READING TECHNIQUES
AND STRATEGIES
An overview
THE QUESTION TYPES
1. True/false/not given
2. Sentence completion
3. Multiple choice and global multiple choice
4. Matching names
5. Labelling a diagram
6. Yes/no/ not given
7. Matching headings
8. Summary – with or without wordlists
9. Classifying information
10. Short answer questions
SKIMMING
• Here you are trying to get the gist of the text
• Look for nouns and verbs
• Read the title, subheadings and pictures
• Read the last and first sentence of the paragraph to get the main idea of
each paragraph
SCANNING
• Look for proper nouns (nouns with capital letters)
• Numbers and dates are usually easy to find
• Long words & specific terminology
LETS PRACTICE
• Page 6 & 7 of improve your skills 4.5-6
CLOSE READING
• When you have found where the answer to the question is, you will check
in detail.
• This means you’re looking at what those sentences mean, thinking about
synonyms used in those sentences, and primarily thinking about
whether that sentence answers the question you look for.
UMBRELLA WORDS
• Help guide you through the text
• Exemplify what is discussed in the text
• Examples: advantage, aim, benefit, consequence, purpose, issue
• Words are in question but not necessarily in the text
• You may need to find synonyms OR information that reflects that word
UMBRELLA WORDS
Organising words
1) The belief
2) The consequence
3) Reasons
4) A criticism
a) that business lost due to lack of linguistic ability disproved
b) why young British people learn languages
c) why young people don’t learn languages
d) of English not being a major language
e) why foreign language learning disliked Now, match the organising words
f) of British attitudes to learning languages with the paragraphs! Unit 4 p32
Improve your skills Reading – 4.5-6
YOUR READING PRACTICE
• ONLY use Cambridge IELTS reading (1-18) books to check your progress –
these will not improve your score. If you use them this way, then you will
run out.
Slow Fast
Learn Feedback Practice Test
Practice
Constantly
work on
Vocabulary
Spelling
grammar
• Here are a couple websites with free graded reading material:
• [Link]
• [Link]
• [Link]
• These are sites with news articles, and you can choose the reading level you want:
• [Link]
• [Link]
• You should start at the level where you know about 95% of the words. This will help you improve your reading
speed, reading comprehension, and, if there are a few new words, it will be easier to guess the meaning and
remember them.
FINAL WORDS ON PRACTICE
• Try to read something you’re interested in
• Reading the news in English relating to your country can help
• Always use subtitles when watching English TV shows/movies (turn them
off if you want to practice listening)
• I will send in Teams some books you can use to practice – they are not
official IELTS practice material, so not perfect to assess your level.
• The same goes for [Link] – this is useful to practice but is
not a reliable indicator of level
• Vocabulary is usually the main reason for getting questions wrong.
TREAT YOUR MISTAKES LIKE
GOLD DUST
Look at your mistakes
Why did you get it wrong?
Is it grammar?
Vocabulary?
Did you run out of time?
Could you not find the answer?
Did you choose the wrong answer? Why?
Learn to look at your work and understand why
you made those mistakes. This is the only way
to improve your reading.