Crack Your Reading Test
In both the sections of IELTS Academic and
General Training, the reading portion is probably the most difficult part to be cracked
for most test-takers. A detailed understanding is therefore plays an
instrumental role in building up both confidence and correct techniques to not
let a single option go wrong. Before
this, you need to understand that the texts are placed according to the difficulty
level. The first texts are usually
easier than the second and so is the second than the third and so forth. At
first, let’s see the reading test format for Academic Test once again where you
are expected to complete 40 questions of varied nature in a span of 60 minutes.
Remember, IELTS passages are mostly authentic passages based on Education, Health, and Science. Keep reading daily international papers (especially published
in English speaking countries like the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, etc.) and other periodicals selecting these areas.
Also, let’s not forget the purpose/objective of this reading test before we start discussing the strategies for completing these different tasks. This test wants to know how well you comprehend the authentic texts in general and what reading skills you have inclusive of these abilities.
2. Follow key arguments in a text.
3. Locate specific information.
4. Identify opinions and attitudes of the writer or a character.
5. Identify the writer’s overall purpose/intention, and
6. Extract information from a text to complete a diagram, table, a set of notes, and a summary.
The other tasks ask you to select any one or two options from a list of five alternatives and you are required to write the number(s) or letter(s) of the correct option in the answer script. Let’s see these types of questions here.
a) Heading/title b) Subheading
c) Caption figure/illustrations d) Paragraphs
e) Footnotes (if any) f) Columns
3. Look for the context of the text in the subheading that always follows the title/heading. This will make you confident to predict the type of information present in the passage.
4. Observe the footnotes that usually help you to understand the meanings of the jargons / technical terms, however, most terms are already explained in the passages which you can understand through the context.
6. Since all exams are time-bound tests, you need to practice reading as many as 100 words in 20-30 seconds.
7. Questions that test your overall understanding of the text, Global questions (finding the main idea, understanding writer’s intention, and tone/attitude, choosing a suitable title) can be easily answered through skimming.
8. Depending on the difficulty level of the passages, you need to learn to scan (like taking an X-ray view) the text for specific details. This will help you answer questions that ask you to write a word, two words, and/or a number from the passage (only present in the passages; NOT a synonym you know).
9. If the question asks: Answer the question with no more than two words from the passage—
What two tools did the carpenter use?
Write your answer as—saw, hammer [NOT a saw and a hammer or saw and hammer.]
10. Short answer questions (SAQs) are placed to evaluate your ability to locate and find specific details in a text. Often the topics in such questions are in boldface and the information (relevant part) you need to find about them are underlined. At other times you may underline the words that are closely related to the information in the passage.
11. Paraphrasing is very important to complete questions related to completions of notes, flow-chart and diagram. Simply put, it is the substitution of the words, idioms, or phrasal verbs that mean the same thing as asked in the question.
12. Good paraphrasing skill helps you in sentence completion type questions for this, you need to have acquired a good resource of vocabulary.
13. Alike short answer questions, sentence completion questions are placed to test your ability to find specific information in the text. So paraphrasing skill is instrumental in this case too.
