Vital IELTS Reading Skills

Many students get anxious when they hear the terms ‘skimming’ and ‘scanning’ as they imagine they
need to learn a difficult new skill. Well, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Think for a moment about how you read a piece of text in your own language. Do you slowly read each individual
word and think about what it means?
No, of course you don’t.
You read through it quickly, getting meaning from keywords and chunks of language that make up phrases.
If you’re trying to find specific information in the text, you’ll look for the words or numbers closely related to that
topic.
In other words, you skim and scan the text just as you need to do in your exam.
So, while these are indeed important IELTS Reading skills, they are also skills you use every day. You are just
applying them to a different language.
It’s easy to get these two skills muddled up so read these definitions. I also explain why each is so important for
your test.

Skimming
Skimming means to read the text quickly in order to understand the general meaning. When skimming, you
do not read each word or study the text in detail. You are just getting the gist of what it’s about.

Why is this important for IELTS?

Skimming is one of the key IELTS Reading skills because once you understand what the text is about, it will be
easier to find the specific information you need to answer the questions.
Understanding the general meaning of a text will help you to scan for the correct information and find the right
answer.

How to skim read

1) Read the title and any headings and sub-headings. These give big clues as to what the whole text is about.
2) Read the first sentence (the topic sentence) of paragraph one. This will give you a good idea of what the
paragraph is about.
3) Quickly glance down through the rest of the paragraph noticing key information such as names, dates and
keywords.
4) Repeat this with each paragraph.
5) Read the last paragraph a little more slowly as it probably contains a summary of the whole text.

This technique can be applied to any text but only with practice will you learn to use it effectively.
 
Skimming practice
The most important thing to remember with skimming is that you’re gaining a general overview, not looking for
specific information.
The following passage is an illustration of the skimming process.
It’s a real article from the BBC News website, although I’ve shortened it for the purposes of this exercise.
To start, try reading just the title, sub-headings, first sentences to each paragraph and the last paragraph. Even
without skimming the rest of the text, you will have a very good idea of what the article is about.

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Now follow the five steps of my ‘How to skim read’ strategy. When you’ve done this, you should have a sound
understanding of the text and be ready to move on to the scanning process.

Topic Sentences

Before we look at scanning, I’ll say a quick word about topic sentences as I’ve mentioned them several times. I
want you to fully understand what they are and why they’re important.
A ‘topic sentence’ is the first line of a paragraph and introduces the subject matter of that paragraph. It tells you
what the rest of the paragraph is going to be about. This makes it a powerful tool to help your understanding of
the whole text without reading it in detail.

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 Scanning
Scanning means reading a text quickly in order to find specific information. For the IELTS Reading test, this will be
the information you need to answer a question. Scanning probably won’t give you the actual answer but it will
help you locate where the answer is.
You could be searching for a name, a date, a phrase or synonyms of words in the question.
As with skimming, this technique allows you to find the information quickly without having to read the text slowly
word by word. This will save you a huge amount of time. Time is your greatest enemy in the reading test.
Scanning is another everyday skill. You use it, for example, when deciding what to watch on TV. You scan the
programme titles and the times they’re on and then you skim through the descriptive blurb to help you decide
what you want to watch. You certainly don’t read the whole programme menu word for word.
 
How to scan a text
1) Pick out the keywords or phrase in the specific question you are answering. It could also be a name, number or
date.
2) Be aware that the text may contain synonyms of these rather than the words or numbers used in the question.
3) Scan the text. When you spot what you’re looking for, underline it to come back to and read in more detail.

You’ll need to scan the whole text for the word or phrase you’re looking for as it may occur more than once. You’ll
then have to check which location contains the answer.
Let’s have a go at this with our article about mushrooms.
See how quickly you can answer these questions by scanning the text. You’ll find the answers and some tips for
locating them beneath the questions but it’s only by trying to answer them for yourself before checking my
answers that you’ll really learn the technique.

Questions
1) At which university was the study carried out?
2) What substance in mushrooms is believed to defend the brain against issues with recollection?
3) What does the report recommend that people should do to reduce the risk of dementia?
4) What position does Lei Feng hold at the university?

Answers & Tips

1) At which university was the study carried out?
Tip: Scan for the word ‘university’.
Answer: The National University of Singapore. (Paragraph 2)
 
2) What substance in mushrooms is believed to defend the brain against issues with recollection?
Tip: Scan for keywords such as ‘defend’ ‘brain’, ‘issues’ and ‘recollection’. Think of possible synonyms for these
words in case they have been used instead.
In fact, synonyms have been used for three of the words:
 defend – protect
 issues – problems
 recollection – memory
Answer: An antioxidant. (Paragraph 1)
 
3) What does the report recommend that people should do to reduce the risk of dementia?
Tip: Scan for keywords such as ‘recommend’, ‘reduce’ and ‘dementia’. Again, think of possible synonyms. Here
are two that have been used:
 recommend – best advice
 reduce – cut down

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Answer: Eat a diet full of fruit and vegetables and also cut down on sugar and salt, be physically active, drink in
moderation and avoid smoking. (Paragraph 5)
 
4) What position does Lei Feng hold at the university?
Tip: Scan for the name ‘Lei Feng’. This part is easy but to find the answer you’ll then need to interpret the
information.
First, you need to understand what ‘position’ means in the context of the text. It means the job title or rank of this
person.
Answer:  Assistant professor (Paragraph 3)

The texts in the Reading test are longer than this one and the questions a lot harder. These are just to illustrate
the technique of scanning and show you how simple it is to use.

Detailed reading
The next IELTS Reading skills is detailed reading and this is what gives you the answers to the questions. Skimming
will have given you the gist of the text, scanning has shown you where the answer is, and now it’s time to dig
deeper into the text to get the detail that provides the answer.
This is when you read the section of the text, maybe the whole paragraph, word for word to
understand exactly what it says.
Really think about the meaning. There will probably be synonyms to identify and you may have to interpret what
is written from the context as we did with question 4 of the scanning exercise.
You won’t need to read the whole text in this much detail, just the parts you identify as containing the answers as
you scan for them.

Context
It can be argued to be the most important of all. It’s guessing the meaning of a word from context.
What does ‘context’ mean?
A definition of context – using the text that comes immediately before and after a particular word or phrase to
help explain its meaning.
Context gives valuable clues to aid understanding.
Even native English speakers regularly come across words they don’t know the meaning of and using context is
exactly what they do to work out the meaning.
 Why is this skill so important?
 There will be words in the reading texts that you don’t understand.
 You will be able to make an accurate guess at their meaning.
 You won’t panic when you see unfamiliar words during the test.

How to improve this skill

When you see new words during your daily English reading practice, guess them in context before looking them
up in a dictionary. Don’t forget to record the new word in your vocabulary notebook.

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 PARAPHRASING
Paraphrasing is an essential IELTS skill.
Paraphrasing is simply re-writing a phrase or
sentence so that it has the same meaning,
but with different words. Paraphrasing is one
of the most important skills to learn before
doing your IELTS test. It is most important for
writing and speaking, but will also help you
in the reading and listening tests. In other words, if you know how to
paraphrase you are more likely to get the score you need.
Here are some techniques that should help you to paraphrase (to say the same
thing in different ways):
1) Use a synonym
This is important = This is significant / crucial / vital
2) Use an opposite
I found it difficult = It wasn't easy for me
3) Change active to passive
You should not do this = This should not be done
4) Use a related word (e.g. change the verb into a noun)
The number rose = There was a rise in the number
5) Consider a more formal or informal version
I am worried = I am extremely concerned (formal) / I'm stressed out (informal)

keywords (In the question & in the text)

Keywords are the words that carry specific information.

Which words can be your keywords?

Here is the list!

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  Nouns and Verbs
 Names (places, scientists, people and more included in the passage)
 Locations (towns, cities, states, countries…)
 Dates and Years
 Numbers or Figures
 Capitalized or Italicized words/phrases
It is essential to develop some strategies if you want to perform well in the IELTS
Reading test.

The question in the Reading test that requires matching the information
given in the question to the answer in the passage works only if you know the
keyword synonyms.

What are Keyword Synonyms?

Keyword Synonyms are words that have the same or nearly a similar meaning
as the keyword. They are often called as parallel expressions.

For example,

Children ~ Kids

Speak ~ Talk

House ~ Home

Present ~ Gift

The above listed words are not exactly the same in meaning, but they have very
close meaning.

Let’s have a look at an example of Sentence Completion.

Jenny thinks employers should encourage workers

who are _______.

A.      Potential leaders

B.        Open to new ideas

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C.      Good at teamwork

Now, what you are supposed to do is underline the

keywords in the question.

Jenny  thinks  employers  should  encourage  workers  w

ho are _______.

Next step is to quickly brainstorm and list some parallel

expressions (i.e., synonyms) of the underlined keywords.

Jenny – It is the name of a person. Thus, it will remain

the same.

Employers ~ boss, manager

Encourage ~ promote, motivate

Workers ~ staff, work force, employees

Now, you can look for similar information in the given

passage.

Jenny says, "Well, currently teamwork is in fashion in

the workplace and in my opinion the importance of
the individual is generally neglected.
What  managers  should be targeting is
those  employees  who can take the lead in a situation
and are not afraid to accept the idea of
responsibility.”

Here, the underlined words are the keyword synonyms.

From the above passage, we can complete the sentence

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as below:

Jenny thinks employees should encourage workers

who are  potential leaders.
It is crucial that you develop the ‘Keyword technique’ to ace your IELTS Reading
module with a high band score.

Follow these simple steps while practising:

 Read the question

 Underline the keywords
 Brainstorm and take a mental note of keyword synonyms (as you will not
have time to note down the synonyms for each keyword)
 Skim and Scan the passage
 Locate the keywords or keyword synonyms
 Write the answer

__________________________________________
_

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