By Kiran Issrani – IELTS Expert & Trainer@CareerMakers
IELTS Reading
IELTS Reading Tip no.1: Read stuff
Read as much as you can. Reading 3 passages is not a hard task if you could form of habit of reading novels. The habit can be formed by reading novels before sleeping.
IELTS Reading Tip no.2: Read the questions first
Read the questions first. There are going to be very few people who are actually going to form a habit of reading books. Most are just going to apply the strategies and techniques.
IELTS Reading Tip no.3: Divide your work
When you are reading the questions, please divide the questions in two parts and try to retain the information you get in the questions. It is very important to remember what the questions were asking.
IELTS Reading Tip no.4: Retaining means gaining
It is important to remember the information in the questions because the questions are not going to move in the chronological order and you might find the answer anywhere in the passage.
IELTS Reading Tip no.5: Circling
When you are going to read the questions you could just circle the nouns and verbs which are going to come in the question.
IELTS Reading Tip no.6: Similar words
IELTS exam is all about similar words. When you are going to circle the keywords in the questions never expect to find the same words in the passage. You are always going to find the similar words in the passage.
IELTS Reading Tip no.7: Paraphrasing
You need to familiarize yourself with paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is a technique by which the same meaning in conveyed by the use of different words. The sentence structure is also changed in order to complete the process of paraphrasing.
IELTS Reading Tip no.8: Do not panic
Do not panic if you cannot find the answers for the questions. Most people panic if they cannot find the questions easily and they stop the entire process.
IELTS Reading Tip no.9: Read the instructions
When you are finding the answers please read the instructions carefully so that you could get the answer correctly.
IELTS Reading Tip no.10: First and Last 2 lines
You can expect to find 60% of the answers in the first or last 2 lines of the paragraph.
IELTS Reading Tip no.11: Skimming and Scanning
There are many people who would know about the technique which commonly known as skimming and scanning, but very few people actually know how to apply this technique. Skimming is by which a candidate would only look at the first and last 2 sentences of the paragraph and by scanning the important information is taken out.
IELTS Reading Tip no.12: No shortcuts
There are no short cuts to get a good score on the reading section of the IELTS exam. Instead of practicing exams you should spend maximum time reading novels.
IELTS Reading Tip no.13: No use of practicing
Practicing is important, but there is no benefit of practicing the wrong thing. There are students who have absolutely no knowledge about English and they expect to get Band 7 just by doing 3 to 4 practice exams.
IELTS Reading Tip no.14: No one can learn English in a month
English is a language which is developed over the years. If you have not completed education from a good school it is highly recommended that you search for a country which is requiring band 6 or less for admission. There is no possible way to dodge the IELTS examiner. In order to get a good IELTS score you will have to know very good English.
IELTS Reading Tip no.15: Set a reasonable target
I would not go to the extent of saying that you will have to learn all 800,000 words of English language but it would be a good exercise to learn some essential vocabulary words which are required for the IELTS exam.