In this article, I want to share my tips and strategies on how to get a high score in IELTS Reading. I’ve also made videos about how to choose between a paper-based or a computer-based exam and my tips on IELTS Listening.
IELTS Tips and Tricks how to get a high score in IELTS
Okay, let’s get started! what’s exam format well you get 40 questions and 60 minutes to complete them in IELTS academic you get three longer passages and IELTS general training five shorter passages in an academic topic some more scientific and you need to answer 30 questions in or der to get a band seven and in general training topics a bit simpler but you’ll be expected to answer 34 questions in order to get a 7 expect to be short of time in IELTS.
Reading basically you have a lot to read and then looking for questions takes a lot of time so time management is important usually the first passage is the easiest and the last one is the most difficult so the instructions in arts academic for example tell you to spend 20 minutes on each section but you should finish the first one in about 15 minutes 20 for the second and 25 for the third but ideally you need to go through the questions even more quickly basically.
When you find a question and you don’t know what the answer is you can’t find an answer don’t spend too much time on this question just market like to review and move on and once you finish all the questions if you have time then you go back and you’ll be looking for answers to those questions but you get yourself the best chance to get the highest mark.
If you attempt to answer all the questions in a paper-based reading you’ll be marking your answers on the question sheets first but then you’re not gonna get extra time to transfer your answers event you must finish everything in 60 minutes so what I usually do is I answer a certain section like a type of questions and then I transfer answers then the next type of question just for my answers and so on I don’t leave it until the end what if you run out of time before you do that imagine I saw that happen in the invigilator came up and just crossed out another five-seven answer at the end imagine she just lost like seven scores like that just because she didn’t do it before so don’t leave it until the last moment in a computer-based exam you just choose your answers on the screen you don’t need to transfer them anywhere.
I would say you save a bit of time comparing between the paper based on computer based exams I think it was easier and more convenient to do the reading questions on the computer I had a large screen I could see almost all the text without scrolling questions were on the same screen on the other side I could choose answers directly I didn’t to transfer answers any where and I could see time left so I would say it’s more convenient.
So the best strategy for IELTS reading well some people prefer to read the whole passage first and then they answer questions usually of those people read fast and memorize information well I try this approach it doesn’t quite work for me because by the time I start answering questions I’ve already forgotten what I’ve read and they need to go and look for the sentence in order to locate my answer so I just waste a lot of time so usually I read the first question and then I start quickly reading the text not paying attention to any detail.
We have unknown words and when he feels it okay but they also somewhere here I slow down I carefully read the sentence if I need a really did it’s fine and icky the answer are read the second question a resume reading the text and so on this strategy allows me to finish my reading section much more quickly do all questions follow the passage order or most do that’s why it is possible to read the question find an answer read the second question find an answer and so on and it’s much more quickly than to read.
The whole text and then look for all the answers but of course some question types are not in order for example matching paragraphs or matching headings otherwise it would be a first paragraph being second paragraph see third paragraph like no of course not and I did some research into which question types come in order and which don’t.
Let’s move on to the next point it’s reading cows complex topics and most likely there will be things you won’t understand there will be words you don’t know you need to navigate your way through this complexity in a way to do that is to pay attention to keywords once you read the question really try to understand what they mean and what are the key words in this question highlight them or underline them and then look for those keywords for their synonyms in the passage.
You will never find exactly the same keywords in the question and in the in the sentence where you find an answer there will always be paraphrased so look for that paraphrase and when you find a sentence and you feel that the answer is somewhere here but you can’t understand everything try to simply guess how different parts of the sentence are related to each other what they’re talking about in general because most likely the thing you can’t understand is irrelevant and your answer doesn’t handle it at all it’s just there to confuse you so try to ignore irrelevant information and choose the bits of information.
You really mean it and now the tables highlight any names surnames dates names of theories names of places most likely there will be questions about them and you’ll be able to locate them in the text very quickly how can you highlight them well in a paper-based exam you use a pencil you simply underline words in a computer-based exam there is a function to highlight words or phrases in yellow you press the right button on your mouse and you click to highlight and that’s it and let me repeat again don’t waste too much time on any single question in my exam I marked probably five questions to review those were the questions where I was not quite certain if my answer is correct and then when I finished all the questions.
I still had time so I could come back look for answers read contemplate because I knew that I’ve done the best I could do for all other questions some questions and I was reading a particularly tricky for example true false not given yes no not given and matching headings I did my research into both types and it published separate videos about them I’m going to link them and in my exam I used the exact strategies I told you about in those videos and I could feel that they were really helpful because as soon as I saw a certain type of question I knew exactly what I’m gonna do I didn’t think about should they read the text first or should I do that I knew what I’m gonna do and it was helpful it saved me time and I think you need to figure out your way of solving each type of question before you take your reasoning them so these were my tips on IELTS reading hopefully you found them helpful and published videos about IELTS writing and speaking soon all the videos I’ve mentioned in this video are gonna be linked in the video description box below thank you for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye.
Tips and Tricks
