Hello folks!
How is it going with your IELTS preparation? Let’s talk a bit on improving your reading and writing skills today.
IELTS Reading: The question formats in IELTS Reading are as below:
- Matching Headings Questions
- True False Not Given / Yes No Not Given Questions
- Matching Paragraph Information Questions
- Summary Completion Question
- Sentence Completion Questions
- Multiple Choice Questions
Tips to improve IELTS Reading
Practice speed-reading: IELTS is a time-bound exam, and time-management would be crucial to approaching the passages. That’s where speed-reading could prove helpful.
One of the effective methods to cultivate speed-reading is word chunking—the act of reading multiple words at once. The key is to focus on trying to read three words at one glance.
Don’t focus on interpreting the full passage, focus on keywords instead: This is specially true of the third passage—which is relatively longer than the other two passage (around 900 words). Try locating specific information (look for synonyms, names, dates, numbers, places) rather than trying to comprehend the full sentence or context of the passage.
For example: if the answer statement has the words small schooling, it might as well be that the passage has primary schooling in the text. The more expansive your ability to spot synonyms (like the above case) and idiomatic expressions (ex: eat a humble pie), the faster you would be in arriving at the answer.
Widen your reading skills: Many of our trainees talk of having lost the habit of reading. This results in their struggle with comprehension and interpretation of passages. A good practice would be to adopt a daily habit of reading news on sites such as BBC, CNN and other international websites. Additionally, you could read The Hindu newspaper for its editorial, and make a list of the things that you found difficult in scanning.
Do check out this short conversation between a Hurray IELTS trainer and an IELTS aspirant over Reading:
Let’s now dwell a bit on the tips for improving IELTS Writing
Tips to improve IELTS Writing
Let’s now look at some tips for improving your writing IELTS.
Band descriptors: There is a tendency in most of the IELTS aspirants to overlook the Writing band descriptors (be it Task or Task 2)! One practice that Hurray has adopted, hence, in its IELTS training is to remind students of having the band descriptors on mind when approaching their tasks in IELTS writing (which is Essay Writing (Task 2) and Letter Writing (Task 1) for IELTS General candidates, and Essay writing (Task 2) and Report Writing (Task 1) for IELTS Academic candidates).
The four band descriptors in writing are as below:
- Task Achievement (for Task 1), Task Response (for Task 2): 25%
- Coherence and Cohesion: 25%
- Lexical Resource: 25%
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy: 25%
Craft an outline for better focus
Given the time-bound nature of the test, it would help to have a rough outline of your ideas; besides helping organize idea, an outline helps you stay focused. At Hurray, our trainers use the mind-mapping strategy towards connecting one paragraph to another, with vocabulary and sentence structure in focus.
It has been observed that students struggle mostly with ‘what to begin with’?
In essay writing, for instance, you can first begin with a paraphrase statement (taking words from the question itself). Then position your thesis statement (what position you would take throughout the essay: In agree/disagree essay, for example, you can either strongly agree or strongly disagree, or agree partially)
Again, in writing Task 1, you can have a template on what to begin with and what to end with. Try arriving at the answer to the question: “What information should I provide about this diagram or chart?” or for that matter, identifying the nature/type of a letter you would be required to write (formal, informal, semi-formal)
Practice transitional phrases and cohesion: Let’s get the fact straight. Even experienced writers talk about ideas. you can imagine what you are up for when you would be required to link your ideas in a one-hour-long Writing test! But this very challenge has naturally driven many of our candidates to focus on coherence and cohesion as an essential component in IELTS writing.
At Hurray, students are trained to make a list of sentence connectors, and use them to transition from one phrase to another. You can also refer to this link for help with transitional phrases.
That’s all in IELTS writing today. If you are an IELTS aspirant, looking for the right guidance in your IELTS preparation journey, do feel free to contact us at: info@hurrayedutech.com. Meanwhile, do take a tour of our website: https://hurrayedutech.com/
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