10 Tips for Effective IELTS Reading Practice

A lot of students, especially the ones who take the IELTS Academic test, find the IELTS Reading test relatively more difficult than the other IELTS sections. This is because in the academic version of the exam, the reading passages are chosen from academic textbooks, research papers, journals, and other academic sources. Whereas in the general category the passages come from the subjects that we come across everyday in an English-speaking environment. These texts are taken from books, magazines, newspapers, notices, advertisements, company handbooks and guidelines.

Moreover, students coming from the non-native English speaking countries are not avid readers of English content. The IELTS reading exam is a time bound test, where students have to read different types of passages and then answer 40 questions in 60 minutes. Successful students spend a lot of time doing reading practice for IELTS, before they take the exam date. Students who have about six months to one year before they take the IELTS exam can start developing reading habits. But the ones who are short of time, can only rely on the right kind of training to answer these questions. This blog post lists down 10 most effective and tested tips that will help students improve their reading skills in a short period of time. 

But before you jump to the tips, do the following to ensure a strong start!

Take an IELTS Reading practice test to know where you stand!

It’s always advised that you first take the IELTS Reading practice test to save preparation time by adopting a more effective approach as the test allows you to analyse your weaker areas. Once you know your weaker areas, you can get an idea of how much effort you need to put in to improve your reading skill to get a higher band score in the IELTS exam. 

Now the next question that might come to your mind is, from where can you access these practice tests for free? You can easily access free IELTS Reading practice tests for free on Yuno Learning website. Let’s move on to some important strategies that you can use to improve your score.

Top 10 Tips for Reading Practice for IELTS

1. Understanding types of questions 

There are around 14 types of questions in the IELTS reading test. Some answers come in the same order as the question and some not. It is very important to understand all 14 types of questions and ways to answer them. One of the best ways to do this is to take as many IELTS Reading practice tests as possible. Some companies offer these tests at a small price and others like Yuno Learning provide students with the latest IELTS Reading practice test completely free of cost. In fact, you can analyze your performance with the help of the answer key provided along with it. 

2. Analyse the first line of the passage

The first thing your IELTS instructor will tell you is to pay attention to the first line of the passage. There are two reasons behind it, one is that the crux of the entire passage is carried in the first line and second is that it will give you an idea about the rest of the passage. However, it doesn’t mean that you spend most of your time looking at the first sentence hoping to find all the answers. The idea is to familiarise yourself with the passage using the first sentence. 

3. Skim through the passage

Skimming means going through the text quickly to get a general idea of the passage. There is no need to read the comprehension word by word as that will waste a lot of your time. You just need to get a sense of the topic and layout. Don’t spend more than 2-3 minutes on this. The fastest way to skim is to read the text in chunks or clusters. All questions, except one – matching headings, come after the passage, so you read the passage before starting to work on the questions. When you are skimming, underline the keywords, and important information like – dates, names, facts, numbers, etc. They will help you locate the answer. This technique is called scanning.

4. Speed read to save time

Skimming, scanning and speed reading – all run hand in hand. Speed reading will help you find key information quickly. You can read faster by reading a bunch of words together, avoiding reading with your lips and practising reading in your mind. You can also physically run your finger on the text you are reading so that you do not lose focus. Finally, you must be able to scan the passage and locate information. When you have less time, this skill can be very useful. 

5. Mark the connecting words to find answers

The connecting words in the text hold a lot of information and most of the time the answer lies around them. The connecting words are words like: first/firstly, second/secondly, third/thirdly, etc. Another set of connecting words are: next, last, finally, in addition, further/furthermore, another, also, in conclusion, to summarise, etc. These words are important to get a good score in not just IELTS reading but IELTS writing and IELTS speaking as well. 

6. Build vocabulary to improve your lexical score 

Having a good vocabulary will help you get a good score in all four IELTS sections. Memorsing new words will not help unless you learn how to use them correctly. In the reading section, knowing words is important because they play a cardinal rule in giving meaning to the text. For example, if there is a word, the meaning of which you don’t know, there is a high possibility that you will not understand the passage. 

7. Use correct grammar

Many questions in reading are based on grammar. You will be asked to check if the sentences are grammatically correct or not. If your concepts in grammar are not clear, you will end up losing points. 

8. Everything is in the details

The IELTS reading exam also evaluates another fundamental skill: detail reading. Drawing inferences and conclusions will require you to read between the lines and carefully take in specific information and the entire narrative holistically. Reading for details is necessary for summarising passages and determining points of view.

9. Identifying paraphrase in the IELTS Reading Test 

Most IELTS Reading questions paraphrase the original text. Naturally, it helps to have a large vocabulary; but vocabulary size is not everything. Recognising paraphrase begins with knowing which words are most likely to be paraphrased: conceptual words like find/discover, avoid/prevent, and theory/explanation are typically paraphrased. On the other hand, technical naming words such as infectious disease, volcanic eruption, or silicon chip are likely to also feature in the text. Therefore, when practising vocabulary, your study should concentrate on the conceptual words.

10. Time management is everything in IELTS Reading Test

Since the IELTS reading test is a time-bound test, one must not spend too much time on each question. As a general rule, if you’re still unsure of an answer after one minute, pencil in your best guess, move on to the next question, and come back to it later if there’s time. It is better to answer 30 questions correctly than answering 40 questions incorrectly.

Each of the tips and suggestions given above for preparing for the IELTS reading test has been curated by IELTS experts at Yuno Learning. If you are interested in learning more to ensure that you get the best IELTS band score, visit our website and enrol into our IELTS online preparation courses.