TOP IELTS READING TIPS FOR DURING THE TEST
IELTS reading a module in which often students get stuck due to various reasons. It is normally heard from the Students that they have practiced various tips and tricks and used to get good scores in their practice tests and mock tests but in the real exam they didn’t get their desired bands. So today we are here with some top IELTS reading tips for during the test.
– Don’t Read much. In the exam you should try to read as little as possible. More you read more you will run out if time. IELTS reading is a race against time and you have to win the race by locating answers without reading the unnecessary text. It is possible only if you are master in doing skimming and scanning.
– Keep an eye on synonyms / paraphrase. In the reading test you will not get the same words and phrases in passages as in question or vice versa. Often synonyms or paraphrasing is done so you should keep your mind open to scan for synonyms / paraphrase.
– Read the instructions carefully. Most of the students lose their points because they don’t read the instructions carefully. For example, if the instructions state, ‘Write NO MORE THAN two words and/or a number’ and you write three words then your answer is wrong. Even if your answer is correct but you didn’t follow the word limit it will be considered wrong. Also, if the instructions state, ‘Write TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN and you write ‘YES’ then your answer is wrong even if the correct answer is ‘TRUE’.
– Don’t get stuck on any unknown word. There are many words in reading that even very high level students don’t understand as there are just way too many to remember. In the test if you see a new word there are two things you can do. First, just ignore the word. You can do this when it is in the text but unrelated to any of the questions. Second, try to guess the meaning from the context. Can you tell what kind of word it is – verb, noun, adjective, adverb, etc? Do the other words around it help you to guess what it might mean?
– Focus on meaning. There are some occasions when you see the same word in the paragraph as in the question and you assume it as the answer without knowing its meaning. So you should know what it means in the sentence as most of the time you will get the wrong answer from it. So, you need to focus on the meaning of the question, not just the words. This is especially true for multiple choice questions, where one or more of the options will contain words from the text but not the same meaning.
– Don’t leave any answers blank – guess! This is especially important near the end of the test if you are running out of time. Look at the final sets of questions before you answer them – if questions 32-36 are T/F/NG and questions 37-40 are sentence completion using words from the text, for example, then you should do the T/F/NG questions last – because you can guess these answers (and have a one in three chance of being correct)!
– Be aware of the time. Time is the biggest enemy in IELTS so you should keep an eye on it. You should not spend more than 1.5 minutes on one question. If you don’t get the answer for any question just leave it for the end and move on. Also, you should take around 20 minutes per text.
– Do not answer questions based on your own knowledge – only on information contained in the reading texts. Even if you are sure you know the answer to a question – you must be able to find it in the text.
– Be careful with your spelling. Answers that are spelt incorrectly are automatically marked as wrong. Check that you have spelt all answers correctly.
Thank You 🙂
