Understand IELTS Reading in 30 Minutes

You've just found the ultimate guide to a read that gives you step-by-step strategies for all 12 questions you might receive on test day. These are the exact same strategies that thousands of my students have used to obtain band nine. in your Reading I test and at the end I will also give you two free practice tests and step-by-step tutorials for the question, so sit back, relax and get ready to improve your Reading I score, so this is an example of a sentence . complete the question here, so to complete the sentence you will have sentences that will be incomplete and you will need to complete them with a word or words from the text, so you will look at the text here and then complete these sentences with words from the text, so for the sentence completion questions, the two key problems are not

reading

the instructions, especially about the number of words and the spelling Pur, so not

reading

the instructions is something that many students have problems with and it is an easy solution. the habit of really paying attention to the instructions,

understand

ing what the instructions say and then following that information and then spelling Pur.

This is because this is one of the types of questions that you do not choose. Like A, B, C or D, you actually have to take words. from the text and write them down, so if one letter is wrong the entire answer is wrong, so make sure you pay attention to the spelling, so my tip for completing the sentence is number one, read the instructions carefully, As we have already said, read the incomplete sentence. first okay, then they will give you a list of incomplete sentences don't read the text first read the incomplete sentences first to

understand

them then predict the answers what you think the type of words the type of content what type of words what content will probably appear even if your predictions are incorrect, that doesn't matter because what you are doing is preparing your brain to receive the correct information, that really helps and often when you make a prediction, it is exactly what you want. predicted will appear or something very very similar now, when completing four sentences, there may be synonyms, so again, that's why we have predict think about the different synonyms that might come up related to your predictions, but it will also do the following scan to look for The location of the correct answer there is a principle that I want you to learn first what is where before what then during the reading test you will look for where the answer is first before thinking what is the correct answer so first look for the correct location in what part of the text it is and then you will just read the section, think carefully about what the correct answer is and decide what the correct answer is, but be very careful about the spelling, here we have an example of a summary completion question, so normally it will say complete the summary below so here is the summary and there is some information missing here and in this particular question it doesn't say more than two words it may not say more than one word or just one word but it will say shows you a summary and You have to complete that summary with words from the text, so to complete the summary is very similar to completing sentences without reading the instructions, you will be told that you know you only write one or two words, pay attention that spelling is also a problem. to complete the summary, but grammar is more of an issue here, this is because when we predict we are going to think if it will be a noun, a verb or an adjective, so good grammar helps us with that, but it also helps. let's complete the summary in a way that makes sense, let's review my number one tip, read the instructions carefully, you will hear me say a lot here, read the text of the summary first, it is imperative that you do this first, don't look.

Look at the text and then predict, but also think about not only the content that might be there, but also the type of words that might come up. Will it be a noun? Will it be a verb or will it be an adjective, if your grammar is solid. that will be very very obvious and will help you find the correct answer, then find the location, keep in mind the synonyms, remember where before and what, once you find the location you can read the section carefully and check if the answer has sense so if you are expecting an adjective and only one adjective will do and you think the correct answer is an n that doesn't make any sense so you need to double check and that will help you find the correct answer and then decide what it is the correct answer, put it and You did it, these two are quite similar, that's why we have put them together here.

Here are some multiple choice questions. I'm sure you're familiar with multiple choice questions. Normally, it will be a direct question like here and then it will give you. You have three or four different options, you have to choose the right option. Now the key problem here is not really understanding the difference between the different options, so you know that there will be slight variations in meaning between these three or four options that you need. understand the difference between these in order to answer the question correctly, so you need to focus a lot on the difference between these, in addition to reading the text and understanding it, so the first thing you will do is read the questions, first read the options carefully and understand the difference between them, that's why we put them carefully here, then we will see the text but we will not read it in detail, what we will do is We will skim the text, we will read it quite quickly with the intention of understanding the general meaning of the text, then we'll go back and think about the difference in the different options.

I have put this here twice because this is the most important thing and we want to be strategic and focus on what is most important, so we will take each question and place the section of the text taking into account the synonyms for that particular question, so if it is the question 24 you are going to see the question 24 look at the information there look at the text and decide well, this is where the correct answer is I have not decided the correct answer but I know the location of the correct answer read that section carefully to find the area, then We are going to read that section carefully, this will save us a lot of time because we are not reading the entire text.

You know, there may be six or seven paragraphs that we're just focusing on one of those paragraphs to answer that particular question, so it's very strategic, with thought, intention and timing, if you're confused, think not about what the right answer is. , but which options are definitely wrong, so let's go back to the original. here let's say this one you know is definitely wrong and D is definitely wrong, which leaves you with two options B or C, then you can focus on B and C and think what is the big difference between B and C and then check the text again .

Oh, it's C, so finally read the question and make the final decision. I hope you're enjoying this video about reading, but if you really want to improve your reading, I have a free course for you that's even better than anything we've ever done. Put it on YouTube and it's called IELT reading challenge. What it will do is give you strategies for all the different types of questions 100% free and also show you where you can find real, reliable practice tests and strategies that will help you constantly improve. IELT Reading Score If you want to sign up for free, just click the link in the description, enter your email address and we'll send you all that information for free.

Now go back to the video. Short answer questions are pretty rare, but they should be. Mind you, these are similar to the comprehension questions you would have received when you were at school, where you are asked a direct question and you have to answer the direct question to short answer questions. These are normal and simple questions to understand and the big problem here. is that students will rush through the questions and not really think about what the question is asking them, so the big problem is not understanding the questions, no matter how good your reading skills are if you don't concentrate and don't understand the question that I will never be able to answer it and then I will not understand many words and phrases in the text, so if you do not understand the question and then you do not understand many of the words in the text, it is practically impossible for you. to answer the questions, so how can we solve that?

Read and understand the questions first, don't get lost in reading the text, read and just focus on the questions, understand what they are asking you within the questions, underline the key words that are normally. it's going to be NES and nine phrases people places objects things like that NS think of synonyms for those NS and that will help you find the location of the answer remember where before what once we understand the location we can read the section carefully Read the question again because our big problem is not understanding the question. Decide on the answer and write it now.

Maybe you're thinking. I have given similar strategies for some of these first four types of questions. Don't make the mistake that many students make. Oh, they're all the same and I'm going to approach them anyway and skip the video and not really think about it. It is a big mistake because very different questions arise now. Here is an example. From a question about how to label a diagram you will normally be given a diagram, sometimes a map but most of the time a diagram and normally there will be arrows relating to different parts of the diagram, it is your job to fill in these parts so You must first label a diagram.

The problem is the inability to face the unknown, not all students, but a good number of them, look at a diagram and think I don't know anything about this, so the example we gave them had something to do with ships. She likes it. I don't know anything about ships. They are not testing your knowledge of ships, they are testing your ability to look at an unknown diagram, understood and related to the reading text, why do they do this? I mean, no, it's because you will do this every day in your In a new country, you will see unknown things and you will have to interpret them in English and also, without reading the instructions, it will often tell you to only use one or two words or one word in a number or something like that, you have to pay.

Pay attention to this, so of course read the instructions carefully, look at the diagram to understand it and don't panic, keep looking at the diagram, highlight the key words, look at the spaces where you need to fill in and predict the answer just like I was predicting it before. scan to find the location read in detail and choose the correct answer and be careful with your spelling here is the dreaded true false not given question very common in reading test I what it asks you to do is read these question statements and then say in relation to the text these statements are true or they are false or they are not given there are many problems with true false no wrong information is given number one this is the question that worries most students, therefore, this is the question which produces the most content online there are hundreds or even thousands of videos about true false, not taking into account that most of the teachers who make these videos are not examiners, they are not highly qualified teachers, which means that there is a a lot of confusion and misinformation.

Another big problem is not really understanding what it is. notg means givens and that leads to people searching for not-given and they are really looking for something that is not there, then it affects the other questions that are going to be asked because if you have less time to spend on these questions, not only have you committed a error true false not given but you have also made a mistake in the other questions, what we are going to do is give you the confidence to search for not given and quickly establish I can't find this this is not given and put not given as an answer, another great The problem is not understanding what the whole sentence means.

This is a problem because many teachers and YouTubers use a strategy that is what we would call a keyword strategy. All they teach about reading are keywords. now sometimes keywords are important but most of the time they are not, it depends on the question being asked, so if you focus on keywords you won't understand what the question statements really mean because it focuses on a small part of the question statement. Instead of looking at the entire sentence and that brings us to our last key problem, focusing on the key words will not only mean that you don't understand the sentence, it will also mean that you will get lost in the text and waste a lot of time.

What should you do instead? For true false not given read the entire statements first look at the statements read them don't focus on the key words think about what the whole statement means and then look at the statements once you have understood them think synonymously what could be said in the text in a different way, for example, if the question was about a pen, you might mention a writing instrument in the text, so if you really focus on the pen,the pen, the pen, you will miss the writing instrument. or writing utensil or something crazy like that and you'll never be able to get to this part which is matching the statement to the correct part the location of the text because the statement says pen the text says writing utensil or something like that if If you're thinking about synonyms and you are open to seeing them, you will find them much faster, so once you find the location, read the statement again and go back to the statement to find your part of the text, if you have your statement and then read the text section carefully, so don't just look at the part of the text and look at the statement and immediately say: oh, that's true or that's not given, calm down, read the whole thing. section carefully and then you are going to look at the statement and look at that part of the text and think if the meaning matches, if the meaning matches, then it is true if the text says that this pen is yellow and the statement says that this pen is purple it is false If the statement says this pen is purple and the text doesn't say anything about the color or says it's a very good or very expensive pen, then we have no idea, so we don't keep it very, very simple.

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Chris Advantage.com is my email address. We answer 100% of the questions we receive. We hope you become a VIP if you don't enjoy the rest of this free video similar to the real thing, not given. if they are not given again, you have to look at the text and then look at the question statements and say whether the question statements are yes, no or no, so that if the statement agrees with the writer's opinions it contradicts the writer's opinions. o there is no information for you to really judge what the writer thinks about these statements, so they are the same but different yes no not given true false not given key problems students are confused about the difference between true false not given da and yes no no no given true false no no given it's a fact, this pen is purple, that's a fact, yes, no, it's not given, it's the writer's opinion.

I think purple pens are better than blue pens, that's not a fact, it's just my opinion, so what you're doing is saying yes. Does the text agree with the writer's opinion or not, the text does not agree with the writer's opinion, which brings us to our second problem: not understanding the writer's opinion because if you are only looking for facts and you have not trained to look for them. what the writer says or what the writer believes, then you will never be able to decide if it is yes, no, no, it is not given to you similar to true, false, you are not given much time to look for something that is not there and finally you confuse the writer's opinions with other people's opinions, so the text will give you the writer's opinions, but it could also give you other people's opinions, so you could say Chris believes this but Jason believes this and you get confused between those two or if the text talks about pens and it's Only Jason talks about pens and Chris doesn't mention it at all, then that wouldn't be given because you don't know, so my advice is to do it exactly the same as true, false, not given, but just focus on the wrong opinion, not the facts. match sentences, this is another pretty weird question, but you might get it and you should keep that in mind.

What will happen is that you will get the beginning of a sentence and then you will be given a list of endings of sentences and you will have to match the The key problem of the beginning of the sentence with the end of the sentence is using logic or grammar, so you will be given the beginning of a sentence and what people do is, instead of looking at the text, they will use their own logic, so before they even look at the text, they look at the endings of the sentences and they think that it is logical that these two go together, they are trying to find the answer without taking the time to look at the text or they think this is grammatically correct so I will just use that kind of logic, everything should be based on what it says in the text , not what you think works logically or grammatically, so my advice is to read the first part of the sentences first, read and understand them, predict the endings before checking. then and only then read the endings and combine the obvious ones.

Is there one that is? You know it has to be this way and it will be extremely obvious if that is the case. Then eliminate the obviously incorrect endings and then many endings that you think might match. You may have one or two different options: Locate the part of the text where the correct answer is, and then read that part carefully and choose the correct answer. Here we have a question about matching names, as you can see there is a list of names here and what it asks you to do is look at the text and then match the names of the people here with the statements here so that people trust you more when affected by oxytocin. that these types of questions come more towards the end, not always, but often they come towards the end because they are usually related to research findings, scientists, researchers, academics, things like that and people are stressed, they are running out of time, she is tired and they simply see names and begin to relate them without taking the time to read and consider the text.

So how can we overcome those problems? We look for the names in the text and underline them so that they are given different names. Look at the name you want to focus on scan the text and underline where that name appears because that will save us a lot of time and help us focus on the area where the correct answer is and focus on the names. which are mentioned once first so some of the names will be mentioned 2 three four times some of the names will only be mentioned once those which are mentioned once try to find the answer to the first ones so take the names which only are mentioned once and Read your research in detail because if they are only mentioned once it will only be in a small part of the reading text, so you will have located that which already matches the statements in the question and then remove that statement to delete the one that matched.

That will make it much easier for you to differentiate between the different statements and then move on. Is there another one with only one? Go to the next one. If not, is there a name that is only mentioned twice or twice? parts, then you can focus on that and then keep using that strategy until you match them all. Here is a matching information question, so the paragraph contains the following information, so you have to read the information and then match it to the appropriate paragraph in the The problem with keeping the text here is that you have to consider the entire text, there are a lot of information to digest here, so what we ask our students to do is ask this question at the end, so if it's the first part of the reading test and this question comes up.

Skip it first, finish the other questions within that part of the reading test and then come back because what you will do by doing the other questions is you will become familiar with the text, you will understand it better, which will make this question much easier. because you will have less information to consume and to understand my advice read the questions first and think of synonyms because this will help you later, skim the text first, you have a lot of information to consume so it is a good idea. Even if you are asking this question at the end, read the whole text quickly to understand it, then read the questions again and think about the placement so that you have read the questions, you understand them, you have skimmed the text and then you will continue.

Let's go back to the questions and some of the locations will already be very very obvious to you and that will help you scan to find the location and if you find the location underline it below we will check the question statement again and mark as correct if Some of them may be easier than others, others, some of them will be very, very obvious, so you can save time by just quickly thinking about them and thinking okay, that's the right answer, but if you can't To find the correct answer, move quickly to a different paragraph because often the answer will be presented in the next paragraph.

Don't spend 5

minutes

reading a paragraph, it has to be here. It has to be here. It has to move pretty quickly. Have confidence as well as confidence. confidence to write not given have the confidence to say no this paragraph continue with the next one and the answer will probably come to you quite easily and then just follow that system again here is an example of table completion or flowchart completion table completion is most common in academic work flowchart is very common in general training work, but the principles are exactly the same, you are missing information here in the flowchart, you have a few different options here and you should look at the options, read the text and then add the options here to complete the flowchart or complete the table the key problem here is not reading instructions, this is again one of these questions where you say a word or a word in a number, you need to really understand what they mean, so my advice for these is to read the instructions carefully scan the text to locate the correct paragraph read that section carefully don't just skim it read it carefully and then transfer the words exactly as they are to the space and spell check very very common for students to find the correct answer but spell it incorrectly there is really no excuse for this because you are copying the exact letters but be very careful with these matching headings.

This is a very common question and I think it is actually more challenging and more difficult for most students than true false not given. but it is not if you follow the strategy that we are going to teach you but they always look the same they will give you a list of headings here and there are always more headings than paragraphs to make it more difficult and then it gives you You have a list of paragraphs and then you just have to matching paragraphs to the list of headings by referencing the text, of course, the key problem here is that there is too much information to process most of the time you will read the entire text.

Text to complete matching heading questions effectively. Another common problem is that many students simply read as the first part of the first sentence into the last sentence or focus on key words that are the opposite of what they are trying to do. We are trying to match titles and what is tested is whether you can understand the general meaning of the entire paragraph, not the key words within the paragraph, because there is a lot of information in the process and you have to skim and understand the entire text, basically Many people. Don't spend enough time focusing on the different options of the statements in this question, you can't find the right answer if you don't understand the statements, so this is what I ask my students to ask this question first because it will form the other questions. . easier because you have to read the entire text, you can also do this first instead of reading parts of the question, parts of the text of other questions, do this first as it is much more efficient and strategic so you won't have to look at the question. statements first you are going to ignore the question statements completely, what you are going to do first is read each paragraph with the intention of writing your own title, so you will read the paragraph and write your own title, this forces you to understand the meaning of the entire paragraph, which is what they are testing, then and only then look at the headings and what you will find are their headings, the headings you came up with will often match the question statements exactly, so focus on understanding the difference of meaning between the different headings and then match the obvious ones, so let's say there are six questions and two of their headings match exactly.

Okay, you got two questions right and left four. Those four. Well, they matched exactly what you need to read. The paragraph carefully, not just skimming it, read it carefully and choose the correct option based on what the text says and the difference in meaning between the headings. I hope you enjoyed the video, now that you know all the different types of questions and you know the different strategies for those.questions, but that is only the first step, the most powerful method to improve your reading is to understand, understand your own personal weaknesses and then improve those weaknesses, that is the most powerful strategy I know to improve students even up to a band nine Yes If you want to know how to do it, click this link and I have made a new video for you.