An Introduction to IELTS

Outline: 1. What is IELTS reading? 2. Reading Practice 3. Feedback 4. Reading strategies

What is IELTS reading? The IELTS reading test is different for those taking the Academic and General Training papers. It consists of 40 questions (3 essays) and lasts 60 minutes. You have to extra time to transfer your answers from the question paper to the answer sheet.

What is IELTS reading? A variety of questions are used, chosen from the following types: • multiple choice • short-answer questions • sentence completion • notes/summary/diagram/flow-chart/table completion • choosing from a ‘heading bank’ for identified paragraphs/sections of the text • identification of writer’s views/claims – yes, no or not given • identification of information in the text – yes, no or not given/true, false or not given • classification • matching lists/phrases

1.How many essays are there in one reading test ? 2.How many different questions types can you find in the academic training papers? 3. How different are they from the general training papers?

Test time! 剑10 test 1

1.What did you do ? 2.Did that work for you ? 3.How did you feel ?

Reading strategies Skimming Scanning Guessing unknown words Time management

Reading strategies Skimming Skilled readers quickly ‘get the gist’ (understand the main idea) of a passage by using speed-reading, sometimes called skimming. They glance quickly at titles and headings to identify the general topic. They know where to look for the writer’s main idea: near the end of the introduction and the beginning of the conclusion. When reading body paragraphs, they stop as soon as they understand the main idea. They don’t bother reading supporting sentences such as examples and quotations. If they see a word they don’t recognize, they don’t stop to consider what it means. Instead, their eyes are constantly moving across the text. This is skimming.

Reading strategies Scanning Effective scanning begins with careful study of the question. What information do you need to find? A person’s name? A year? A cause? An effect? Are there any names or technical vocabulary in the question that will surely appear in the passage? Now scan to find them quickly, without re-reading the text. There are speed-reading techniques that can help with this: for example, looking backwards through the text.

Reading strategies Guessing unknown words There will be vocabulary you have never seen before in the IELTS Academic Reading module. The test writers deliberately place uncommon words in the passage to test if candidates can figure them out using contextual clues. These contextual clues can include a definition, a paraphrase elsewhere in the text, collocating words, or word parts like prefixes and suffixes. High-scoring IELTS candidates have more than just a well-stocked vocabulary; they also have the reading skills required to analyse an unknown word and guess intelligently at its most likely meaning.

Reading strategies Time management By answering 30 out of 40 questions correctly, you can achieve a score of 7.0 in the IELTS Academic Reading module, which is considered good enough to enter most universities in the world. The lesson here is: Don’t spend too much time on the 10 most difficult questions. It’s more important that you allow yourself time to answer the 30 easiest questions and give the remaining 10 your best guess. As a general rule, if you’re still unsure of an answer after one minute, pencil in your best guess, move on to the next question, and come back to it later if there’s time.

Try it out !

Homework: 1. AWL: Vocabulary Learning 2. Review the notes. 3. 剑10, Speaking Preview.