IELTS Reading
Your IELTS reading level can be measured by taking the IELTS exam. The reading section is made up of three passages with each passage 700 to 1000 words in length.
What Topics Should I Expect?
These texts are not written specifically for the exam but are taken from a wide range of sources such as newspapers, books, journals, and magazines, and can be academic or non-academic style.
Although a wide range of topics are possible, no specialist knowledge is required. However, a fairly extensive vocabulary range in needed if the text is to be completely understood. Topics can range from subjects such as tea tree oil, herbal medicine, international airports, and beetles.
Don’t Try To Guess
Some students find that some knowledge of the subject can encourage them to ‘guess’ the answers rather than use the text to get the correct answer. Many of these ‘guesses’ can be wrong because the student has not read the instructions or questions carefully enough.
The test itself consists of forty questions and a time of exactly sixty minutes to finish it. At the end of the test your answers must be on the answer sheet provided. Note that, unlike the listening test, no extra time is provided to complete the answer sheet, and so a grade of zero would be given if this is blank after the allocated time.
Question types
Question types come in a variety of forms and test various skills such as scanning, skimming, reading for detail, recognizing the writer’s opinion, comparing and contrasting data from two sentences and so on, (a sentence from the text and a question statement), selecting main ideas, inferring and so on.
Two Styles of Reading
There are two types of readers; passive and active. The main problem with the passive reader is that they want the writer to do all of the work. They want the writer to do the thinking, the analyzing, the development of ideas, to state what is important and what isn’t, how to use the information in the future and so on. The result is that the passive reader often reads slowly, has trouble concentrating, and has no real understanding of the structure of the things they are reading.
The active reader, on the other hand, develops an ongoing relationship with the writer. Information is read critically and any observations made are related to information previously read, or experience and knowledge obtained. An understanding of the structure of the text (even from a newspaper) is essential if a more active approach to reading is used. Scanning, skimming and reading for further detail are all active reading skills and would not normally be used when reading for leisure. To ensure an optimum IELTS result you must become an active reader.
English Today teaches students how to actively participate in their reading and our students get the scores they need. Let us show you how.
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