4 helpful strategies to improve your IELTS Reading
The aspirants of IELTS often complaint about less time allowed in the Reading test as often many questions are left unanswered due to shortage of time. Well the problem is not the insufficient time provided but it’s about time management and some other things that become an obstacle in the way of improving reading. So, today we will discuss 4 helpful strategies to improve your IELTS Reading.
One common mistake that an IELTS aspirant do is to read each and every word of the given passages without knowing the questions. Moreover they try to understand the meaning of each of them and if a new word comes in the way they start panicking and get stuck there. All these things prevent the students to score high in IELTS reading test.
Now the thing is all the above said behavior is wrong and should be changed. Let’s discuss four key strategies that can help you manage your time and improve your band score in the IELTS reading test:
1- Read the questions first
You should read the questions first to know what information you should look for. If you read the passage first it will be like going in the dark aimlessly and after killing time on reading the whole passage when you will read the questions you will find that there’s nothing in your mind to look for and will read the passage again. The right approach is to read the questions first and underline the keywords then read the passage and as soon as you get some information related to the question underline it and come back to the question to confirm it. By this strategy you will only need to do skimming and scanning of the text instead of reading the whole passage twice as a result your valuable time will be saved. You can also see some important tips to score 8+ in reading.
2- Don’t panic to see new words
Many aspirants gets upset when they come across a new word and get stuck there as they think they will not understand the passage without knowing the meaning of a particular word. This not only happens with the new test takers but the advanced test takers are also the victim of this. Be calm if you find a new word in the passage and if needed try to guess it’s meaning but don’t waste much time in this process.
3- Keep moving
In case you get stuck on any question and the above mentioned strategies doesn’t work just skip the question and move on to the another question. Remember you should not waste much time on one question as you can solve 2-3 in that time so it’s a wise decision to leave the question which you find is consuming much time. At the end of the exam when you have finished come back to the unsolved question again and try to solve it and if you don’t succeed just go with the guess work. In IELTS there is no negative marking and sometimes you can get rewarded for guess work so never leave any question unanswered.
4- Practice under test conditions
To take the maximum benefit of these strategies it is recommended to do practice under test conditions and with time limitations as this will make you familiar with test conditions, timings and the stress level. So, if you want to master these strategies you should practice on daily basis. Another thing is that you should appear in the mock test before the real exam as it will help you a lot and boost your confidence level.
Thank You 🙂
