Tips IELTS Reading | how should you practise for get Band 7
Tips IELTS Reading | how should you practise for get Band 7
Here’s a useful
question that a student asked me:
Many students
complain that they don’t get a high enough score in IELTS reading, and many
teachers respond that you need more practice. Dear Simon, could you describe
how to practise for reading correctly? I do practise with the Cambridge books
and spend time reading newspapers, but with no results.
Here’s my answer:
Good question.
First, testing yourself is not the best form of practice. You should test
yourself from time to time (e.g. once a week), but spend much more time
studying rather than testing. ‘Studying’ means that your aim is to learn
something from what you read. For example, when reading newspaper articles, you
might learn a new word or phrase, or you might learn how to use a word
correctly in a new context. Don’t forget to check things in a dictionary or by
searching online, and write new language in a notebook.
The CambridgeIELTS books are a great resource for studying (as well as testing). Try doing
some reading tests without a time limit. Allow yourself to use a dictionary to
check words, and aim to get all of the answers right. Analyse your mistakes
carefully, and make keyword tables.
Above all,
remember that IELTS reading is a vocabulary test. Ask yourself what new
vocabulary you have learnt this week. Can you point to a page of your notebook
and say “I’ve learnt these 10 or 20 new words and phrases this week”? If you
can, you are improving.