Four Helpful Tips to ace your IELTS Academic Reading

As an avid reader myself, I was excited to take my IELTS Academic Reading because I know this component is one of my strengths. During my exam, I was tasked to answer two passages and answer forty questions within one hour. Since I already practiced beforehand, I made sure that I finished both tasks on time.

I practiced my reading skills using Road to IELTS and the free online IELTS Academic Reading practice test-paper provided by the British Council. I also downloaded the IELTS Word Power and play it to improve my vocabulary.

Good thing, the reading passages were related to my profession as an environmentalist that’s why it was easy for me to analyze the questions as it reflects my own experience. The four tips I will present here are the techniques I used to ace my IELTS Academic Reading.

Develop a strategy for IELTS Reading

The first thing to do is to know the IELTS exam format. As we all know there are two types of IELTS tests, Academic and General Training. For Listening and Speaking, test takers were given the same tests. However, for Reading and Writing components the subject matter differs depending on which test you preferred to take. The IELTS Reading test is designed to assess a wide range of reading skills, including understanding the aim of a section and understanding the general content of paragraphs.

You need to familiarize yourself and expect the following type of questions like matching headings; true, false, not given; and summary completions. To better improve your skills in each Reading task you can practice through simulating a mock test and by downloading available materials online.

In summary, I highly advise you to (1) develop your vocabulary and paraphrasing technique; (2) practice and simulate each type of question; and (3) develop your speed in locating the answer being asked. These techniques will help you save time.

Practice your Skimming and Scanning skills

Skimming is simply reading a text quickly to get a general idea of meaning, while scanning is reading quickly to find a specific fact. In short, while skimming will tell you to find general information within a section, scanning will help you locate a particular fact.

Test takers should be able to skim and scan passages to get their target band score in IELTS Reading. If you are given 40 questions in one hour then you should skim-read the given passage within 2 to 3 minutes. Find the keywords and reread the paragraphs where you are not sure with your answers. This will help you get the right message from the writer and review your answers.

Improve your grammar and vocabulary

While I practiced my IELTS Reading lessons, I get wrong answers if I didn’t provide the correct grammar. I realized that the trick to getting the correct mark is providing the right and complete answers. Improving your grammar and vocabulary is necessary for summary completion and sentence completion. Proving a shortcut answer in these types of questions will result in wrong marking. You have to make sure that the required sentence is grammatically correct as you put your answers in.

I find vocabulary words fun to vital because they are a range of artistic words used in a particular sphere of activity or on a particular occasion. Improving and learning new vocabulary terms will help you a lot in your IELTS Reading test especially in collocating verbs and nouns. Word collocation refers to a group of words that usually go together. Though there are many other possible word combinations, understanding collocations, and vocabulary terms will help you improve your English fluency.

Improve your reading skills through wider range of topics

I remembered that aside from practicing my reading skills through Road to IELTS and Cambridge IELTS 15 Academic, I also read some latest news online, scientific journals, and economic and business reading materials. This is widening my scope of knowledge to a range of topics that may come up during my exam. It also helped me a lot to understand and familiarize the complicated IELTS reading passages. Overall, just focus on reading and be confident while taking your test. Do not panic and just enjoy your IELTS journey.

That’s all! I hope I inspired you to read and best of luck to your upcoming IELTS exam.

***

To keep myself updated, I followed the following online platforms:

Website: https://www.britishcouncil.ph/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ielts.britishcouncil.philippines

Twitter: https://twitter.com/takeielts

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/takeieltsofficial/