Completing the IELTS Reading test in 60 minutes
You have 60 minutes to complete 40 questions, reading three different passages which is often challenging for majority of candidates. Improving your reading skills is definitely important however, here are few other tips that could help you complete the Reading Test just in time.
Some key guidelines to be taken into consideration:
Familiarize yourself with the question types
You should be aware of the different types of questions in the reading test. There are a total of 12 question types that will probably appear in your reading test which are as follows:
- Matching Headings
- Summary Completion
- Multiple Choice
- Matching Sentence Endings
- Short Answer
- Sentence Completion
- Name Matching
- Matching Paragraph Information
- True/ False/ Not Given
- Table Completion
- Yes/ No/ Not Given
- Diagram Labeling
Making yourself acquainted with these question types will help you save a lot of time as you can easily recognize and understand what you will be required to do to answer them.
Know the Strategies
Each question type in the reading section assesses various different skills of reading and it very important to learn the strategies to answer each question type. You can simply check out our blogs on different reading question types where you can learn about the strategies for each question type.
However, only learning the strategies will not suffice because you will need to consistently keep practicing these strategies for all the question types.
Practice the key reading skills
In order to successfully complete the reading test, you have to learn the key skills for reading: Skimming, Scanning and Detailed Reading.
Skimming refers to reading the text quickly to understand the gist where you do not read the text in detail. It is always easier to find the correct information to answer your questions when you understand what the text is about.
Scanning refers to reading the text quickly to locate specific information required to answer our questions. It refers to scanning for a specific key word from the question.
Once you understand the gist of the text and when you are able to scan for the key word, you should now read the specific section of the text in detail to understand what it exactly means
Build up your vocabulary
Improving your vocabulary will be very useful in the reading section as it can really help you understand the text better when you are able to understand the word. Additionally, synonyms and paraphrasing are very common in the reading section which clearly indicates that boosting up your vocabulary is very essential.
Manage your Time
Learn to manage time. You should practice speed-reading techniques like skimming and scanning. This will help you to find the answers quickly and save time. Set yourself certain time to tackle each question and avoid the trap of wasting time with the distracters.
Use your time efficiently
Time management is very essential in the reading section and you should avoid spending a lot of time on just one question. When practicing for the reading section, you should always learn to time yourself and it is highly recommended that you do not spend more than 20 minutes on each passage.
You can always come back to the question or passage later if you have extra time.
A key tip here is, aiming to answer all the 40 questions even it means you are making a guess for the questions you are unsure about. Answering 30 out of 40 questions will help you achieve a band score of 7.0 henceforth; it is highly recommended that you focus on the easier questions first.
Remember, PRACTICE IS THE KEY!
