Identifying Writer’s View – IELTS Reading Task

Candidates will be asked whether the following statements agree with the views or claims of the writer.  Candidates are then required to answer with a “Yes”, “No” or “Not Given” in their answer sheets.

It’s important to remember that answering this portion with “True” or “False” will garner no points, whether the answers are correct relative to true being the equivalent of yes and no equivalent to false.

Identifying Information – IELTS Reading Task

This is one of the task candidates will be encountering in the IELTS reading test, this is also one of the task that candidates find confusing.  When do we use Not Given is the question we get so often.

This task is used to assess the candidate’s ability to find particular information found in the passage, this does not mean you have to memorize the passage to be able to discern whether an answer is True, False or Not Given; there is always a technique candidates can implore to help them pass any exam.

Sentence Completion – IELTS Reading Test

One of the easier task in the IELTS reading test, this is also where your scanning skills will be tested.  This task requires candidates to complete sentences in a given number of words. The instructions will be clear on how many words candidates should use in their answers.

Here are some things to remember when answering a sentence completion task:

Matching Task – IELTS Reading Task

There are several types of matching task in the IELTS reading test; aside from matching headings there are matching information, matching features and matching sentence ending.  I separated these from matching heading because I believe that these matching tasks assesses the candidates ability to scan for specific information rather than the general information needed for matching headings.

Here are some methods to help you complete the matching tasks:

Matching Headings – IELTS Reading Task

This task is pretty straight forward; you are given a set of paragraphs without their headings, you are to select the right paragraph heading from a list.  In most cases you will be given more paragraph heading choices, than the actual paragraph; if you have 5 paragraphs, you can expect to have up to 7 or 8 paragraph headings.

This task is designed to test your ability to read passages quickly and get some general information about the passage or paragraph.  With that said, the best way to practice this task is to read newspaper and magazine articles.  Understand that reading everything in detail, will not be the best thing to do in this instance; try to notice when reading a

Scanning the Reading Passage – IELTS Reading Test

With 3 passages to read and 40 questions to answer, how are you supposed to manage getting a good score on the reading sub-test?  You can try reading and remembering the details of all 3 passages and answer the questions, if you have a very good memory and an above average reading speed.

Scanning is the method you can use when you need to search a page or passage for specific information as quick as possible.  A good example of scanning is when you are using the White Pages to search for a specific phone number of someone you know; reading all

Time Management – IELTS Reading Test

Most inexperienced IELTS candidate would just start reading the passage right of the bat, and try to answer the questions following the passage.  Unless they have a photographic memory, chances are they will have to refer back to the passage and look for answers or verify some of the answers that they aren’t so sure of.

This technique is of course very time consuming and inefficient.  The IELTS Reading sub-test is to a certain degree, about time management.  This is not a leisure reading session in a café; you are not reading a self help book, trying to absorb all the details the book is offering; you are not reading a novel, where you want to picture in your mind all the details given in the book; nor are you reading a newspaper article to get an idea of what is happening around you; you are reading a passage to be able to answer some general information and some very specific questions.

What to Expect from the IELTS Reading Test

60 minutes to answer 40 questions would be too simple to have a feel for what we need to expect and thus prepare for the IELTS reading test. 

You do have an hour to answer 40 questions, but what about the reading materials? There are 3 reading passages with a variety of questions with a number of question types or task types.  Some sample of the task types are: multiple choice, identifying information, identifying writer’s view, matching headings, sentence completion and so much more.

How IELTS Reading & Listening is being Scored

The listening and reading modules both contains 40 items and each correct item is given 1 mark; with a maximum possible raw score of 40. The raw score is translated to a band score, ranging from 1 to 9.  The reading and listening modules are the objective parts of the exam, you really can’t contend with the results.

The questions for all IELTS test are pretested and standardized; there will inevitably be minor differences in the level of difficulties across tests.  The band scores are set so that all the candidates’ results relate to the same scale.

5 tips for IELTS Reading

Test takers are given 1 hour to read and answer the 40 questions in the reading test.  Most people will not have time to read all the passages in detail and answer the questions.  Here are some tips to help improve your test score.

·         Read the questions first –Instead of reading the passage in details and trying to remember everything. Finding out what you need to watch out for while reading the passage may help speed things up for you.