IELTS – 3 Reading Strategies

Is the IELTS Reading section very challenging for you? Can’t finish all the readings and questions before the time is up? In this lesson, you will learn three approaches to the IELTS Reading section and their pros and cons. The goal of this lesson is to help you finish the test on time without compromising your understanding of the readings. Learn how to read less while answering more questions correctly. After watching, make sure to do the quiz to test your understanding. Good luck on your test! WATCH NEXT IELTS Writing: The 3 Essay Types TRANSCRIPT Hi again. Welcome back to . I’m Adam. Today’s lesson is about IELTS. As usual, with IELTS lessons, I will be speaking a little bit faster than normal. It’s good for your listening practice. But if you’re not taking the IELTS, you can still listen and try to follow us as we go through this section. So, let’s begin. Today, I’m going to look at the IELTS reading section. I’m going to look at three different approaches to tackling the IELTS reading section. Students always ask me: “What should I do with the reading? How do I do it? How can I finish on time? How can I answer more questions?“ Right? So I’m going to give you three approaches, three different ways to try to do the IELTS. Okay? We’re going to look at three different ways. They’re completely different from each other. The most important thing I want to tell you before we start: you have to know what works for you. Okay? One of these approaches will work for you; the others may not. Practice all three. If you’re comfortable with one and it seems to work for you, and your score seems to be getting better, stick with that one and practice that one. Don’t try to do all three each time. Figure out which one works, and just practice that one the most. Okay? The most obvious one and the first one we’re going to talk about: read the entire passage, and then tackle the questions. Now, a few things to say, good and bad, about this approach. So, you have 20 minutes, let’s say, that you’re going to start from the first passage, you’re going to do about 17 minutes; the second passage, you’re going to spend 20 minutes; the last passage, you’re going to spend 23, 24, 25 minutes. So, you have to do this very fast. So: can you read the entire passage and do the questions in that timeframe? Okay? That’s the question you must ask yourself. Are you a fast reader? Can you comprehend everything you’re reading? How is your vocabulary? Things like this. Some people, they must read everything, from beginning to end, and then go to the questions. But they can also keep; they can retain the information they’ve read, so when they go to the questions, they know where to go back and look for the answers. Now, the good part about this is that you have all the information in your head once you’ve read the entire passage. The bad part is that you’re going to be reading the passage twice. Okay? Or not the whole passage, but you’re going to read big chunks of the passage twice. You’ll have read it the first time, you’ll go to the questions, and then you’ll be reading again to find the answers, because you’re looking for specific words now. When you get to the questions, sometimes it’s only one word difference from what you read in the passage. So, do I recommend this? Yes and no. If you’re a fast reader and you can comprehend, then yes, do that. If you’re not a fast reader, then no, don’t do this. You’ll be wasting too much time and reading more than you need to. What I’m going to do with these two approaches is show you how to read less. So you don’t need to read the entire passage; you just need to read the areas that contain the answers to the questions. So, the second approach: go straight to the questions. You look at the question. First of all, understand the type of the question. Is it a multiple choice? Is it a fill-in-the-blank, like a summary? Are you looking for like headings for each paragraph? Are you looking for the title? Etc. Figure out what you’re looking for, read the question carefully, pick out the keywords in the question or the key idea in the question, and then scan the passage. Don’t read the passage. Just quickly look everywhere for where that information ought to be.