Simon ILTES —— Reading

Lesson 1

• 1 hour

• 40 questions

• Read the passages and answer questions about the information

• Reading comprehension
  comprehension means understand.

• Ielts reading is testing your understanding of written English

• A vocabulary test. -> Find the right words that answer the questions.

My aim will be to give you what I think are the most effective techniques to help you do those types of questions and answer them quickly without wasting time. The aim in this course is to make you feel a bit more confident with every lesson and a bit better prepared. So by the end of the course, you should be ready to go and know exactly what you need to do in the exam.

Lesson 2 Basic exam techniques & Gap-fill questions

Basic exam techniques:

1. Don’t read the passage first

2. Just read the title

3. Then go to the first question

If you read the whole passage first and time is a big problem in the aisle reading test.

⭐️4. Underline keywords’ in the question (key)

Any word that you think is important in the question that you want to search for underlying it.

⭐️5. Then search for those words in the passage (key)

6. Underline them

it’s important to always underlying things that you find, because if your turning the paper over and you forget what you found, or you lose what you found, you’re going to waste time, so underlining things means that you won’t forget or lose them, also it helps you to focus on the important words that get you the answers, what I call the keywords.

7. Read that part of the passage carefully

8. Try to get the answer

Three more pieces of advice

1. Read at normal speed. (when you find answer, even slower)
2. Only skim/scan for names or numbers
3. Miss any difficult questions, get to the end

Question types

1. Gap-fill
2. True / false / not given
3. Yes / no / not given
4. Multiple choice
5. Matching paragraph headings
6. Matching paragraph information
7. Matching sentence endings
8. Matching other features. E.g. names
9. Short answer questions

Gap-fill

Example

A useful plant

Mosses are small flowerless plants that usually grow in
dense green clumps, in damp and shady locations. The
individual plants are usually composed of simple, one-
cell thick leaves, covering a thin stem that supports
them. At certain times they produce thin stalks topped
with capsules containing spores. They are typically 1-10
centimetres tall, though some species are much larger,
like Dawsonia, the tallest moss in the world, which can
grow to 50 cm in height.

Fill the gap with one word
1. Mosses are normally found in ________ with sufficient moisture and shelter from sunlight. (answers: locations)

注意：题干中的下划线和文中的加粗对应（同义替换）

Types of ‘gap-fill question

1. Fill the gaps with words from the passage
2. Fill the gaps to label a diagram
3. Fill the gaps with words from a list/box
4. Fill the gaps in a table

Worksheet（见文件夹）

⭐️ You can normally find the answers IN ORDER in the passage

Keyword table

Finally, I tell my students that when they finished a reading exercise at home, not in the example of course, when you’re practicing at home, make a keyword table. so in this column, you have keywords in the questions. And then in the next column, you have similar words in the passage.

Those are the key words, or some of them that I would put in my table from today’s lesson. And even if they’re easy, keywords is always a good idea to make note of them like this, because the more you get used to finding keywords, the better you’ll get ielts reading.

lesson 3 True/yes, False/no, Not given

Is there a difference between the following？

• True, False, Not given

  • when the passage is about facts（Are the statements true according to the information in the passage？）

• Yes, No, Not given

  • when the passage is about the writer’s views（Do the statements agree with the views expressed by the writer？）

Tip：

These differences are not important！ We can approach both question types in the same way. Just think: correct, incorrect, not given

For example:

Remember

True/ Yes - the correct information is given
False / No - different information is given, contradicting the statement
Not given - we don ‘ t know the answer there isn’t enough information

remember
⭐️ Find the keywords and then compare the question and passage carefully.

⭐️ Answers are always in the correct order in the passage

Keyword table

lesson 4 Matching paragraph headings

• List of headings
• Choose the best heading for each paragraph in the passage

Difficult

Because the answers are not in order in the passage and because some of the headings may be similar

A few simple techniques can help to make these questions easier.

Techniques

1. Do paragraph headings’ questions last

• Do all other questions for that passage first
• You will then be more familiar with the passage
• You might get some of the answers from memory

2. Underline keywords in each heading on the list

3. Then read the shortest or easiest paragraph

• Read at normal speed
• Underline the main ideas in the paragraph
• Compare with all of the headings
• Choose the best one

Worksheet （见文件）

The test is on that worksheet, it would be a good idea for you to try it using the techniques that I’ve just given you

Keyword table

lesson 5 Which paragraph contains？

• List of statements
• Find which paragraph contains the information in each statement

Difficult

• because the answers are not in order in the passage
• the same paragraph may contain more than one answer
• some of the paragraphs may not contain any answers

Techniques

1. Do ‘which paragraph contains’ questions last

• Do all other questions for that passage first
• You will then be more familiar with the passage
• You might get some of the answers from memory

2. Underline keywords’ in each statement

3. Then start with the easiest statement

• Information that you remember reading about
• Easy keywords that you can scan for

Worksheet（见文件）

Keyword table

lesson 6 Multiple choice questions

Difficult

• because there is a lot to read and the choices can be similar and confusing

• You can normally find the answers in order in the passage

Worksheet（见文件）

Keyword table

lesson 7 Matching names

• A list of question statements
• A box containing a list of names

match statements with names

Difficult

• the answers are not in order in the passage
• one name may be used for more than one answer (if it matches more than one of the statements)
• some of the names may not be needed

Techniques

1. Underline ‘keywords’ in each statement (questions not passage or names)

2. Scan the passage to find all of the names

• Highlight each name clearly（e.g. circle them）

3. Choose the name with the shortest description

• read the sentences around that name
• underline the main ideas relating to that name

4. Compare with all of the question statements

• go through the question statements to see if any of them match what you read

Worksheet（见文件）

Keyword table

lesson 8 Short answer questions

Worksheet

I don’t think we need to do much work on this type of question

Keyword table

lesson 9 Matching sentence endings

Techniques

1. Underline keywords in the sentence endings
2. Then start with the first question
3. Underline keywords in the question
4. Read the passage at normal speed
5. Underline keywords that you find
6. Compare the passage with the sentence endings
7. Choose the best one

Worksheet（见文件）

Keyword table

lesson 10 Course summary

You should feel confident that you know what to do

Summary

1. The main technique

• Keyword technique: underlining the main words in the questions and search for words or similar words in the passage.

2. It’s a vocabulary test

3. Question types

• in order, easy.

  1. Gap-fill
  2. True / false / not given
  3. Yes / no / not given
  4. Multiple choice
  5. Short answer questions

• Harder:

  6. Matching paragraph headings

  7. Matching paragraph information

  8. Matching names

  9. Matching sentence endings

4. The time problem

• use the keyword technique
• miss any difficult questions
• 20 minutes for each passage (sometimes passage 1 is the most difficult, sometimes passage 2, sometimes passage 3, but use 20 mins to each of them)

5. Lots of practice

• official Cambridge IELTS books
• my videos and blog lessons
• slowly and carefully
• ⭐️ high score first, get faster later