As reading is one of the four components of IELTS test, reading module differs for the students who are appearing for the Academic and General Training exam. The number of and type of questions remain same but the context of questions and passages differ.
For the IELTS Academic module, there are 40 questions divided into 3sections. Each section contains one long passage. The context of the passages can be descriptive and factual. The sources of these passages can be from scientific journals, magazines, newspaper articles and books. However, for the General training module, the sections contain texts from advertisements, leaflets, notices instruction manuals, newspapers, books and magazines.
The type of questions asked in both the modules (academic /general) is same, including- selecting a correct heading from the paragraphs, identifying writer’s view, fill in the blanks, completing the sentences, choosing the correct answers, table completion and labelling the diagram, multiple choice questions.
All the 40 questions have to be attempted in one hour. Students may write the answers directly on the answer sheet or may write them on the questions paper and transfer them to the answer sheet before the end of the test. There will be no extra time given to transfer the answer at the end of the test.
One must write the answers in pencil. So, if a student has to make sure all the questions are attempted will within the given time, few strategies need to be applied. These are:
Targetting the number of questions can help. Even if a student manages to get 30questions correct, 7.0 band score will be allocated. While attempting an exam, student should not waste time on the questions which are difficult to find, they can move to the next so that they can manage time to reach the last question. Ideally students should not have spent more than 2 minutes on the question.
The words must be taken from the Reading text. The students need not to change the form of the words in the text.
Glancing at the passage beforehand can help those who have a command over the language, weaker ones can target the questions first.
Read the instructions carefully. These will help about the maximum number of words that can be picked up from the passage for the answers. Also, there might be a hint dropped about the location of answers in the passage.
After the instructions, target the question statement and take out the requirement of the question. Translate to understand the demand of the question into your mother tongue. Ascertain what you have to find in the passage, what type of word, whether a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb or a linking word is required.
After that, pick up a few strong words from the questions known as keywords and skim the passage for those words. If there is no strong key word then, pick an idea from the question and locate that idea in the passage. Start skimming from the beginning of the passage.
Only pick up answers from the content written in the passage. Do not make any assumptions, especially in case of Yes/ No/ Not Given answers.
Once the correct answer has been found, transfer that on the question paper first and mark the location in the passage. However, once done with the entire passage, do transfer the answers neat and tidy side by side on the answer sheet. Waiting for the last minute to transfer the answers can be a wrong approach by the student as no extra time will be given and chance of transferring an incorrect answer increases.
Make sure that correct spellings are written while transferring the answers on the sheet and words are selected from the passage as per the instructions given. In the Reading module the answers are picked up from the passages and only the grammatical changes can be done if the answer was not grammatically sound.
Do not leave any answer blank as there is no negative marking. Write any flukes at the end rather than leaving the answer blank.
So, students can apply the above mentioned tips for IELTS reading passage to score good bands for both Academic and General Training.
