Workshop 6: IELTS Reading

1. Reading test overview

• Three sections and 40 questions.
• 60 minutes. No extra transfer time.
• Texts can be up to 900 words long. Up to 2,700 words in total.
• Based on authentic texts such as magazines, journals, newspapers and
books.
• Texts may contain charts, diagrams etc.
• Topics: academic topics of general interest
• Written for a non-specialist audience
• Some texts are factual, others are position-based.
• At least one text contains a detailed logical argument.
• Approximately 14 different question types
• http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/booklet/Reading.pdf
• http://www.world-english.org/ielts_reading.pdf

2. Marking
• 1 mark per question.
• Must follow instructions.
• “NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS”
• Correct answer: ‘black leather coat’
• Student answer: ‘a black leather coat’ X
• Spelling must be correct.
• Any standard English spelling is acceptable
• Grammar must be correct.
• Question: ‘in the ………….’
• Student answer: ‘in the morning’ X
• Capitalisation is not important

3. Common difficulties for Vietnamese candidates

 Reading every word and trying to understand everything.
 Not familiar with the question types.
 Time management.
 Locating the part of the passage that contains the necessary information.
 Dealing with unknown vocabulary.
 Paraphrasing and synonyms.
 Ability to read intensively (T/F/NG, matching headings) and infer opinions.
 Checking for avoidable mistakes when transferring answers

British Council Exams Team IELTS is jointly owned by the

British Council. IDP:
IELTS Australia and University of Cambridge
ESOL Examinations.
4. Skills needed
• Prediction: of content and language.
• Skimming: to understand the main idea of the text and how the text is
organised / where in the text a certain piece of information is likely to be.
Skimming is useful for the paragraph matching type questions.
• Identifying topic sentences / key ideas
• Annotating: finding meaning in what you read as you read it and writing on
the text (i.e. main topic of Paragraph #2, etc.)
• Understanding questions: instructions, meaning of questions & tricks
• Scanning: To find information such as names and dates quickly.
• Intensive Reading: Useful for True, False, Not Given and Summary
Completion questions.
• Guessing the meaning of unknown vocabulary.

5. Skills required

Skimming
– to understand the main idea of the text
– how the text is organised
– where in the text a certain piece of information is likely to be.
– useful for the paragraph matching type questions.
• Students resist skimming
– “it’s a waste of time”
– “it doesn’t help me answer questions”
– “it’s too difficult”
http://www.easyprompter.com

Vocabulary
• Paraphrase / Synonyms.
• Deducing meaning from context.

Cohesive Devices
• Discourse markers (e.g firstly, in addition sequencers help us understand
order of information).
• Lexical chains (vehicles, cars, four wheel drives).
• Referencing e.g pronouns.
• “Not only would this save energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions, it
would also enhance the quality of community life.”  what do these
refer to?

British Council Exams Team IELTS is jointly owned by the

British Council. IDP:
IELTS Australia and University of Cambridge
ESOL Examinations.
6. Useful links

www.memrise.com – Independent vocabulary study and review

www.quizlet.com – Quizlet Live is a nice group revision game
www.getkahoot.com – Multiple choice quizzes
takeielts.britishcouncil.org
www.ieltsadvantage.com
www.ieltsliz.com
www.wordandphrase.info - Vocabulary profiler – levels of vocabulary based on the
COCA corpus
www.lextutor.ca – I use the “Vocabprofile” link and use AWL (VP-Classic) or COCA
www.english.com/gse/teacher-toolkit/ - Create a free account and you can look up
approximate CEFR bands for individual words, and grammatical structures too!

7. Practice tests
• Don’t overload students with practice tests
• If using as a diagnostic, be strict with timing
• Always get students to reflect
– “Why did I get #12 wrong?”
– Mark where I thought the answer was vs. where it really was
– Repeated errors (remember the feedback sheet?)
– Vocabulary that might be useful to learn
– Problems with Timing? Instructions? Language? Answer sheet?
• Worry less about the band score, more about the skills

8. Recommended books and resources

All of these books have explanatory answer keys for practice tests:
1. Charlie Martineau and Jane Short - IELTS Graduation (Macmillan
Publishers, 2007)
2. Louise Hashemi and Barbara Thomas - IELTS Trainer (Cambridge University
Press, 2012)  warning: a bit more difficult than the real IELTS test
3. Peter May - IELTS Practice Tests (Oxford University Press, 2004)
4. Philip Gould and Michael Clutterbuck - Focusing on IELTS Academic
Practice Tests (Macquarie University, 2004)
5. Sam McCarter - IELTS Testbuilder (Macmillan Publishers, 2004)
6. Sam McCarter - IELTS Testbuilder 2 (Macmillan Publishers, 2008)
7. Mark Harrison and Russell Whitehead - Exam Essentials: IELTS Practice
Tests (Thomson ELT, 2006)

British Council Exams Team IELTS is jointly owned by the

British Council. IDP:
IELTS Australia and University of Cambridge
ESOL Examinations.