7 Skills needed to Score 7+ in IELTS Reading
Reading is one of the four modules in IELTS and there is bit difference between academic and general reading test, in terms of content. For getting the details about the test click here. Anyhow, whatever test you are filling there are 7 Skills needed in IELTS Reading which are common for both general and academic reading. Even there are some tips and strategies which can help you to approach any question type.
1. Preview- Looking at the heading and layout of a text to get a quick idea of what the text is about before starting to read is called previewing a text. For example, in a newspaper before reading an article, we always look at the headline and/or the picture given to get an idea of about the content in it, and decision whether to read or not depend on the fact. Previewing is an important skill which helps us to predict the content and makes it easier to understand the text.
2. Prediction- You should use our knowledge of the topic to guess and predict what it’s going to be about. For instance, if there is an advert for a car, you can easily guess that the motive of the text will be to sell the car and the vocabulary related to cars will be used in it. Predicting is another important skill for reading because we can make more sense of a text if we use what we know already about the topic.
3. Skimming- The term skimming is used for the skill used to drive main ideas of the text by reading a text quite quickly to get a general idea of the overall topic. While doing this we focus on main idea rather than specific details. Skimming is an important skill because it solves our purpose to get a general idea about something, by this we don’t have need to read the text carefully and in detail. In IELTS Reading test we don’t have time to read everything in detail.
4. Scanning- By scanning we find key information while reading a text quickly, this skill is used to find a particular fact. For instance, we might scan a holiday magazine to find out a particular destination. Scanning is an important skill that used on daily basis to find out facts such as times, dates or places.
5. Intensive reading- It is also said reading for detail means careful study of a text or part of a text. This type of reading is done when all the given content is important. For instance, if you bought a new micro and don’t know how to operate it, you would need to read the instructions intensively. Intensive reading is an important skill to understand exactly what the writer is saying.
6. Guessing words- Sometimes in the Reading test the learner don’t get the meaning of a specific word from context. A good reader guesses the meaning of a word by using the context provided in the passage and by his general knowledge, instead of looking the word up in a dictionary. For instance, if you were reading a manual if micro and you came across a function you didn’t know, you might be able to guess it from the description. Guessing words from text is not always easy for students, but it is an important skill which can help to understand a text even if it contains new words.
7. Understanding opinion and attitude- Understanding the thinking or feeling, of the writer even when it not directly stated. For instance, if someone on holiday wrote in a letter, ‘I don’t want to come here again,’ it’s clear from the text that the person was not enjoying there.
Understanding attitude and opinion is an important reading skill because writers usually do not reveals directly their thinking or feeling.
For more tips and strategies to solve different question types click here.
