How to Improve IELTS Reading Score - IELTS Reading

Many of you need high IELTS Reading Scores. Many of you might have done the test before. Your reading scores are not as high as you'd hope. This lesson is really really going to help you. 

Okay! so there are many different ways that you can improve your reading scores. We're going to in the next slide. Look at the most common ones but none of those actually help your reading scores as much as the math.

I'm going to share with you today the great thing about this method. It is free, you can do it at home by yourself. You do not need a teacher. You can do it anytime and it is an extremely effective way.  First I am going to go through a few assumptions.

Assumptions for IELTS Reading

A lot Of Reading Practice Tests

So lots of you think that in order to get a higher IELTS reading score just do lots of reading tests. The practice is important to a certain extent but not nearly as important as you think. Doing lots of practice tests are not really going to improve your reading scores.

Significantly, why is that well that the analogy?  I always use is, I have a friend who grew up on a farm and his dad had a car and he used to drive the car around and around and around the farm and he failed his driving test over and over and over again. Even though he had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours behind the wheel of a car. He kept failing his test. Why is that because he had really bad habits. No one had ever corrected him or pointed out the bad habits. He had no idea how to actually drive a car safely.

Same with doing a lot of practice tests. If you don't actually analyze your mistakes or no one is helping you with that you might be doing the wrong thing. You have no idea. So the unfortunate thing about students who say things, like I've done every single practice test. The sad thing about that is their scores don't improve which is the sad thing. They've just wasted their time. So don't fall into that trap of thinking that practice tests are going to work they will help you they are part of your preparation but only a very very small part number.

Get help from a Teacher

 Even not a teacher is going to help you with you know telling you about the different skills used teaching you about the different types of questions. Teachers can give you some strategies for those questions that are helpful. However, a teacher is not going to be able to give you direct feedback on your performance in the reading test.

Why is that so there's a big difference between writing and reading so writing and speaking. Your producing language, words coming out of your mouth, or writing on a piece of paper and that's something that the teacher can give you feedback on like this grammar is wrong, this vocabulary is wrong.

Improve your structure there's something to go on for the teacher in case of reading on listening. Because you're receiving language, you're not producing any language so there's nothing really for the teacher to give you feedback on. The teacher would have to physically go into your brain and see your thought processes to figure out what was actually going on and right now. I don't have the ability to do that so a teacher can help you to a certain extent. I'm about to show you is way more effective than even a teacher sitting beside you.

Follow a Strategy

Number three follows a strategy. So there are many different types of reading questions. Learning strategy for each different question is very helpful but they are only part of the puzzle. They are only a small part of your preparation. Strategies alone are not going to fix many of the weaknesses that you have and they are good and but they're not going to fix everything number.

Tips and Tricks Do Work

Tips and tricks do not work. Read some tips and automatically become a better reader or improve your vocabulary or anything. Really tips and tricks do not work. They are very attractive because they're easy but they do not work.

Read Lots of Books

Read lots of books no reading is very very important. If you want to get better at reading read, it is OK! It's important that is part of your preparation but reading alone is not going to help you as much as reading consistently.

Next thing that I'm going to teach you is the most effective way to improve your IELTS reading scores and it's a five-step process step: 

Step 1. Get some real practice tests. So tests that have been produced by Cambridge. They're real IELTS practice tests. Cambridge English IDP British console look on those websites or by the books get some real practice tests. Do two or three tests under exam conditions.

Step 2. Do not look at the answers, do not look at them before you start them.  Do not cheat in any way that is really really important if you don't do that you've just sabotage. your preparation, your progress.

Step 3. Be Honest with you while matching your answers. Honestly correct them so be very honest. In the same way that your real IELTS test is corrected. If one letter is at a place that is wrong. If the word is kind of the same that's wrong unless. 

It is correct exactly as to how it is in the answer key. It's wrong so honestly correct it.  Don't give yourself extra marks or cheat in any way.

 Step 4. This is the most important part. You need to focus on the most to analyze your mistakes. Okay! so what does that mean? It means looking at every single incorrect answer and thinking deeply think, very deeply, and take a long time. This is not wasted time. It is an investment of time. Think deeply about why you got that incorrect answer. It might be very quick if it's just a spelling mistake. But if it's something to do the strategy or vocabulary or meaning or you know synonyms or something like that it will take you a long time to think about it.

It is absolutely essential that you write down the reason and get a book and sit down and write each reason on a piece of paper or multiple pieces of paper because you want to start to recognize patterns. When you want to start to recognize your common weaknesses or your common mistakes and that is where you're going to end the process which is to work on your weaknesses. 

Common Weaknesses 

So let's now look at some common weaknesses and we can talk about how to improve those so here's these are just some common weaknesses.

1. Spelling Mistake

It's very rare that students need help with everything. As I said you're looking for patterns and you're looking for example if 90% of your mistakes are spelling mistakes

 Here is must do a thing that you need to pick up on because you don't need help with reading skills or vocabulary or strategy or specific questions. You just need to improve your spelling that might sound unrealistic. But I have had students who were wonderful at reading but their spelling was often nuts was. That was a reason why they were fairly the reading test and but by getting them to follow that process. They were able to improve their spelling and they jumped. I had one student jump from band 5 to band 8 just by improving their spelling. Does that mean that if you improve your spelling you're going to get a higher score?

Maybe probably not you probably need help with something else. You are an individual this is what the whole process is about figuring out your individual weaknesses. So it could be that you just need help with reading.

Okay! you are not very good at reading in English yet so you need to practice more reading. You need to focus on getting better at skimming scanning looking locating information within a text and undecided meaning and what the correct answer is.

2. Vocabulary

Many of you are not failing the TED the reading test because of reading skills. You're failing the reading test because of vocabulary. The reading test is a vocabulary test as much as it is a reading test.

So vocabulary synonyms especially are going to help you to locate the answer. So if you have a problem with time management.

Often the problem is not time management. The problem is vocabulary. You just can't find the words fast enough or if you're getting a low score. It might mean that you just don't understand the words or the difference between words so improving your vocabulary is going to improve your scores and but you need to figure it out. If that is the particular weakness strategy. You might be really good at reading, your vocabulary is great, your spelling is great but you're very unfamiliar with all of the different types of reading and question. You need a little bit of work on strategy and or it could be a specific question that you have a problem with. 

3. Panic

I've had lots of students who are you know quite good at reading the vocabulary is good, the strategy is good, their spelling is good but every time they see a true false not given question or a matching headings question or a multiple-choice question or a short answer question, they get all of those questions wrong or nearly all of them wrong. The reason is students get panic. 

I had a student the other day and we went through this process and they did three different tests. They did them under exam conditions and we wrote down the reason why they failed and we established a pattern. The pattern was they get all their true, false, not giving questions wrong on, all their matching headings, questions wrong. We spoke about it and they said yeah every time I see those questions, I just panic, I can't do them I hate them. I'm not good at them. And I said actually it's not that you're not good at them. You're just not good at them yet. We need to focus on these questions.

And when we focused on these questions, they went from about 6 to about 7.5 because these questions were their weakness. Does this mean these questions are your weakness maybe or maybe not? You need to carry out this process which is free which you can do is very simple.

It's very straightforward and you can work on your weaknesses. Then get the scores you need. That is the most effective strategy for improving your reading scores. If you do that I pretty much guarantee that you will see an improvement but most of you reading this will not do it. Most of you will this and you'll go and read another article and expect that to help you improve.

You're not going to improve by just reading tips and tricks or rules. You're going to improve by taking action. 

This requires you to take a lot of action. That's going to take you about 30 minutes or three hours that's gonna take you another hour and a half. That's gonna take you four or five-six hours, weeks, and months to do it's very simple. It's not easy. But what is the alternative is you look for tips and tricks and hacks you fail the test.  You do that over and over and over again and you've just wasted months of your life, you've wasted thousands of dollars.

When all you had to do was just put in a little bit of hard work and then you'll get the scores you need. But not easy I know it's not easy but what was ever achieved without hard work.

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Also Read: How Speed IELTS Reading (13 Tips)