Reading Advice From Four Band 9 Students

I interviewed

four

students

who were struggling with IELTS

reading

and ultimately got a

band

9 so you can learn exactly how they did it. Interestingly, all

four

band

9

students

said the same four things and that is exactly what we are going to teach you in this video so that you can go from struggling with IELTS

reading

to getting the score you need more easily. Let's start with Valentin, who went from a band Six in Reading to around nine. Let's hear what he has to say about strategy. I had a big fight. with destruction I could easily get distracted by true false not given questions and I really hated all questions related to topics, so when should you Place topics for a different part of the text.

I really hate them, so what Valentin said there was what he found. certain types of questions are distracting and he talked about hating true false not given and hating questions with matching headings and this is very very common for students who deserve a very high score, like they deserve a band 8 or a band 9 but they are getting a low score. They get a five or a six and the reason is that they hate certain questions, which means that they enter the exam and when they see the question they get very distracted as Valentin said and that makes them waste a lot of time and leads to lower scores, so in terms For general strategy, what we did with Valentine was give him a step-by-step strategy for true false not given and four matching headings and this removed all the fear and made sure he answered all of those questions correctly. which improved your overall score and don't worry, we will give you those strategies at the end of this video and the other students who got band 9 will also show you what they did with those questions, but overall we want to eliminate any distractions. or any exam fears so that we can perform the best we can on exam day.

Now let's see what Priyanka said about the strategy, so she moved from band 7.5 to band 9. Each type of question has a trick, like filling in the blanks. or just answering a question, uh, you can skim the paragraph, you don't have to read a whole paragraph, but for the true and false, and magically hearing questions like that, you have to read the paragraphs, so you have to focus your time there on instead of matching or filling in the blanks, so what Priyanka said was that every question has a trick. Now I corrected her and said, you know, what you really mean is a strategy, so there are no tricks you can employ, but you can employ step-by-step strategies for each different type of question and this is something that every student in the band 9 that we interviewed all say the same thing, you must have a strategy for each of the different types of questions that you learn in the strategy, you apply it on test day and then you are able to do what Valentine and Priyanka did, which was go from band Six to about 9 or 7.5 to about nine and don't worry she will go into more detail about the matching header strategy later in this video but look at what jaswan said in the video and he went from a band of 6.5 to about 9, a big increase.

It is not necessary to have good vocabulary knowledge, especially for the reading part, so the main skills needed are knowing how to skim and scan. and understand the different formats of the exam, I mean different types of questions and as you can see, you agree with Priyanka. What it says is that each different type of question tests different things, they are different, therefore you need a unique strategy for each of the different types of questions, this is a big difference between students who score around 5.5 66.5 and students who are banned eight and nine generally lower level students will have a strategy for all the different types of questions, while around eight or nine students will understand that each question is different and will learn, learn and apply a unique strategy to each one of the different types of questions and we will give them all to you at the end of this video, finally we see that Chobani bushani went from about 6.5 to about 9 and what she says in this clip blindly follows the strategies totally.

I would say all the strategies I learned blindly follow are very confusing and I used to spend a lot of time thinking where is the answer but when did I get the strategies. and I just followed the strategies blindly and that was really helpful, so nine students don't just watch the strategies, they don't watch some YouTube videos or read a couple of books and watch the strategies, they memorize the strategies they practice the strategies so that the On exam day they can follow them blindly and not deviate at all from exactly what the strategy does. You might think this is a lot of work, but it's about putting in the effort before the exam so that the exam is easy winterbani talks about blindly following the strategies what he is really saying is that he didn't even have to think about the strategies he had practiced them so many times that when you saw each question automatically without even thinking you applied those strategies this makes exam day much easier because you are not thinking about what to do in the exam, you are applying everything automatically, which reduces stress, reduces cognitive load and not only It improves your reading, but it also means you have a lot more energy to apply to the other three skills. what you will do on exam day now let's see what students say more specifically about the two most difficult questions the two most challenging types of questions matching headings false false not given so what Priyanka says about matching headings is what she always used to do It's like I always read the questions and all the headings that the question asks us about, but we should not do that, we should simply immediately go to the passage and read the passage and with each passage we should give a particular idea of ​​that passage or write in some place. that idea so that in the last you can relate what your idea is and what is given in question, so this

advice

shows you how important the strategy is, if you did not follow this strategy you would be missing out because what most of the students is to look at the headings of the questions first and then read the passage, which means that they are going to waste a lot of time and they are going to be looking for things that are not there and they are going to get very confused not knowing what to do.

Do we do exactly the opposite? We taught Priyanka to look at each of the question paragraphs first and create her own headings for each paragraph and then you look at the list of headings and it's much, much, much easier because all you have to do then is match your headers with the list of headers in the question, now let's see what jaswant has to say about matching headers. I loved your tips Chris, you know some of them, before we start, you know, just read our paragraph and you know. I used to do all that, but then you told me that you don't see the headings before you even start the paragraphs right, so that's the important key that helps me get that perfect score on the reading test so accurately. the same

advice

, the exact same strategy and when you see successful people doing the same thing, there is a quote.

Success leaves clues. Whenever you see successful people in any walk of life doing the same things you should copy them now let's see what bushani has to say. about matching titles when it comes to matching titles, we have to read create our own titles and then match those titles to the given titles, so, you know, practicing these strategies and remembering those strategies, this requires a couple of Sometimes it takes a lot of slow practice, so Trabani not only gave advice exactly the same as the other two students in band nine, but he also gave advice on how he learned the strategies because, as I said before, the nine students don't look a strategy once they memorize it and she talked about slowness. practicing slow practice is when you get some real practice exams and you don't try to do them as fast as possible, you don't do them under exam conditions, you open the book, you find the type of question you want to work on and you work on learning the strategy , not in asking all the right questions, it doesn't matter at that stage, that's why we call it slow practice.

It may take 20 minutes for a question or an hour for a question because your focus is on learning your The focus is not on reaching the speed of the exam so very very good advice from another band 9 student there so I will give you that matching header strategy in a lot more detail at the end of the video for free, but let's see what they have to do. say about true false not given because it is completely different so let's see what Chobani has to say about true false not given the quad profiles are not given below for example I used to read the passage first and by not giving I used to be very Confused and I used to spend a lot of time thinking what the answer is, but when I got the strategies and just followed the strategies blindly, that was really helpful, so as you heard there, Shabani would read the text first to see if it was true or false. is not given and this would create a lot of confusion and this has knock-on effects on the rest of the test because if you think about it, if you get lost with one type of question, you waste a lot of time and it also increases a lot. stress, many of the students we work with deserve a band 8 8.59, but because they screw up one part of the exam, that means the rest of the exam is also screwed because you are running out of time, you are very stressed when you are stressed your brain is not working optimally so it is very important that you establish what your weaknesses are and how to use another strategy for each of the different types of questions, so let's see what Priyanka has to say about true false not given. and the differences between what is true, what is false and what is not given.

If she has read the paragraph first and then is reading the question, then it is very easy to know that it is not in the paragraph, so she should mark it as not given. What she is saying is not that she read the text, the paragraph first and then read the questions she is talking about, comparing the paragraph that you think contains the correct information and the statement of the question, and if you can't find any information there, then it is not like that. given and really what measure 9 shouldn't say over and over again is that you need to develop the confidence to write no given because searching in a paragraph for something that isn't there is like telling you to go into the next room and find something that isn't there. snap.

It's not there, it will take you a lot of time, you will get lost and confused. By practicing the strategy he will give you at the end of the video, it will give you the confidence to watch right away. and it says okay, this is not here, I can't find it, let's move on, they are not given and then it says when there is something there, then when there is something there, then you have to think if it is true or false, and if it is not . It is not given if there is something there related to the question, then you decide if it is true or false, but when there is something there and you can correct that sentence, that means it is a false sentence, so what she said there was if she can.

Look at the text and think this is wrong. In fact, I can correct it. I can change it to something that is true and then false. Now there are many other ways you can do it, but that's a very logical way to think about it. First of all, is it there if it's not there? it is not given if it is there then you must decide if it is true or false if you can correct the statement then it is false if you cannot correct it if it is the same then it is true, the important thing is that you do not watch this short part of the video and think that you have mastered true false, you are not given the questions, you need the strategy and you must practice it slowly, you must master it and then apply it in the exam. day we will give you that at the end of the video now let's move on to time management, it is very common for students to email us and ask us for time management tips, but what bar 9 students say is completely different from the time management tips we have.

A look at what Priyanka says. I've never really had a problem with time management since I started practicing. From day one I was able to complete my exam in an hour, so she never had any problems with time management. Does this mean you can? I don't learn from her, no, because this is reflected in what Jaswan also said to read. I have read it as more practical. I mean, she was reading some articles online like you always suggested in the course, like she had been reading and reading. the BBC articles, that really improved my skills a lot, so he talks here about reading in his free time to be honest with you, um and Chris, he was more interested in wildlife, so he was reading more, more that kind of things, you know. things that interested me and that will let you know that I will read anything with ease so you don't have to struggle with anything he talks about reading something he loves to read about wildlife.

I find any new vocabulary. I will make a separate note andthen here you talk about taking notes on new vocabulary, what does this have to do with time management? So these two students from bar 9 were reading in their free time, they were practicing that skill, they were reading things they enjoyed so they were doing it sustainably and regularly and they were reading actively they were improving their vocabulary while doing it this means that the time management is not a problem at all you don't improve time management by learning time management tips you improve time management by being better As you read, let me give you a quick analogy: Usain Bolt was the fastest man in the world.

Did Usain Bolt have a better time management than these guys are these guys behind Usain Bolt because they don't have the same time management skills no Usain Bolt is better at running these guys are not as good at running as Usain Bolt exactly the same not just with the reading test but also the writing test students who get around nine don't think about time management at all when I did the real IELTS reading test I got around nine in 20 minutes, after 20 minutes I just went to the bathroom and then I came back and stared at the ceiling, that's not because I did something magical or looked up the top 10 magic time management tips the night before the exam, in fact I was in the pub drinking the night before the exam, It's because I'm a native English speaker and I'm an IELTS. teacher of course you should easily get a bonus nine that there is one additional thing that my nine students do related to time management that the lower level students don't do so there are three sections on the reading test section one section two section three and They will get more difficult as you go through them, let's take a look at what Srabani has to say about it.

What I did. I did some time limit practice and checked each and every section how much time I am spending and I realized that initially. I used to spend a lot of time on section one and section two, leaving very little time for the third section in an Excel sheet. I marked my times as if I was taking seven minutes, usually at the beginning it used to take 10. minutes after that they reached seven minutes. I told myself I had to finish it in five minutes and this kind of practice actually helped me complete the test within the time and Jazz once, there's something very similar here, so I don't know, do you know how much time I should allocate to each section, so I'll try to complete, you know, the first two sections in 30 minutes, so I'll have enough time for section three, so what you understand is.

Because the questions get harder and harder, they spend a lot more time on the harder questions later in the exam, so most of the Bond Line students we work with tend not to think about I should spend this number of minutes to each question or this number of minutes in each section, what they generally do is try to finish sections one and two as quickly as possible correctly but as quickly as possible and that gives them a lot more space, a lot more time to final to really think and focus on the last hardest questions, so to summarize the band 9 tips, 9 real tips from real band 9 students, each question is different and you should have a separate strategy for each of them . true false does not happen and questions with matching headings are difficult and can cause problems, but not if you practice and master them and apply a real strategy to those questions and finally time management tips simply do not exist, it is about improving your reading, your reading skills and your vocabulary and if you get to that level 9 it is inevitable it will just happen for you so what you need to do now is watch this video or this video will be here which will give you every type of question and strategies for everyone.

Get some practice questions and practice them slowly until you get the hang of them, don't book the exam until you're ready. If you need help with your preparation, do not hesitate to contact us.