IELTS Reading Skill Instruction

General information about IELTS reading skill test

The IELTS reading test consists of 40 questions in three or four different sections in general training IELTS test and three long passages in academic one. The whole test is 1 hour long with no time to transfer answers from the question sheet to the answer sheet. Therefore, it is better to write answers on the answer paper from the beginning.

The test is different for Academic and General training candidates. Regardless of the purpose of each test, there are two main differences in them including the content of some sections and the way they are graded.

Content of IELTS reading test in General Training IELTS

It consists of three sections:

• • Section 1: (14 questions) based on two or three factual short texts, such as advertisements or job descriptions
• • Section 2: (13 questions) based on two texts related to the workplace, such as safety regulations or employer policies
• • Section 3: (13 questions) based on a longer instructional text of a higher level of difficulty which is similar to passages used in academic IELTS module

Content of IELTS reading test in Academic IELTS

Academic IELTS reading, also, consists of 3 reading passages. However, the difference with general training IELTS reading is that the passages are taken from a number of different academic subjects. Each passage consists of 12-14 questions.

Differences in scoring on academic and general training IELTS reading tests:

Although both versions are graded on the same scale (out of 40), correct answers are weighted higher in Academic IELTS reading test. This is due to the difficulty of its content and vocabularies. For instance, in order to get a band score of 7, one needs to answer correctly 30 questions out of 40. Yet, in general training reading test 30 correct answers out of 40 results in a band score of 6. It means that one needs to answer correctly more number of questions on a general training reading test to get a higher band score.

Similarities between Academic IELTS Reading test and General Training one

These two modules are similar in the format. It means that in both modules, there are 40 questions that must be answered in one hour with no time to transfer answers to the answer sheet. Although the first two sections of General Training module contents are different from Academic module, the last section which is a long passage is similar to the passages in Academic tests. Last but not least, the types of questions in both modules are similar and the same strategies are needed to find out answers.

Prepration for IELTS reading tests

In both Academic and General IELTS tests, the fourteen different types of questions will be the same. Therefore, it is important to learn different types of IELTS questions that you will be tested as well as some reading strategies that improve students’ reading skill.

Reading Strategies:

• • Skimming
• • Scanning
• • Understanding organization
• • Identifying paraphrasing
• • Finding key words
• • Guessing unknown words
• • Time management

Skimming:

Skimming a text means reading it quickly to get the main idea of it. It, particularly, helps the candidates to have an idea of the passage and how it is organized before reading the questions. To do so, candidates should,

• • read the title and subheadings of the passage
• • read the first sentence of each paragraph as it usually contains the main idea of the paragraph.

Scanning:

Scanning a text means reading it quickly as well. However, in scanning the purpose is not getting a main idea or a gist, but to find a specific information such as ‘a name’, ‘date’, or ‘someone’s opinion’. In scanning, the candidates should

• • read a question and understand what it is asking for
• • look for key words in questions and paraphrase them
• • scan the text to find the answer

Understanding organization:

An IELTS reading skill that helps the candidates to locate information more quickly is understanding how the passage is organized. Therefore, it is useful to train the candidates

• • to locate the thesis statement
• • to find out the main function of each paragraph
• • to indicate linking words that change a topic or an opinion while they skim a passage

Identifying paraphrasing:

An important point in IELTS reading test is that the language in the questions is not the same as the language in the passage. Therefore, candidates need

• • to think of different way of saying the questions while they are reading them
• • to think of synonyms or some words that have the same meaning. For example, if the statement is “graduated students from tertiary school find it difficult to find a job” in the passage, it could be “people cannot easily find an employee after finishing university”.

Finding key words:

Finding key words in each question or statement is very useful to understand the question better, and to identify the part of the passage where candidates can find the answer. Key words, in fact, express the main ideas of each question. In our previous example, key words are

• • ‘graduated students’
• • ‘difficult’
• • ‘find a job’

Guessing unknown words:

Definitely, in IELTS reading test, particularly, the IELTS Academic reading module, there are words that candidates have never seen before. Therefore, training them to figure them out using contextual clues is an essential point. Some examples of contextual clues are

• • a definition
• • a paraphrase somewhere else in the text
• • collocating words
• • word parts like prefixes and suffixes

Different types of IELTS reading questions:

• •  matching heading
• •  true/false/not given
• •  matching paragraph information
• •  summary completion
• •  sentence completion
• •  multiple choice
• •  list selection
• •  choosing a title
• •  categorization
• •  matching sentence ending
• •  table completion
• •  flow chart completion
• •  diagram completion
• •  short answer questions

Matching Heading Questions:

In this type of questions, candidates should choose a heading from the list which matches a section or a paragraph in the passage. In order to improve matching headings skill, candidates need to

• • read headings before reading the passage
• • identify the difference between a main idea and supporting points
• • analyze the headings before trying to match them to sections or paragraphs.

Steps to find out answers:

• • read headings and find out key words
• • identify similar headings
• • skim the first paragraph, get the main idea, and match with the possible heading
• • eliminate the selected heading from the list
• • if you found it difficult to match move on
• • do the same for remained paragraphs

Example: Read the following passage about a chess-playing computer.

A) On February 10, 1996, Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. However, Kasparov won three and drew two of the following five games, beating Deep Blue by a score of 4–2. Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded and played Kasparov again in May 1997, winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½. Deep Blue won the deciding game six, becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.

B) After the loss, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened on behalf of the machine, which would be a violation of the rules. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games. The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer's play that were revealed during the course of the match. This allowed the computer to avoid a trap in the final game that it had fallen for twice before. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue.

Choose the best heading for paragraphs A and B from the list below.

1. The first chess-playing computer

2. Developers’ intervention is questioned

3. Chess champion accepts defeat

4. Program developers caught cheating

5. A victory for artificial intelligence

CORRECT ANSWERS:

A) The main idea of the first paragraph is a victory for machine, so 5 is the best heading.

B) The main idea of the second paragraph is questioning the machine’s move as a violation of the rules, so 2 is the correct answer

(Source: Corcoran. S, December 5, 2019)

IELTS True, False, Not Given questions (TFNG):

First, learn the meaning of TFNG and make sure you know what true, false, not given mean.

• • True: you can find the information in the passage and it agrees with the statement.
• • False: The passage and statement have different information. The passage shows that the statement is wrong and it contains a mistake which you know because the passage shows us what it should be.
• • Not Given: you can’t find all the information in the passage or that the passage does not contain enough information to know if it is true or false.

Below are some examples that contain common TFNG mistakes.

Pinpointing paraphrasing and looking for meaning:

• • Passage: By the second half of the 17th century, coffee had found it’s way to Europe.
• • Statement: Coffee arrived in Europe after the 17th century.
• • Answer: it is false because it contradicts the statement (by the second half vs. after)

Mentioning some common tricks such as comparison/all/some/majority:

• • Passage: The majority of people who graduated from university found it difficult to get a job.
• • Statement: After finishing their tertiary education, all people had difficulties to find employment.
• • Answer: it is false (majority vs. all)
• • Passage: the charity raises money to pay for education and the daily need for poor people.
• • Statement: The charity spends more of the money raised on schooling of poor people than on their daily requirements.
• • Answer: it is not given because in the passage there is no information about more or less.

Raising your grammar awareness:

• • Passage: Just over 400 million acres of land is being used for agriculture in America.
• • Statement: At present, in America, about 400 million acres of land is allocated for agriculture.
• • Answer: it is true because present continuous tense in the passage shows it is about at present time.

Explaining not to match just keywords, but aim to match meaning:

• • Passage: Rapid mobility is one of the main characteristics of modern life.
• • Statement: One of the main characteristic of modern life is rapid development of science.
• • Answer: it is false. Although many key words are repeated, mobility doesn’t mean development of science.

Matching Paragraph information questions:

In this type of questions, candidates should match the given information with information found in one of the paragraphs in the passage. To do so, they should

• • improve scanning for information and identifying specific information
• • be able to paraphrase the information in the question

Read the following passage, and try the exercise below it.

Steps to find out answers:

• • Read the statements and get a general idea of what they are about
• • Think of possible synonyms and paraphrasing of them
• • Highlight names, dates, locations, and other key words in the statement
• • Scan the text for key words or synonyms of them
• • Identify the paragraph with matching information and read details
• • Repeat the same process for all the statements

Example: Read the following passage and answer questions

Language rhythms

A) When analysing the rhythm of spoken languages, some languages are referred to as syllable-timed, whereas others are commonly defined as stress-timed.

B) In a syllable-timed language, every syllable is perceived as taking up roughly the same amount of time. Syllable-timed languages tend to give syllables approximately equal prominence and generally lack reduced vowels. French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Icelandic, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and Turkish are commonly quoted as examples of syllable-timed languages. This type of rhythm was originally metaphorically referred to as "machine-gun rhythm" because each underlying rhythmical unit is of the same duration, similar to the transient bullet noise of a machine-gun.

C) In a stress-timed language, syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time (on average) between consecutive stressed syllables. Consequently, unstressed syllables between stressed syllables tend to be compressed to fit into the time interval. English, Thai, German, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Catalan, Norwegian, Faroese, Dutch, European Portuguese, and Persian are typical stress-timed languages.

D) There can be varying degrees of stress-timing within the different standards of a language. English, a stress-timed language, has become so widespread over the globe that some standards tend to be more syllable-timed than the British or North American standards, an effect which comes from the influence of other languages spoken in the relevant region. Indian English, for example, tends toward syllable-timing.

E) A better-documented case of these varying degrees of stress-timing in a language comes from Portuguese. European Portuguese is more stress-timed than the Brazilian standard. The latter has mixed characteristics and varies according to speech rate, sex and dialect. At fast speech rates, Brazilian Portuguese is more stress-timed, while in slow speech rates, it can be more syllable-timed.

Which paragraphs contain the following information?

1. How one language’s stress rhythm can change according to how quickly the language is spoken?

2. Examples of languages that give more prominence to certain syllables during speech.

3. How stress-timing in one language may be affected by the rhythm of a different language.

CORRECT ANSWERS:

1. E because change according to how quickly the language is spoken = varies according to speech rate

2. C because give more prominence to certain syllables = unstressed syllables between stressed syllables tend to be compressed

(i.e. some syllables are stressed and others are unstressed)

Note: 'B' is the wrong answer because syllable-timed languages give equal prominence to all syllables.

3. D because stress-timing in one language may be affected by the rhythm of a different language = the influence of other languages spoken in the relevant region. Indian English, for example, tends toward syllable-timing

(Source: Corcoran. S, June 24, 2019)

Summary completion questions:

In this type of questions, candidates are supposed to complete a summary by filling in the gaps using words from the passage or given words in a box. To answer this type of questions, it is a good idea to train yourself to

• • scan for specific information in the passage
• • identify the type of words needed for each gap (noun/verb/adjective etc)

You also need to know that answers come in order and they must be grammatically correct.

Steps to find out answers:

• • Skim the summary to get a general understanding of it
• • Read the summary in detail and find out parts of speech (noun, verb, adj, adv) needed for each gap
• • Highlight key words in the summary
• • Scan the text to find the paragraphs that include the key words or synonyms of them
• • When you found the part of the text that include the key words, read in detail to fill the gaps
• • Make sure your answers are grammatically correct

Example: Read the following passage about nocturnal animals.

Nocturnality is an animal behaviour characterised by activity during the night and sleep during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus its opposite “diurnal”.

Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed senses of hearing and smell, and specially adapted eyesight. Such traits can help animals such as the Helicoverpa zea moth to avoid predators. Some animals, such as cats and ferrets, have eyes that can adapt to both low-level and bright day levels of illumination. Others, such as bushbabies and some bats, can function only at night. Many nocturnal creatures, including most owls, have large eyes in comparison with their body size to compensate for the lower light levels at night.

Being active at night is a form of niche differentiation, where a species' niche is partitioned not by the amount of resources but by time (i.e. temporal division of the ecological niche). For example, hawks and owls can hunt the same field or meadow for the same rodents without conflict because hawks are diurnal and owls are nocturnal.

Fill the gaps in the summary using words from the below list.

most, sensitive, asleep, conflict, diurnal, compete, exceptional, sleep

Nocturnal animals sleep during the daytime, whereas ______ animals are awake during the day and they ______ at night. Animals that are active at night tend to have ______ hearing and smell, and they may have ______ eyesight. Nocturnally allows animals to hunt for prey without having to ______ with predators that are active during daylight hours.

CORRECT ANSWERS:

diurnal (clue: versus in the second line of the text is equal to whereas in the summary)

sleep (clue: Nocturnal animals are awake during night, so its opposite sleep at night)

sensitive (clue: they have highly sensitive hearing (third line) is equal to sensitive hearing)

exceptional (the last sentence of the second paragraph conveys the fact that they may have exceptional eyesight)

compete* (in the last paragraph, it is mentioned that there is no conflict between these two types of animals and they can hunt the same field)

*Most people chose 'conflict', but in the verb form 'to conflict' usually means 'to be incompatible' (e.g. the date of the celebration conflicted with a business meeting that I had to attend).

It is much more natural to use 'compete' in the summary above.

(Source: Corcorna, S. November 12, 2018)

Sentence completion questions:

The strategies and skills in this type of questions are similar to summary completion questions. The only difference is that in sentence completion questions, candidates should complete sentences by filling the gap with words from the passage.

Steps to find out answers:

• • Read the sentences and try to understand their meaning
• • Find out parts of speech (noun, verb, adj, adv) of each gap
• • Highlight key words in the sentences
• • Scan the text to find out the key words or synonyms of them
• • Locate the part of the text where the answer is

Read the following text about pedestrian zones in cities.

A large number of European towns and cities have made part of their centres car-free since the early 1960s. These are often accompanied by car parks on the edge of the pedestrianised zone, and, in the larger cases, park and ride schemes. Central Copenhagen is one of the largest and oldest examples: the auto-free zone is centred on Strøget, a pedestrian shopping street, which is in fact not a single street but a series of interconnected avenues which create a very large auto-free zone, although it is crossed in places by streets with vehicular traffic. Most of these zones allow delivery trucks to service the businesses located there during the early morning, and street-cleaning vehicles will usually go through these streets after most shops have closed for the night.

In North America, where a more commonly used term is pedestrian mall, such areas are still in their infancy. Few cities have pedestrian zones, but some have pedestrianised single streets. Many pedestrian streets are surfaced with cobblestones, or pavement bricks, which discourage any kind of wheeled traffic, including wheelchairs. They are rarely completely free of motor vehicles.

Fill the gaps below with NO MORE THAN 3 WORDS from the text.

1. In some cases, people are encouraged to park ________ of the town or city centre.

2. The only vehicles permitted in most pedestrian zones are those used for ________ or ________ cleaning.

3. Certain types of road surface can be used to ________ traffic.

CORRECT ANSWERS:

1. on the edge (clue: in the second line car park on the edge of pedestrianised zone)

2. delivery, street (clue: in the 8th & 9th line delivery trucks and street-cleaning vehicles)

3. discourage / discourage (any) wheeled (clue: in a line before the last line of the passage discourage any kind of wheeled traffic)

(Source: Corcoran, S. March 13, 2019)

Multiple choices questions:

In multiple choice questions type also candidates need to be able to scan the passage for specific information and locate the precise information in the passage. Therefore, exercises related to scanning and paraphrasing the information in the questions and options are helpful. It is also important to inform students that answers come in order.

Steps to find out answers:

• • Read the questions and try to understand their meaning
• • Skim the text to get a general idea of what it is about
• • Identify key words in the question
• • Scan the text to locate the key words or their synonyms
• • When you locate the paragraph that include the key words, read in detail
• • Go back to answer options and find out which one matches the best

Example: Read the following passage and answer questions

The Placebo Effect

A placebo is a sham or simulated medical intervention. Sometimes patients given a placebo treatment will have a perceived or actual improvement in a medical condition, a phenomenon commonly called the placebo effect.

A study of Danish general practitioners found that 48% had prescribed a placebo at least 10 times in the past year. The most frequently prescribed placebos were antibiotics for viral infections, and vitamins for fatigue. Specialists and hospital-based physicians reported much lower rates of placebo use.

1. The placebo effect refers to

A) a simulated medical treatment

B) an improvement in a patient’s health as a result of a simulated medical treatment

C) a common medical phenomenon

2. According to a study, placebos were prescribed in Denmark

A) mainly by doctors working in hospitals

B) instead of antibiotics

C) for fatigued patients or those suffering with viruses

CORRECT ANSWERS:

1. B (Clue: it is a paraphrased of the second sentence of the passage)

2. C (it is not mentioned in the passage that it was used instead of antibiotics, so B is wrong. Also, it is not mentioned that it was used mainly by doctors working in hospitals, so A is wrong. But, it is clearly mentioned that the most frequently prescribed placebos were antibiotics for viral infections, and vitamins for fatigue. So, C is correct.)

(Source: Corcoran, S. September 16, 2019)

List selection questions:

In list selection questions, candidates should choose the correct option from a list of words, information, or names. As a teacher, you can help students to improve necessary skills of answering this type of questions by giving them exercises related to

• • scanning for information
• • paraphrasing the list
• • identifying key words in the questions

Steps to find out answers:

• • Read the instruction carefully and find out key words in the instruction e.g. in the below example poor communication are key words
• • Read the given
• • Scan the text and look for the key words or synonyms of them
• • Read in details wherever you find key words
• • Select the appropriate answers from the list

Example of a list selection questions: (Source: https://www.ielts-exam.net)

The writer mentions a number of factors related to poor communication which contributed to the disaster.

Which THREE of the following factors are mentioned?

A. The Titanic was travelling too fast.

B. Ships were not required to operate their wireless continually.

C. There were insufficient lifeboats on the ship.

D. The Titanic’s wireless was not operating around the clock.

F. The Californian’s wireless had broken down.

G. The Titanic’s wireless had broken down.

H. Captain Smith did not give his officers enough information.

Lessons from the Titanic

The belief that the Titanic was unsinkable was so strong that passengers and crew alike clung to the belief even as she was actually sinking. This attitude was not helped by Captain Smith, who had not acquainted his senior officers with the full situation. For the first hour after the collision, the majority of people aboard the Titanic, including senior crew, were not aware that she would sink, that there were insufficient lifeboats or that the nearest ship responding to the Titanic’s distress calls would arrive two hours after she was on the bottom of the ocean. As a result, the officers in charge of loading the boats received a very halfhearted response to their early calls for women and children to board the lifeboats. People felt that they would be safer, and certainly warmer, aboard the Titanic than perched in a little boat in the North Atlantic Ocean. Not realising the magnitude of the impending disaster themselves, the officers allowed several boats to be lowered only half full.

Procedures again were at fault, as an additional reason for the officers’ reluctance to lower the lifeboats at full capacity was that they feared the lifeboats would buckle under the weight of 65 people. They had not been informed that the lifeboats had been fully tested prior to departure. Such procedures as assigning passengers and crew to lifeboats and lifeboat loading drills were simply not part of the standard operation of ships nor were they included in crew training at this time.

As the Titanic sank, another ship, believed to have been the Californian, was seen motionless less than twenty miles away. The ship failed to respond to the Titanic’s eight distress rockets. Although the officers of the Californian tried to signal the Titanic with their flashing Morse lamp, they did not wake up their radio operator to listen for a distress call. At this time, communication at sea through wireless was new and the benefits not well appreciated, so the wireless on ships was often not operated around the clock. In the case of the Californian, the wireless operator slept unaware while 1,500 Titanic passengers and crew drowned only a few miles away.

Correct answers: B & H

Choosing a title:

As the name of this type of question tells, candidates are asked to choose the most appropriate title. To do so, you need to be trained to

• • find key words in the titles
• • skim the passage
• • distinguish between detail and main idea
• • read introduction and conclusion paragraphs to choose the best title

Steps to find out answers:

• • read the titles and find out key words
• • identify similar titles
• • skim the text, get the main idea, and match with the possible title
• • remember that a title should be related to the whole text not about only one of the paragraphs

Example: Read the passage below, and select the best title from the following list.

A) The 2020s: a decade of challenges

B) Work in the 2020s: how to succeed

C) Essential skills in a changing job market

As the pace of digital transformation in the workplace accelerates, the next decade will pose challenges for employees as they are pushed more quickly into different types of jobs and teams. Skill demands are changing so rapidly, say futurists, that even when a company lays out what it requires now, by the end of the 2020s that will look very different.

Jason Wingard, dean of Columbia University School of Professional Studies, believes some skills will not be relevant. “You are going to have to look at the market and keep abreast of what are transferable skills,” he says. “You will need to measure yourself against that and ask yourself, ‘Do you have what it takes to be competitive?’”

So what are the five essential skills that workers will need to navigate a changing work environment — and flourish in the next decade?

(Source: Financial Times, 6th January 2020)

The best answer is B.

Here's why:

Answer A is too general. 'Challenges' could mean anything, and the passage is specifically about work.

Answer B is good because the passage is about work in the 2020s, and "how to succeed" is also mentioned e.g. Do you have what it takes to be competitive?... flourish in the next decade.

Answer C doesn't mention the 2020s, which is a key theme in the passage. Also, the skills aren't mentioned yet - they are probably described in the rest of the passage, but we can only use what we have.

(Source: Corcoran, S. January 14, 2020)

Categorization or classification questions:

In this type of questions, candidates need to decide which category the information belongs to from a list, and/or recognize the connection between facts from the text and their characteristics. Important skills that are needed in categorization questions are

• • scanning the passage to locate the information
• • paraphrasing the list to decide which category matches the best with the found information

Steps to find the answers:

• • Read the given options
• • Skim over the text to get a general idea of what it is about
• • Read the given statements and underline key words
• • Scan the text and look for key words or their synonyms
• • When you found the statement in the text, match it with the given option
• • Remember that answers are not in order in this type of questions

Example of classification questions:

(Source: https://ielts-up.com/reading/classification-questions-lesson)

Classify the following statements as referring to

A) Matthew Walker

B) Ravi Allada

C) Paul-Antoine Libourel

Write the appropriate letters A, B or C in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet:

1) There are three main behavioural features incident to sleep.

2) The idea that we sleep because we have nothing else to do is absurd.

3) At some point in the evolution, a new stage of sleep appeared: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

4) Natural selection did not suppress sleep, but developed it.

5) Sleep makes animals’ reaction slower.

6) Every major system in human’s body suffers because of lack of sleep.

7) Muscles are not very active during sleep.

Why do we sleep?

Researchers have found that sleep is beneficial to humans in many ways: it helps us process memories, and keeps our social and emotional lives on track. Yet we still do not really know how, why or even exactly when sleep evolved.

“The cost of losing consciousness to survival is astronomical,” says Matthew Walker at the University of California in Berkeley. Whatever functions sleep performs, they must be so fundamentally important that they far outweigh the obvious vulnerability associated with being asleep.

This means we can confidently reject one of the simplest theories of sleep: that we drift off simply because we have nothing better to do. This could be described as the indolence theory of sleep. Once an animal has eaten, seen off any rivals and exhausted any potential mating opportunities, it effectively has an empty schedule, and losing consciousness kills time for a few hours.

It is a fun idea, but considering that a sleeping animal is significantly more likely to be caught and eaten than a waking animal, this hypothesis makes “zero sense”, says Walker.

There is now an emerging consensus on the behavioural features that define sleep, and these features can be used to look for sleep in simple animals, says Ravi Allada at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

There are three main elements, says Allada. First and foremost, sleep renders an animal quiet and still: muscles are not very active during sleep. Second, sleep makes animals slower to respond. For instance, if you make a loud noise near a sleeping animal, it will react more slowly than an awake animal. And finally, we can recognise sleep because it keeps animals from getting tired.

“I believe that the behavioural features used to characterise sleep are quite reliable for identifying this behaviour in animals… and to differentiate sleep from a simple rest,” says Paul-Antoine Libourel at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France.

According to Libourel, sleep now appears to be an almost universal feature of animal life. “This suggests that sleep is fundamental for the survival of species. Natural selection did not suppress it. In fact, natural selection did the exact opposite: it built on the concept of sleep, adding in new stages and new functions.”

“At some point in prehistory, the most famous of all stages of sleep appeared: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep,” says Walker. “Non-REM sleep was the original form.”

Sleep impacts every major system in the body. Cut down on sleep and it is not just your brain that struggles: the reproductive, metabolic, cardiovascular, thermoregulatory and immune systems all suffer too, says Libourel.

All the explanations for sleep we have looked at ultimately boil down to the same thing: sleep is a state we enter to fix the systems that are put under stress when we are awake.

Correct answers:

1. B because from the text Ravi Allada describes three behavioral features that define sleep

2. A look at 2nd and 3rd paragraph

3. A look at 8th paragraph

4. C look at 7th paragraph

5. B because this is another feature that Ravi Allada mentions

6. C look at 9th paragraph

7. B because this one also is a behavioral feature

Matching sentence ending:

In this kind of tasks, candidates are supposed to complete sentences by matching the start of the sentence with the correct given ending. Here also, improving your scanning skill is helpful because you need to locate information in the passage. Also, you need to be reminded that the completed sentences must be grammatically correct.

Steps to find answers:

• Read incomplete sentences to get a general understanding of them

• Find out key words in the incomplete sentences

• Read the sentences endings and look for possible matches

• Eliminate those sentence endings that cannot be matched grammatically

• Scan the text for the key words you identified earlier

• Look for synonyms and paraphrasing of the key words

• When you locate the key words in the text, look around it to find a matched ending

• Make sure the matched sentence is grammatically correct

Example of matching sentence ending:

(Source: https://www.ieltsjacky.com/support-files/jurassiccrocodilepdf.pdf)

Question 1-4

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below

1. The ancient species of crocodile ate marine creatures that

2. The skeleton is kept in

3. Bones of the early type of crocodile

4. The geology of southern Germany

A) is believed to have lived 150 million years ago.

B) show some unique features.

C) resembled dolphins.

D) Was laid down when the area was under water.

E) A museum in the town near where it was found.

F) swan fast through the water.

G) the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences.

Correct Answers:

1. F

2. E

3. B

4. D

Table completion:

In table completion task, candidates are asked to complete the table using the correct word from the passage. To do so, you need to

• scan the passage to locate the information

• understand details

• identify the type of word needed for each part of table

Steps to find the answers:

• Read the instruction carefully and find out how many words you are required to fill each gap

• Read through the sentences with gaps to get a general idea about them

• Skim the text and note the key words beside each paragraph

• Go back to the table and find out key words, you will be looking for in the text

• Scan the text to locate the paragraph that contains answers

• Read the paragraph in details and look for key words or synonyms of them

• The completed sentences must be grammatically correct

Example: complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage. (Source: www.ielts.org)

Correct Answers:

9. temperate

10. early spring

11. two to five / 2-5

12. sub-tropical

13. South African tunneling/tunnelling

Alternative answers are separated by a slash (/).

Flow chart completion questions:

In this type of questions, candidates are supposed to complete the flow chart using the correct words from the passage. Useful skills that help you to complete answers are

• scanning in order to locate the information

• choosing appropriate words

• understanding details and order of information

• identifying the type of word needed for each part of the flow chart

They need to be reminded that answers do not always come in order, and they need to use the direction of the arrows and boxes to follow the order of information in the chart.

Steps to find the answers:

• Read the instruction carefully and find out how many words you are required to fill each gap

• Read through the sentences with gaps to get a general idea about them

• Skim the text and note the key words beside each paragraph

• Go back to flow chart and find out key words, you will be looking for in the text

• Scan the text to locate the paragraph that contains answers

• Read the paragraph in details and look for key words or synonyms of them

• The completed sentences must be grammatically correct

Diagram completion questions:

In diagram completion questions, candidates are asked to label a diagram. The reading strategies that are used in diagram completion is very similar to flow chart completion questions that are mentioned above.

Steps to find the answers:

• read the instructions carefully and find out if you should label the diagram from a word list or with words from the text

• look at the diagram and try to get a general understanding of it

• Scan the text for key words and try to locate the paragraph where answers are

• Read the relevant section of text in detail to find each answer

• Lookout for synonyms of key words as well because usually the text contains synonyms of them

Example: to complete the below diagram, read the passage in table completion section.

Source: Official IELTS website ielts.org - Diagram Labeling Sample Test

Correct Answers:

6. South African

7. French

8. Spanish

Source:www.ieltsjacky.com

Short answer questions

In this kind of tasks, candidates are asked to answer questions regarding details in the passage. Some exercises that can prepare you to answer this type of questions are

• scanning in order to locate information in the passage

• identifying the type of words (noun, verb, etc)

• paraphrasing vocabulary in the passage

Steps to find out answers:

• Read the questions first

• Skim the text to find out what it is about

• Go back to questions and underline key words

• Scan the text for the key words or synonyms of them

• When you find the location of the answer, read it in detail to find the exact word(s) you need to answer the question

Example: Read the following passage about compound words and hyphens.

A study of more than 10,000 compound words has found that four basic rules, regarding when to use a hyphen, will work 75 per cent of the time.

If the compound word is a verb (like to blow-dry), or an adjective (like world-famous), it probably needs a hyphen. For nouns with two syllables, like break-up and set-to, the rule is easy: use a hyphen only when the second word has two letters. If the second part of the word has more than two letters, it should be spelled as a single word, like coastline or bedroom. This explains why hotdog is not hyphenated. Finally, if the noun has three or more syllables, it is two separate words. Examples here include bathing suit and washing machine.

Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, who is a linguistics professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, produced the simple set of rules after examining thousands of English words. She worked alongside a programmer and a statistician to find the patterns in the English language. She said: “A whole range of factors can have an influence on how compound words are typically spelled. But on a general level, it all boils down to a few simple guidelines.” She has published exceptions to the rules, and additional guidelines for hyphens, in a book called ‘English Compounds and their Spelling’.

(Adapted from www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech)

Answer each question below with just ONE word.

1. How many different rules for the use of hyphens did the study identify?

2. Are these rules always correct?

3. Do compound adjectives usually need a hyphen?

4. Do we normally use a hyphen when a compound noun has more than two syllables?

5. Did the linguistics professor carry out this research alone?

CORRECT ANSWERS:

1. Four (clue: the first sentence says, a study of more than 10,000 compound words has found that four basic rules, regarding when to use a hyphen)

2. No (clue: the second sentence says, will work 75 percent of the time. It means not always)

3. Yes (clue: in first line of the second paragraph it is mentioned that an adjective (like world-famous), it probably needs a hyphen.)

4. No (clue: on the 8th line it is mentioned that if the noun has three or more syllables, it is two separate words.)

5. No (clue: in the third paragraph it is mentioned that She worked alongside a programmer and a statistician.)

(Source: Corcoran, S. July 24, 2018)

How to improve students’ IELTS reading score?

One can help their students to improve their IELTS reading band score by the below points.

• Teaching IELTS reading skills and strategies through various exercises

• Developing skills of each type of questions in reading among your students

• Giving some exercises to improve speed reading skills

• Increasing your students’ range of vocabularies

• Increasing your students’ grammar knowledge

• Practicing some difficult passages with students

• Introducing good website pages for practicing IELTS reading tests

• Making students aware of their weaknesses

• Encouraging them to plan their studying

• Conducting practice test not under exam conditions, so they can work on skills

• Conducting practice test under exam conditions to test your students’ score and progress

References:

Corcoran, S. (2020). Lessons with Simon, ex-IELTS examiner. https://ielts-simon.com/

Effective strategies for IELTS Reading. (2019, April 29). https://www.londonschool.com/blog/effective-strategies-ielts-reading/

Ferguson, E. (2020). IELTS preparation with Liz: Free Tips, Lessons, & English. www.ieltsliz.com

IELTS. (2020). https://www.ielts.org/

IELTS-Exam.net. (2006-2017). https://www.ielts-exam.net/

IELTS Jacky The Result You Want The Simple Way. (2020). https://www.ieltsjacky.com/

IELTS Reading: Essential Skills and Strategies. (2012, October 24). http://ielts-academic.com/2012/10/24/ielts-reading-essential-skills-and-strategies/

IELTS-up your best IELTS guide. (2015-2019). https://ielts-up.com/