If you’re concerned about scoring that perfect-looking nine bands on your IELTS reading, this is going to boost your score. I’m not saying you’ll reach the exact nine, but what I’m saying is you can make your score better. If you’re at six, you’ll be able to make it seven, seven point five. If you’re at seven point five, you’ll be able to make it eight, eight point five. I promise you this will increase your score; just stick around, and pay attention, you will not need any more tips and tricks, but please just for the next 10 minutes I want you to pay undivided attention because this is important.
This is my experience and I’m telling you exactly everything you need to know; no one will go into this much detail, I can promise you that. Okay, with that I’ll begin, and I think I have your attention. So, by the way, this is applicable for both computer-based and paper-based, whatever kind of files you’re taking, academic or general, both work perfectly fine,
**First Tip: Understand the Format**
But the first thing and the first point that you need to know is a lot of people when they get the IELTS exam, actually go ahead and start reading the passage for the reading section. By the way, I’m not talking about the first section of course; that’s listening, but we’re talking about the reading right now.
They start reading the passage from top to bottom; that’s what they do. That’s the worst thing you can do to yourself because see the passages are too long. There’s no way in hell that you’re gonna remember every single thing that they’re talking about in the passage.
That’s not gonna happen. Okay, even if it’s in your subconscious mind, it’s gonna go away by the time you get to the questions. So, never make this mistake. Um, and even before you start the test, the first thing you should do is go ahead and read the questions. Don’t read the passage first off; just read the heading, and take a look at the questions. Thirty seconds you want to spend just taking a look at the questions, okay?
**Question Types**
The first seven questions are heading questions; next is true, false, not given, and after that, we have, um, let’s say maybe summary questions. So, you need to know this, and by the way, for those of you who are new and you know don’t know much about the IELTS, well, you will have three passages in the IELTS reading section. You will have 60 minutes; that means you can say 20 minutes for each passage per see.
And the important part over here again is that when you have these passages, right, they’re extremely long. There are about seven to eight paragraphs in each passage, so you wanna be very, very quick with your reading, okay? So, understand this; you should know the format, and like I said before, actually going ahead and starting the questions or even reading the passage, just take a look at the questions to know what you’re going to be dealing with after your reading, okay?
**Handling Summary Questions**
And a lot of times, let me tell you how this can help. Sometimes you will have summary questions at the end and not at the beginning, right? And some requests, if you don’t know, they are sort of like, you know, they will take any two consecutive paragraphs from the text and they will summarize that text and they will have some, you know, blanks in the middle, so you can go ahead and fill the blanks. Now, that’s important; you need to know that you don’t have a lot of time on the IELTS.
So, what you essentially want to do is you want to make sure that you’re reading the passage a little bit whenever you get to those two paragraphs that they’re summarizing, and then you’re answering the question, okay? You read some more, you answer another blank. That’s very important; a lot of people would just read the whole passage first, do the headings, and then come back, read the passage again, and then do the summary. You’re wasting time; you’re doing it two times. That’s wrong; don’t do it. Try to save yourself time; trust me, this will help you massively. You’ll see the change when you start doing this. Don’t think that you have to do this in consecutive order; those questions do not need to be in consecutive order. You can do anyone first; it doesn’t matter.
**Reading Strategy**
Okay, good, we’ll move on to the next tip now, and this is very, very important. Again, a lot of people will give you tips about how you should go about reading the passage. Should you skim? Should you do this? I would say read every single sentence, read every single sentence because the answer, now, I know the passages in the US, you know, in the West itself, they are written in such a way that the first passage in the last passage, or sorry, the first line and the last line of every paragraph is the most important.
They define what the paragraph is about, but in IELTS, what I’ve personally experienced is that any single line can have the answer, and this line can be in the middle of the paragraph as well. So, read every single line, but do not go ahead re-reading the lines; that’s not recommended at all. If you just read the lines once, you can easily get through the passage within five, five to seven, eight minutes, okay? So, you shouldn’t need more than that, even in the worst-case scenario. Um, and don’t worry if you don’t know a particular word; it’s okay, it’s perfectly fine.
No one can know every single word that exists, so it’s fine, it happens, but just try to skim and move on; just try to understand the essence of the sentence.
**Importance of Instructions**
The third point, and this is the third tip, um, always read the instructions. A lot of people, they’re very overconfident of the IELTS; maybe they’ve taken it three, or four times before. I don’t care if you have done a hundred sample question papers; it’s extremely important to go ahead and read the instructions.
For instance, in summary questions, you will have a condition that, all right, you only need to answer with one word, or you only need to answer with, you know, some kind of a structure. You need to know that because that can change every single time, and the IELTS actually can trick you into doing this. In maybe, if you have to answer one word, and you know, they will give you the Eiffel Tower for the answer, and you have to just write tower over there. So, you must understand that only one word is allowed, so you can only write tower.
**Answering Techniques**
Um, examples of this one word only; you can just write a single word like Paris, one word, and, or a number means you can write maybe just a number like nine, both like 10, September, or maybe just a word like Boston, okay? This is important; again, if you have three words, your list understands.
These three words are still allowed, so you can write either just tower, space, dust, or new Boston area,, all three of these will be valid answers, in this case, okay? I hope you understand that. Um, the fourth point over here, and this is also very important, is that do not confuse true, false, or not given questions with yes, no, or not given questions.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, chances are you have not been preparing for the IELTS reading section yet. But you’ll come across questions where you have to write down true, false, or not given, and at the same time, you have to write down yes, no, not given in some other kind of questions, okay?
**Avoiding Confusion**
These other kinds of questions are really where you’re writing down yes, no, not given, and you’re giving a little bit more of a perspective of what the author is writing about, whereas in true, false, not given, it’s general facts that you talk about, okay? But still, you will have the instructions in the question; note them.
A lot of times, I see people making these silly mistakes. Instead of yes, they’ll write true; instead of no, they’ll write false, and that’s where they lose the points. Very important because you’re under a lot of pressure, in a very short amount of time; people are bound to make these mistakes. But if you keep them in mind, you will never make them; I promise you, okay?
**Spelling and Grammar**
Let’s move on to the fifth tip over here, and that is to remember to check for spelling. Even if you have one percent doubt that your spelling may not be the correct one, go back to the passage and check the spelling; it’s important. People make this silly mistake all the time, and even if their answer is correct, they’ll lose points.
Your spellings, your tenses, all of these should be matching. You cannot write an answer that is okay but doesn’t fit because the tense is wrong. Maybe you have to use the past tense of it, and you use just, you know, present participle or something else, so that is where you can lose points very, very easily. So, just keep that in mind, okay? Um, make sure your spelling is correct; make sure you’re not making any silly mistakes like that.
**Final Tips**
Moving on to the sixth tip now, which is also very important. Again, if you’re not sure about an answer, remember every single answer on the IELTS counts only as a single point. So, you have 13 questions on the first passage, 13 more questions on the second passage, and 14 questions on the last passage.