Strategies for the Academic IELTS Reading passage

IELTS Academic Reading Tips:

1. Order: Generally the Reading section questions are in order of the reading passage.

For example, in the True/False/Not Given, Yes/No/Not Given question types, there are often paragraph or idea summaries. This means you will not find the answer later in the reading, but will have to decide whether or not the question is true based on a general understanding of the paragraph or idea as a whole.

1. The IELTS reading passages are not there for pleasure reading and you do not necessarily need to understand the whole passage – there is no time to read the passage in detail.
2. Scanning and Skimming: skimming and scanning techniques should be used for all passages. Practice how to skim read (speed reading).
3. Time: Do not spend more than a minute on a difficult question. If you cannot find the answer, make a guess, narrow it down to 50-50 (if it is a multiple choice question type), make a note, and if you have time later, you can come back and spend more time on it. Remember that there are 40 questions in the Reading module and just 60 minutes.
4. Read the Question First: Reading the question(s) before reading is a vital key to reducing the amount of time spent reading. You can often skim and find an answer without reading the whole text, but if you don’t read the questions first, it is difficult to skim and find the answer.
5. Key Words: Always underline key words in the question and in answer choices. Look for key words in the passage, but do not answer questions based solely on finding a key word and understand the idea(s) presented. Key words that are proper nouns (place names) and numbers and dates (July 10, $5 billion) are the easiest to find.
6. Synonyms/Antonyms: Make sure you know the exact meaning of the work you are looking for before looking for synonyms/antonyms such as: novel (noun) meaning – a long printed story as opposed to novel (adjective) meaning – new and original.
7. 50-50 chance: If you have a Multiple Choice question and are not sure of the answer, try to eliminate one or two of the possibilities, thus giving yourself a better chance of guessing the answer.
8. If you do not know the answer to a True/False/Not Given or Yes/No/Not Given answer, make an educated and logical guess.
9. Running out of time?: If you are running out of time, leave all of the questions that can be guessed on until the very end. For example, Fill in the Blank and Sentence Completion answers can’t be guessed; you need to find the right word in the passage. However, True/False/Not Given and Matching Headings questions can be guessed, often with good accuracy.
10. Guess: Do not leave any questions blank. If you run out of time at the end of the test, just guess. You may get a couple more correct answers. Remember you do not get penalised for incorrect answers.

IELTS Academic Reading overview

IELTS test format 

IELTS Academic Reading

The second part of the test is the reading section. The reading section is divided into 3 parts; 60 minutes to complete the section and 40 questions. This gives you 20 minutes per reading passage.

You have between 1500 and 2500 words in total to read and answer the questions. If we average each reading passage there are 666 words to read and answer the questions in 20 minutes.

Let's break this down: You have approximately 13 questions to answer per reading passage; 666 words on average to read giving you around 1 minute and 5 seconds to read, understand and answer the question.

The first reading passage is relatively easy and progressively gets more difficult in the second passage and the third, the most difficult, although it is not necessarily the case that the first reading passage maybe easier.  Some candidates have commented that the third reading passage was the easiest for them.

The reading passages are usually on various topics and at times the vocabulary will be very topic specific and technical. Do not worry about this, this is the whole idea of the test. Can you extract the information required of you to answer the questions.

The best thing to do is to go into a habit of reading various types of articles, books, news, magazines etc.