Top 9 tips for IELTS Reading

What language skill can be easier than reading? You’ve got the text right in front of your eyes and all the answers to comprehension questions are right there; if you fail to grasp some ideas, you can always go back to them. Also, there’s often a dictionary to help you with the words you don’t know yet. However, the IELTS Reading module is somewhat different. There’s obviously no dictionary, correct answers are artfully disguised, and there’s hardly enough time to go into all the details of the reading passages. So, in this article I’d like to share a few tips on how to make the most of your IELTS Academic or General training Reading experience.

1. Read the task carefully. You’d think it’s so obvious, why draw your attention to this? Oh, if only I had a penny every time one of my students tried to answer a question without knowing exactly what they are supposed to do. So, if you are to complete some notes, check how many words you need to fill in; if it’s a multiple choice, read EVERY word of the task – test takers often ignore some words that change the meaning of the whole sentence; if it’s a heading matching task, find out which paragraphs are involved – sometimes not all paragraphs are included in the task, and it might cause some confusion.
2. Don’t waste your time on reading the passages completely. And God forbid you even think about reading first and then going over the text once again to translate it to your mother tongue. A little calculation for you: the total time for the Reading module is 60 minutes, but you’ve got to set aside about 10 minutes to check and transfer your answers (though I advise you to break the 10 minutes into 3 intervals and do your checking and transferring after completing each reading passage). That leaves you with about 50 minutes to do 40 questions, and it’s a little over 1 minute for each question. I hope you’ve already got what I’m driving at: there’s NO time to read the texts. Surprisingly, it’s still possible to answer all questions correctly using skimming and scanning skills.
3. Skim the text (as opposed to reading) before you set about answering the questions related to it. Skimming is a technique that involves selective reading. Its aim is to understand the way the passage is organized and figure out the gist (or main idea) of it. You should quickly read the title, the introduction (usually the first paragraph only), the first and last sentences in all the paragraphs of the body text and the conclusion (one or two last paragraphs). This will give an understanding of what the text is about and how it is structured; thus, you may be able to predict some of the answers and you’ll have a pretty good idea of where to find them in the text.
4. Scan the text to find answers to particular questions. If you were smart about the skimming part, when you begin doing a certain task, you should be able to find the respective paragraph with the answer in no time. This is where your scanning skills come into play. Scanning means to look through the text quickly looking for a specific piece of information, like a date, a name, a phrase, etc. When scanning, you should ignore the “little words” – articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and so on – so that they don’t slow you down.
5. Questions usually restate the answers; that is, they have the same idea but it’s put in different words. Hence, you need to make sure that the answer gives you the same information as you can find in the question. It should be specifically written, usually in one sentence, but not more than in 2 to 3 sentences. You’ll almost never be given a question the answer to which is to be derived based on the content of the whole paragraph, let alone a few paragraphs or the whole article. Thus, if you think that you’ve found the right answer, but it’s not written in one sentence, you should probably keep looking.
6. Don’t fret over difficult questions. All the questions have the same value, so there’s no point wasting time trying to figure out the answer to a tough question. If you can’t do it fast, move on to the next one; you can ponder over it later or, if you’re pressed for time, follow the advice of Tip 7.
7. Answer all the questions. What you should love about the Reading and Listening modules is the fact that you don’t lose marks for incorrect answers. Therefore, if you don’t know what to write, put down at least something – anything! Who knows, you might get lucky.
8. Don’t be scared of unknown words. Yes, you’re bound to come across some words that are new for you, but don’t let it get in your way. In many cases they are not that important, or can be figured out based on the context, or both. 
9. Mind your grammar. It’s really important to pay attention to the grammar of a sentence in any task that involves gap-filling. You need to check if your answer is consistent in terms of:

• part(s) of speech – for example, whether you need a noun, an adjective, a verb, or a combination of parts of speech
•  tense (where applicable)
•  number (where applicable) – for instance, if the subject is plural, the verb should be as well
•  articles – whether you need to include ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ in your answer.  

That being said, one of the most important things to learn when preparing for the Reading module is the logic behind answers. You may disagree and argue with them all you want, but I doubt it’ll be productive. Instead, when doing a practice Reading paper, you should analyze your mistakes, understand what makes a correct answer, and learn to apply this knowledge.