HOW TO SOLVE IELTS READING PORTION QUICKLY AND EASILY? Matching Heading In reading, we do not have time to read every word of the passage. Because we do have just 60 minutes time and within that time we should complete all 40 questions. The heading is usually, but not always, the first sentence of a paragraph. This sentence is also called the topic sentence and it really outlines the main purpose of the paragraph. While searching for the heading: check the first sentence then the second one and pick a heading. In most of the cases it works. If you do not find the heading in these two sentences, in that case you should read the entire paragraph to get the heading. True, False, Not Given The key skill here is to understand that you are interpreting the text and the question. This means that you need to read very closely and pay attention to what the writer means. Don’t think of it as a skimming question, rather a question where you need to read the text and the question closely and decide what the writer means. The “Not Given” variation is probably what makes this type of question so difficult. How can you deal with this problem? You need to understand that: “Not given” does not mean “Not mentioned”. Typically, “NG”answers mentioned in the text – they simply don’t answer the question. You cannot add information that is probably true: you can only use the information given in the text. Some Tips to improve your Y/N/NG Questions - Read the whole question. Do NOT focus on key words. - Think about the meaning of the question. - Be especially careful with words such as “often” and “some”. They can change the meaning dramatically. - Be careful with questions beginning “The writer says”: here you need to think about the writer’s opinions and not about facts. - The questions will follow the order of the text: if you can’t find answer 12, you know it must be somewhere between 11 and 13. - Do not spend too long on any one question. If the answer is “Not Given”, there may be nothing for you to find. - One possibility is to mark all the “True” answers and all the “False” answers and then guess “Not Given” for the others. Summary Completion The main skill here is the ability to read a text quickly and understand its general meaning. If you can do this, you should be able to predict many of the correct answers even before you analyse the text. The vocabulary skill you need most is the ability to recognise “synonyms”or words that have a similar meaning. This is because the words from the summary may not exactly match the reading passage itself. Another key skill is to think grammar. Each word you place in the summary must fit in grammatically. It helps to know whether you need a noun, adjective, verb or adverb. The main difficulty this task presents is that it requires you to read all or a large part of the passage. One suggestion is to do it first even if it is not the first set of questions – that way you should get a better understanding of the passage as a whole. Another problem is that there are a lot of possible words to consider – normally they give twice as many words as there are spaces. It’s important to be methodical here and make sure you consider all the words before you put in your answer. It may take more time, but you’ll get more questions right that way. A very common mistake is to fill in a word because you recognise it form the passage. Try not to do this, but rather think about meanings of words as you are almost always looking for a synonym. Another common mistake is to choose a word that has the right general meaning but does not fit grammatically in the summary passage. One way to avoid this mistake is to read the summary sentence by sentence and not just look at the words either side of the gap. Matching information and Paragraphs You are given a series of 4/5 questions with information from the text and you are asked to say which paragraph the information appears in. The information you need to look for varies, it can be among other things: a fact an example a reason a summary a definition You should note that: * There will be more paragraphs than questions so some paragraphs will not have answers. * Some paragraphs may contain more than 1 answer. * It is important to realize that this is a very different type of question to the heading matching question. * Here you need to find specific information in a paragraph and not the general meaning of the paragraph. This type of question requires different reading skills. Understanding General Meaning This will help you identify which paragraphs you should start reading to find the answers. The quick way to do this task is to understand the whole text before you start looking for the answers. One of the keys to understanding this task is that you are generally not looking for the same words in the text as you find in the questions. What you need to do is look for words or phrases in the text that are similar in meaning to words in the questions. So you need to understand that this information in a question. Some Suggestions to approach this question * Read the whole text first quickly to decide what each paragraph is about. If you do this, you are much more likely to predict which paragraph contains the right answer. This will save you lots of time. * Look at each question in turn and try to predict which paragraph might contain the right answer. * Generally do not focus on key words in the question, think of the meaning of the question. Be aware that you are looking for synonyms rather words in the question. * Read the paragraph you have predicted. Are there any sentences/phrases that relate to the question? If so, underline them and refer back to the question. * If you cannot find the answer in that paragraph, move on to the next question and come back to it later. * You may well find the answer later when you are looking at another question.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 07:28:23 +0000
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