opinions but it might also give you other people's opinions so it might say Chris believes this but Jason believes this and you get confused between those two or if the text is talking about pens and it's just Jason talking about pens and Chris doesn't mention it at all then that would be not given cuz you don't know so my advice do it exactly the same as true false not given but just focus in on the wrer opinion not on fact matching sentences this is another quite rare question but you might get it and you should be aware of it what will happen is you will get the beginning of a sentence and then you'll be given a list of sentence endings and you have to match the beginning of the sentence with the end of the sentence key problem is using logic or grammar so you'll be given the beginning of a sentence and what people do is they instead instead of looking at the text they will use their own logic so before they even look at the text they'll look at the sentence endings and think that's logical that these those two go together they're trying to find the answer without taking the time to actually look at the text or they think this is grammatically correct so I'll just use that type of logic everything should be based on what it says in the text not what you think logically or grammatically works so my advice is to read the first part of the sentences first read those and understand those predict the endings before checking then and only then read the endings and match the obvious ones are there any ones that are you know just that has to be it and it will be extremely obvious if that's the case then eliminate obviously wrong endings and then much endings you think might match so you might have one or two different options locate the part of the text where the correct answer is and then read that part carefully and choose the correct answer here we have a matching names question as you can see there's a list of names here and what it asks you to do is look at the text and then match the people's names here with the statements here so people are more trusting when affected by oxytocin who said that so matching names key problems there are writing names immediately without considering text in detail so I find that the this type of question comes more towards the end not always but it often comes towards the end because it's normally linked to like research findings scientists researchers academics things like that and people are stressed they're running out of time they're tired and they just see names and start to match them up without taking the time to actually read and consider the text so how can we overcome those problems well we scan for the names in the text and underline so you'll be given different names look at the name that you want to focus on scan the text and underline where that name comes up because that is going to save us a lot of time and it is going to help us focus in on the area where the correct answer is and focus on the names that are mentioned once first so some of the names will be mentioned 2 three four times some of the names will only be mentioned once the ones that are mentioned once try to find the answer to those first so take those names that are only mentioned once and read their research in detail cuz if they're only mentioned once it will only be in a small part of the reading text so you've located that already match with the question statements and then delete that statement so the one that you have matched delete that that is just going to make it much easier for you to differentiate between the different statements and then move on is there another one with just one move on to that one next if not is there a name that is just mentioned in two times or two parts then you can focus in on that and then just keep using that strategy until you match them all here is a matching information question so which paragraph contains the following information so you have to read the information and then match it to the appropriate paragraph in the text keep problem here is you must consider the whole text there's a huge amount of information to digest here so the thing that we ask our students to do is do this question last so if it is part one of the reading test and this question comes up first skip it finish the other questions within that part of the reading test and then go back because what you will be doing by doing the other questions you will be familiarizing yourself with the text you will understand the text more which will make this question far easier because you will have less information to consume and and to understand my advice read the questions first and think of synonyms because this is going to help you later on skim the text first you have a huge amount of information to consume so it is a good idea even if you're doing this question last to read the whole text quickly to understand it then read the questions again and think about location so you've read the questions you understand them you've skimmed the text then you're going to go back to the questions and some of the locations will already be very very obvious to you and that will help you scan to find the location and if you find the location underline it next we're going to check the question statement again and Mark correct if possible some of them will be easier than others others some of them will be very very obvious so you can save time just by thinking quite quickly about those and thinking okay that's the correct answer but if you cannot find the correct answer quite quickly move to a different paragraph cuz often the answer will present itself in the next paragraph don't spend you know 5 minutes reading one paragraph going it it has to be here it has to be here it has to move on quite quickly have the confidence just like the confidence to write not given have the confidence to say it's not this paragraph move on to the next one and the answer will probably present itself quite easily for you and then just follow that system again here's an example of table completion or flowchart completion table completion is more common on the academic paper flowchart is very common on the general training paper but the principles are exactly the same you have missing information here in the flowchart you have a few different options here and you have to look at the options read the text and then add the options in here to complete the flowchart or complete the table key problem here is not reading instructions this is again one of these questions where it says one word or one word on a number you need to really understand what those mean so my advice for these is read the instructions carefully scan text to locate the correct paragraph read that section carefully don't just skim it read it carefully and then transfer the words exactly as they are to the Gap and check spelling very very common that students find the correct answer but spell it incorrectly there's really no excuse for this because you're copying the exact letters but be very careful with these matching headings this is a very common question and I think this is actually more challenging and more difficult for most students than true false not given but it's not if you follow the strategy that we're going to teach you but they always look the same they will give you a list of headings here and there are always more headings than there are paragraphs to make it more difficult and then it gives you a list of paragraphs and then you simply have to match the paragraphs with the list of headings by referring to the text of course key problem here is there's lots of information to process most of the time you're going to be reading the entire text text to complete matching headings questions effectively another common problem is a lot of students just read like the first part of the first sentence on the last sentence or they focus in on keywords that is the opposite of what you're trying to do what you're trying to do with matching headings and what it's testing is can you understand the general meaning of the whole paragraph not keywords within the paragraph because there's so much information into the process and you have to skim and understand the whole text basically a lot of people don't spend enough time focusing in on the different options this question statements you cannot find the correct answer if you don't understand the statements so here's what I get my students to do do this question first because it's going to make the other questions easier because you have to read the whole text you may as well do this first in instead of reading parts of the question parts of the text of other questions do this first as is far more efficient and strategic so you not going to look at the question statements first you're going to ignore the question statements entirely what you're going to do first is read each paragraph with the intention of writing your own heading so you're going to read the paragraph and write your own heading this forces you to understand the meaning of the whole paragraph which is what they tting testing then and only then look at the headings and what you will find is your titles the titles that you came up with often they will match exactly with the question statements so focus on understanding the difference of meaning between the different headings and then match any obvious ones so let's say there are six questions and two of your titles match exactly okay you've got two questions right that leav four those four okay did match exactly for those you need to read the paragraph carefully not just skimming it really read it carefully and choose the correct option based on what the text is saying and the difference of meaning between the headings hope that you enjoyed that video now you know all the different types of questions and you know the different strategies for those questions but that's just the first step the most powerful method for improving your reading is understand understanding your own personal weaknesses and then improving those weaknesses that is the most powerful strategy that I know of to improve students to even a band nine if you want to know how to do that just click this link and I've made a new video for you

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 783,396

Keywords: IELTS, ielts reading, ielts reading strategy, ielts reading strategies for band 9, ielts reading true false not given tips, ielts reading question types, ielts reading matching headings, ielts reading mcq tips and tricks, ielts general, ielts academic, ielts preparation, sentence completion, summary completion, short answer, match sentence endings, diagram label completion

Id: hT4uSyRrUE4

Length: 30min 15sec (1815 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2023