Ten top tools to do Academic reading successfully It’s a download from the net. For many academic IELTS candidates reading is the hardest paper and the one which requires most training. Here I suggest some different ways to make that training as efficient as possible. These pieces of advice are fairly general and are designed to help you think about the best way to train yourself in IELTS reading and how to avoid some common mistakes. 1. Beat the fear – read as much as possible My first suggestion is to read as much as possible. By this I don’t mean do endless IELTS practice tests, I mean do as much general reading as possible. I suggest you focus on reading short articles on topics that interest you or on topics that are common in IELTS – newspapers and magazines are a great resource here. One reason why this is such a good idea is that many candidates freeze in the reading believing it is too hard and so fail to get their band score. If, however, you read enough “native English” before the exam, you will become more and more confident in looking at texts where you don’t understand every word. Confidence is a very important concept in IELTS. If you look at Daily Exercises, you will find lots of possible exercises for you. The idea is to find something that interests you and read. That’s all. 2. Improve key skills – skimming and scanning and reading in detail A major problem in the exam is the length of the texts and you will not have time to read them all carefully. You need to train your speed reading skills so that you can read as efficiently as possible. 2 skills here are skimming which is reading quickly for general meaning and scanning which is looking for specific information. You may sometimes see advice saying that you don’t need to read in detail. Incorrect. Bad advice. You shouldn’t read the whole text in detail but you will need to parts of the text in detail – if you want to get the right answer. Put simply, skimming and scanning are useful skills to help show you where the answer might be: reading in detail tells you what the answer is. You might want to look at this post on improving your reading speed. 3. Time management – experiment to see what works Because the texts are so long you need to have a definite strategy for how you manage your time in the exam to make sure you finish on time. This means deciding: • how long you look at the text before answering questions • how long you spend on each question • how long you spend on each group of questions • how long you spend on each text • do you leave time at the end to go back at look at unanswered questions? There is a lot to consider here. You will find books and websites that insist you do it their way. They may claim to have a magic formula and that you must do this or you must do that. Ignore them. Their advice may be good for some people but not for you. The key point here is that different learners have different styles and different needs. Much the best advice here is to experiment and try different approaches and see what works best for you. Focus on the question – avoid careless errors The texts in IELTS are typically quite hard, so candidates spend as much time as possible reading the texts. Mistake. Why? Well, a huge amount of mistakes are made by not focussing enough on the exact question. It can be easy if you are in a hurry to miss a word such as “always” or “often”: the problem is those sorts of words can change the meaning of questions. There is an easy solution to this problem: it is to go back and look at the question before you write in the answer. Make sure that the question says what you think it says. You will normally save yourself 2/3 marks this way. 5. Learn the exam – know the different types of questions There are 8/9 different types of reading question that examiners may use. Before the exam, you should make yourself familiar with each type of question as they are slightly different. What I suggest is that you look at my series of tutorials on the different types of reading questions as a first step to see what the question types are. The next stage is to experiment and see what techniques you are going to use for each type of question. This may mean that you approach different types of questions differently. 6. Train yourself, don’t test yourself One common mistake candidates make is to practise exam questions too much. Exam practice is important to learn the timing (3 above) and learn the question types (5 above), but that does not mean that every time you practise reading you need to do it in exam conditions. My suggestion is that you do some “open book” tests where you can see the answers as you do the questions. This way you will learn how examiners set questions and how to find the answers. If you just test yourself, this may not happen. How often and when you do this training will depend on your preparation programme. 7. Learn how to underline This is a very specific piece of advice. You may believe it is wrong to write in books and generally I’d agree with you, but IELTS is different. A very strong suggestion is that you should underline words in the text in the exam. There are at least two reasons for this: 1. if you underline key words in the text, it can help you organise the text and this will save you time in the exam 2. if you find an answer, it is sensible to underline the part of the passage that relates to the question as a check (see 4 above) and to write the number of the question next to it in case you find a better answer later How you do this will depend on you and your style. Some people underline different types of words in different ways.I’d only add that less is more: if you underline too much, it can become confusing. 8. Beware word matching – be careful with key words One very common mistake is to match a word in the question with a word in the text and to think you have found your answer. It is almost never that simple and I am tempted to say that if the words do match, then that is not your answer. What you are normally looking for are either synonyms (words with a similar meaning) or paraphrases (short bits of text that say the same as the question. One reason candidates make this mistake is that teachers (myself included) tend to say look for key words in the question. This is helpful advice to show you where the answer might be and which paragraph it might be in. After that you need to go back and read the whole question carefully to see what the answer is. Focus on the question – avoid careless errors The texts in IELTS are typically quite hard, so candidates spend as much time as possible reading the texts. Mistake. Why? Well, a huge amount of mistakes are made by not focussing enough on the exact question. It can be easy if you are in a hurry to miss a word such as “always” or “often”: the problem is those sorts of words can change the meaning of questions. There is an easy solution to this problem: it is to go back and look at the question before you write in the answer. Make sure that the question says what you think it says. You will normally save yourself 2/3 marks this way. 9. The questions follow the text – normally This is a very practical piece of advice and could save you a lot of wasted time. Typically, the questions will come in the order of the text: so the answer to question 3 will come after the answer to question 2. This can be very helpful in the exam if you are a quick worker who goes through the questions once for the easy ones and then a second time for the harder ones. If you have answer 4 underlined (see 7 above) and answer 6 underlined then you know where answer 5 must come. One word of warning. In certain types of question (eg paragraph matching) the order of the questions are jumbled. 10. The questions or the text – which do you read first There is no one right answer here. Text books tend to advise you to read the text quickly first so that you know how the text is organised. This helps as you will save time later by knowing which paragraph will contain the answer. This can be a good approach, particularly for high level candidates provided you don’t spend too much reading and you have notes/underlinings afterwards. Many teachers say that you should read the questions first and not read the whole passage. There is logic here too. Normally, you do not have to understand the meaning of the whole passage to answer the questions, so why waste time reading it? This approach can work, especially for lower level candidates who might not understand too much of the passage anyway. However, thee is always a third way. Life is not black and white. It is quite possible to decide to use different strategies for certain question types. In paragraph matching you are going to have to read the whole passage, so you might decide to read first then. In the short answer questions, you might decide you look at the questions first. As ever, you decide. The only bad piece of advice is the one that tells you you must do it their way. Ignore them. The only right way is the way that works. 11. Fill out the answer sheet Okay, this is an eleventh tip. Practise filling out the answer sheet before you get to the exam. Too many avoidable mistakes are made this way. I’d go further: whenever you practise IELTS reading, use an answer sheet. This is what I do with my classes. Two points: 1. when you go through the answers in your practice book, make sure that you have written the answer exactly as it is in the book – anything else will lose you the point 2. you need to fill out your answers in the 60 minutes. They don’t give you any more time.

Ten ways to bust stress in exams. Think ahead – be one with a plan The main idea with all these ideas is that you want to feel in control. 1. Get there on time – don’t be early, don’t be late – remember to find out where the exam is You rush into the test centre in a hot sticky mess because you lost your way. Clearly a bad idea. So I suggest is getting there hours early – that just leaves you too much time to worry about things. All you have to do is figure out the difference between being on time and in time and to do the obvious thing and not just know where the test centre is, but work out how you are going to get there. 2. Have a plan for the exam and stick to it One of the problems with exams is that you have to deal with time pressure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you should know before the exam what amount of time you need for each type of question. You may want to be a little flexible in how you decide to spend your time, but the idea is not just to make a plan, but stick to that plan. 3. Simulate the exam – turn off your phone and ignore your boyfriend for an hour or so If this is the first time around, how about trying to simulate the test. One way in which the exam often goes wrong is that 3 papers are fine but one is just worse – you lost concentration To do this need an environment to work in where you will not be disturbed: no music or no telephone calls. It may help to try and do this away from where you normally study – a quiet library would be good. 4. Match your study habits to the test – build your concentration skills This is a similar idea. Exams often go wrong, not because you don’t know what to do, you just don’t do it: you lose concentration and panic sets in. That’s bad, you want to block out the world and concentrate on the test – do that and you should come close to performing your best. One solution is to learn to concentrate for a specific amount of time – the time of each paper in the exam. The obvious way to do this is to study for the same amount of time as the test. This means, for example, practising your writing in a block of 60 minutes, it does not necessarily mean you have to write a part 1 and part 2 in that time. The idea is that you are training yourself to concentrate for a set period of time to prepare for the exam. 5. Taper down – get there in the mental shape of your life – no last minute cramming The temptation is to study right up to the last minute. What if they give you a question you’ve never seen before? If you had sat up the night before, you may have been able to study for it. This is the wrong attitude as far as I’m concerned. Do that and you may tire yourself out – waste mental energy. You may not want to take the day before the exam off, but I do suggest that you should take it easy. One idea is to spend the day before making a plan for the exam – how long you will spend on each part of the paper – that way you will feel in control on the big day. Don’t believe me? You won’t find world class athletes in full training before the Olympics – they “taper down”. What that means is that as the competition becomes closer, they do less and less. - and IELTS does require stamina. Think physical You’re probably aware of the saying mens sana in corpore sano; in my experience, it translates into most languages. Perhaps the reason for that is it contains a universal truth – there is a strong connection between the mental and physical. Exams are a mental exercise and to excel in them, it doesn’t harm to think physical. 1. Don’t do caffeine before exams – certainly not in excess Caffeine may stimulate you, but it can also make you anxious – put you on edge, as we say. In an exam, you need to focus of course, but in a calm way. The best advice seems to be that you should avoid caffeine if you are prone to stress – and exam time is stress central! I’d add here that caffeine doesn’t just mean coffee, energy drinks often contain it too. 2. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out This time a positive piece of advice. Deep breathing really does work: it can calm the soul and bring your heart rate down. There are a number of different deep-breathing techniques that you may care to try out – but as lying down isn’t really practical in an exam centre, perhaps you should focus on the breath counting exercise here. Think positive It is very easy to get a mental block about a certain paper especially if you have taken the exam a few times and the result in one paper refuses to get better. It really does help to have a “I can” attitude. This is true of life too, but is especially true for language exams: there is a strong connection between self-confidence and the ability to communicate – and language is all about communication. 1. Visualise your answer This is another idea borrowed from athletics. A very common technique used by professional athletes is visualisation. The essential idea is that if you can see yourself doing something, that helps you to actually achieve it. Problems often happen because candidates get lost in the detail and forget to look at the big picture of what they are trying to achieve. How can this help you in exams? One way is to “see” your complete essay just as Usain Bolt sees himself breaking the tape first. See a complete essay in your head and you are much more likely to write it. 2. Get off to a good start – work your way into the exam As someone who has done more than his fair share of oral examining, I can tell you that it really helps to get off to a good confident start. Candidates who start well almost always go on to complete the test well. How does this apply to IELTS? Do NOT learn answers to part 1 speaking: examiners can always tell if you are doing this and they will be very UNIMPRESSED: this is a bad start. Rather just listen to the question and give it a short and simple response – the first questions are designed to be easy. Do that and you have the confidence to move on to the tougher questions later. In writing, most candidates have a preference for either task 1 or 2. How about starting with the one you feel better about – even if it is task 2? All you need to do is remember to leave the correct amount of time for the other task. 3. You get marks for doing well too – remember your strengths A common mistake is to think that IELTS scores are calculated by seeing how few mistakes you make and you can stress in an exam because you become obsessed by the idea of avoiding mistakes. You make a mistake and think: “Oh @$%&”. Don’t. Try and remember that you are rewarded for things you get right too: if you have a strength, concentrate on that too. One application here is in the speaking exam. We all make mistakes when we speak – native speakers too. If you hear yourself saying something incorrectly, don’t panic. It often works to go right ahead – be fluent. Fluency and coherence are as important as grammatical accuracy. 4. You don’t need 100% – make a mistake and move on This is a related idea. Quite often candidates go wrong because they mismanage their time by spending too much time on a question they can’t answer. IELTS is a strange exam because it is one test for people at all levels: the only people expected to get “100%” are educated native speakers. Put another way, the test is designed so that almost everyone will make a few mistakes. In practice, this means that you should allow a certain amount of time for each question. If you can’t do it, move on to the next question and relax. Think beyond IELTS IELTS is an exam that can make all the difference to your life. One reason why you may perform badly and become tense is that it all means too much. Here are two, slightly contradictory, thoughts for you. 1. IELTS is absurd sometimes – you can go again Recently I have been contacted by two separate candidates who got 9.0 in three papers but failed to get the overall score they needed. This is frankly absurd. 9.0 is a sensational result in one paper: in three…!!!! I also have a long-term correspondent who has completed a masters degree in Australia, but who still cannot get the right result for immigration/work. Again, silly. And, well, I think it helps to remember that it is still just a silly test, not a moral judgement on who you are. More practically, you can take the test again or apply for a re-mark – it isn’t the end of the world. Even more practically, why not book two tests at once. I very much doubt you will ask for your money back if you get the score first time around. 2. Maybe you’re not ready yet Don’t worry about getting the wrong result, that may not be a bad thing. IELTS can be silly, but it mostly works quite well. If you get a score that is less than you need, that may mean that you are not ready yet to go where you want to go. The very worst IELTS stories I know relate to people who got the correct score and then found that 5.5/6.0/6.5/7.0 in IELTS didn’t equip them for life on the other side.