IELTS Reading

Academic Reading:

There are three long passages in Academic IELTS Reading. Each passage is approximately 1000 words. The passages are often taken from scientific journals, newspapers and academic journals. If there is a lot of technical jargon in the text, you’ll be provided with a glossary which explains the meaning of specificwords. The passages increase in level of difficulty, so the third passage is more difficult than the first and second passages. The texts may be descriptive, narrative and at least one argumentative passage.There may be visuals.

General Reading:

There are three to five passages in General IETLS Reading.The passages are taken fromnotices,advertisements, timetables, job descriptions, contracts and staff trainingrelated to the workplace. There may also be descriptive and instructive texts (non-argumentative) from magazines and books.There are 40 questions which follow both the IELTS Academic and General Reading passages which must be answered in 60 minutes.

Here are the most important Reading Strategies for IELTS:

• Skimming
• Scanning
• Close reading
• Time Management
• Understanding the type of question
• Adapting techniques to each type of questions

Here are the types of questions that appear in IELTS Reading:

• Multiple choice
• Identifying information
• Identifying writer’s views/claims
• Matching information
• Matching headings
• Matching features
• Matching sentence endings
• Sentence completion
• Summary, table or flow chart completion
• Diagram completion
• Short answers

Here are some basic techniques to answer IELTS Reading questions

• Skim the question-and-answeroptions.
• Identify the part in the passage.
• Read the first sentence (topic sentence) and ending sentence (conclusion sentence) of the paragraph.
• Highlight any key words and their synonyms in the answer options.
• Now, scan for those key words or their synonyms.
• Apply careful reading to find the answer.