This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1535 Expert Answers to 4 IELTS Reading Questions.
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When it comes to IELTS prep, you need quick answers to your questions.
Today, get four expert answers to four great reading questions for a higher IELTS reading score.
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Hey there, Aubrey.
How's everything going today?
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you?
I'm good.
Aubrey, have you ever had a question and there was no one you could ask to find that answer?
How frustrating.
It is so frustrating.
This happens to me a lot with French and Spanish.
I'll have like random questions about vocabulary.
Sometimes I'll text a friend, but like takes a while for them to get back to me.
And I want my answer now.
Phone a friend, phone a friend.
I know, I know.
That's frustrating.
Okay.
So what are we getting into on the show today?
Today we are going to answer four questions about the IELTS reading exam that we have been asked during webinars or from students.
A couple of these were sent to our email, support at allearsenglish.com.
So if you have questions, you can send them there as well.
Our students in Three Keys IELTS get answers right away to their questions.
But if you have questions, you can send them.
Maybe we'll record an episode about them.
Exactly.
I mean, the way to make sure you get answers again is to join the course.
Join through these aisles at allersenglish.com slash K-E-Y-S.
But if you're lucky, you may get your question answered here on the show.
Again, don't forget to hit follow right here on the podcast.
That would be a way to make sure you hear it if you do get your question answered.
Yes, absolutely.
So let's dive in with our first question.
I'll read this one for us.
Okay.
So this was from Royelle asked in one of our webinars and they said I cannot understand the main idea of a passage.
After reading
What can I do?
Tell me the solution for that.
Great question.
It is a good question.
So what do we need to know here to find the answer?
Yeah, so this is interesting because as soon as I heard this question, my first thought was that if you are trying to read entire passages on the IELTS exam, you would have to read everything so quickly because you don't have time to read these very long passages word for word.
So when you're reading that fast, not only will you not have time to find all of the answers, you might not even understand the main idea, just like what's happening to this student.
So that could be the first problem.
If you're thinking, okay, this is a comprehension exam, I have to read these entire passages.
You don't have time for that on the reading exam.
And I mean, frankly, that's what we might think if we're not trained and prepared, right?
So we need strategies.
If reading is not the right approach, what do we need to be able to do, Aubrey?
Exactly.
So one of the first strategies we teach in Three Keys IELTS is that you need to be able to skim an entire passage in one minute in order to identify the main idea.
Because yes, of course, you need to know overall, what is this article about?
What are these answers going to be about?
But this should take one minute, no matter how long that article is.
You're just scanning, looking at the beginnings of paragraphs just to get the overall gist.
You're not reading every word.
And it's really something that needs to be practiced, right?
We can't just know how to do it right away.
We have to practice this over and over.
Exactly.
Not even native speakers can do this, right?
I remember when I started my college classes and I had to figure out how to skim because I would just be assigned chapters and chapters of books and I did not have time to read it closely, word for word, like I would a novel.
You have to learn to scan and skim to get those main ideas.
Oh, reading.
I remember in graduate school, the volume of the reading was incredible.
It's just like overwhelming.
So yeah, we pick up new strategies.
So that is the answer for number one.
If you're reading, you're doing the wrong thing, right?
We should be doing something different.
Skimming, scanning.
Love it.
Yes, exactly.
And quick note here keep in mind that main ideas are usually in the first place sentence or the last sentence of a paragraph.
So this will really help you when you're looking for the gist and also for some question types that are asking you to like identify information in paragraphs.
Often you're going to find it in if you just check the first and last line.
You don't have to read that entire paragraph.
Yeah, that is such a hot tip, right?
Very hot tip.
I love it.
All right.
What's the second question that we found that we have from a listener?
I'll read this one for us as well.
This was from the Nadada Muda.
Sorry if I'm saying your name wrong.
This was sent into our support email.
And she asked, what's the best resource to improve my reading skills for the IELTS exam?
Okay.
And so the answer to this, I mean, first of all, a lot of things, right?
So we obviously need to start to build the skills and those are skills you learned in our course.
You're building the skimming, the scanning skills, but there's other things more broadly we can do to improve our broad reading skills.
What are they, Aubrey?
You should be reading a lot of different things.
First of all, articles about a variety of different topics, right especially those common on IELTS, like the environment, education technology, the role of government, social issues.
You need to have your reading fluency be at a level that you can quickly scan an article, that you can understand the questions when you read them on the exam.
But that's not all you should be reading, right, Lindsay?
Yeah, you should have a novel by your bedside that you are looking forward to getting back to.
This will improve your general fluency and your vocabulary.
And don't make this a task.
Don't make this homework.
Make it fun.
Make it enjoyable.
Exactly.
Right.
It needs to be at a good reading level to where you look forward to it.
Like you said Lindsay, it should not be super difficult.
Drudgery like pushing you to where you're learning new vocabulary.
It's a little difficult, but you know, you want to look forward to it.
So you'll actually spend time reading it.
And then what about transcripts?
Could those be useful?
Absolutely.
So when you, for example, listen to a podcast or watch a TV show, if you turn on closed captions or follow along with the transcripts, then you're targeting both listening and reading.
So this is strengthening several different skills at once for the exam.
I love that.
I love that idea.
So good.
Anytime we can target multiple skills with the same activity.
It's a good use of our time as busy adults.
Absolutely.
Exactly.
Okay, Aubrey, we are here for the third question that we've rounded up for today's episode.
Here it is.
How can I improve my reading in 15 days?
And this is from Parwinder, who attended one of our IELTS webinars.
Exactly.
So if you have only 15 days left, you should definitely be applying strategies on practice exams.
It's no longer the time to just be reading and listening.
You need to make sure that you're comfortable with strategies for all of these different individual question types.
Each one has different strategies that you'll use, and it's not enough just to know them.
You need to be practicing them on real exams.
Yes, exactly.
So that should be the bulk of your study time.
And then obviously, you should still be continuing to read like read the newspaper, read the news on your phone, continue reading that novel.
But your study time is really more spent on those strategies.
And I think also familiarizing yourself with the exam.
Right.
Absolutely.
Right.
So you are taking practice exams, but of course, you're never going to do this all day.
Aim to do one full practice exam each day, but also several different blocks of different question types, and target the question types that are difficult for you.
So if you're struggling with finding headings and paragraphs, you should be doing a few of those each day until you are confident with the strategies for that.
If it's true false not, given that you really find problematic, do several of those each day until you are confident that you can get all of those questions right on test day.
It's just really very rigorous IELTS preparation, right?
It's not something to take lightly.
It is for those students in our course that we found hit that seven or higher.
They kind of took it on as a bit of an obsession, as a bit of a full time job, not literally because they had their jobs, but they really put a lot of themselves into the course, into the preparation.
It's not a casual thing here.
Absolutely.
Right.
If you're aiming for a seven or higher, you're going to be working hard to get that score.
There's a lot you're going to have to do.
And if you only have 15 days left, you're really going to need to make this a priority.
And, like you said Lindsay, not just doing practice exams, practice sets of questions, but continuing to build your fluency.
You can get a lot done in 15 days.
Love it.
So inspiring.
And with that in mind, let's move on to number four.
Here's the fourth question.
I got stuck on reading two times.
I got a 6.5.
So what could be the reason?
Overall, I had a 7.5 and this is from GOT who attended one of our IELTS webinars.
Exactly.
So this is really interesting.
There are a lot of different things that could be keeping you at a 65 or lower, keeping you from getting the seven that you need potentially.
One problem could be, as we mentioned earlier, treating it like a comprehension exam and reading entire passages.
If you aren't using strategies to find answers, then you just don't have enough time to get enough answers correct to get higher than a 65.
Or you could be falling for the typical IELTS tricks and traps, and there are a lot of them out there.
You know, for example, there are distractors that do look like the correct answer, but when you actually read the sentence closely they're not correct.
So you might be doing that.
Exactly.
Or another trap that IELTS test writers will do is there will be words from the question, the same words in the article, when the answer is actually found somewhere else near a synonym or a paraphrase.
That's a trap IELTS loves to do that.
You'll see the word from the question and think oh, the answer's here and read there closely.
Not always, right?
Be sure to scan for those paraphrases as well synonyms, because most likely it's going to be a paraphrase or a synonym of the keywords in the questions.
Tricky IELTS traps.
Let's avoid those for sure.
Or you could be making common mistakes and there are lots of common mistakes.
What are some examples of what mistakes students make?
Yeah, one example is not being really clear about the difference between no and not given on true, false not given or yes no, not given.
A lot of students struggle with this and make a lot of mistakes where they'll choose no, when it's really not given.
So one quick pro tip is to ask yourself this.
Can I say, I don't know?
Or can I say, there's not enough information?
Don't forget that that's a possibility.
And so there's either yes or no, but there's also that possibility of not enough information.
Is there any other mistakes we tend to make, Michelle?
Oh my gosh, you're not Michelle.
Aubrey.
I'll take it as a compliment.
Michelle is one of the hosts of All Ears English, which Lindsay and I also record together.
If you're not listening to All Ears English, you should be.
There's a lot of great vocab and tips that would be great for anyone studying for IELTS as well.
100%.
Anything else we need to know here, Aubrey, about common mistakes?
Yeah, another common mistake is mixing up true, false, not given and yes, no, not given.
So someone will accidentally write a T instead of a Y if you just kind of get in the zone and you forget which one, and that's such a simple mistake and that answer will be marked incorrect if you put a T instead of a Y.
So little things like that can hurt your score in the end.
All right, so these are four answers to four good questions.
What is our takeaway for today?
Where should we leave our listeners?
Yeah, really the bottom line is you need strategies for IELTS reading.
You don't want to go in just hoping that you will understand the reading passages and hoping you'll be able to know the answers to these questions.
Every question type requires its own strategy.
So you need to have these strategies in order to get as many questions right as possible.
Exactly.
So, guys going over, if you are ready to be serious about IELTS, join our course allearsenglishcom.
Slash, K E Y S.
That will get you right into the community, right into the course lessons, the strategies.
You will be invited to attend our open conversation club, our fluency parties.
You will be in the community and have a place to ask your questions right away.
Yes, and that course comes with strategies for every question type you could face on the IELTS reading exam, as well as strategies for every other part of the test.
So get in today, allearsenglish.com slash keys, K-E-Y-S.
All right, Aubrey, I'll see you over there in the community.
All right.
Awesome.
Thanks, guys.
We will see you next time.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy.
Hit subscribe now, and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglishcom.
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