IELTS READING SKILL MODULE

Week 1 : 06 February 2023

Material : Reading Passage 1

About the Reading Test

• The second part of the IELTS test

• Takes 60 minutes.
• Consist of three or sometimes four reading passages of increasing difficulty
• 40 questions to answer
• Must enter the answers on the answer sheet without any extra time given

Question Types

1. Multiple choice
2. Short answer
3. Sentence completion
4. Notes/summary/diagram/table/flow-chart completion
5. Choosing from a heading bank
6. True/False/Not Given
7. Matching lists, Classification

Factors in the assessment

• Identifying and retrieving factual information

• Understanding the writer’s viewpoint
• Distinguishing between opinion, fact, or assumptions
• Understanding the main points of a passage by recognizing ways of linking ideas,
sentences and paragraphs, e.g. cause and effect language, time sequences, comparison
or contrast
• Locating detailed information

TEST TIPS

❖ Allocate 15 minutes for the first section, 20 minutes for the second and 25 minutes for
the third section.
❖ Read the questions first. How many are there? What sort of questions are they?
❖ Read the heading. This will give you good general idea.
❖ Scan and skim the text.
❖ Turn back to the questions and begin to work through them, referring to the passage as
you need to and reading important sections carefully and slowly.
❖ If you cannot answer a question, or taking you a long time, leave it and come back to it
at the end.
❖ REMEMBER to WRITE your ANSWERS STRAIGHT onto the ANSWER SHEET.
READING PASSAGE 1

• a text of up to 900 words, usually factual or descriptive

• two or three tasks, with a total of 13 questions (e.g. True/False/Not given, short-answer
questions, diagram labelling)
• usually slightly easier than Passage 2 and 3

What does it test?

• understanding texts which could be included in an academic course.

• the ability to follow an argument and opinions.
• range of reading skills including reading for main ideas and detail as well as
understanding the structure of a text at sentence and paragraph level

Task Information: True/False/Not Given

• Require you to compare the information given in a series of statements with

information given in the text and decide if they are the same.

You have to:

• Read statements which are in the same order as the information in the text
• Scan the text to find the information you need
• Decide if the idea given in each statement agrees with the text (TRUE) or contradicts
(FALSE) and if there is no information about it in the text (NOT GIVEN)

TIPS

✓ You will always be able to find the answers by reading the text. You never need to use
your own general knowledge.
✓ The information you need for each question is not evenly spaced through the text.
Some may be close together and some further apart. There may be some paragraph
which do not relate to any of the questions.
✓ Use the words in the statements to find the part of the text you need to read carefully
for each question. Remember – the text may use different words from the questions.
✓ Two questions following each other may have the same answer. There is always at least
one True, one False and one Not Given answer.
✓ If you find the right part of the text but you can’t find the answer, the answer is ‘Not
Given’.
 Task Information: Diagram Labelling

• requires you to understand a detailed description and relate it to information in a

diagram. This task is often found where the text concerned with a process or a
description of something.

You have to:

• scan the text to find specific information

• find one, two or three words or a number in the text which complete each sentence or
notes and copy them into the gaps. If you spell the word(s) wrongly, you will lose
marks.

TIPS

✓ Sometimes you only need to write one word, sometimes two or three. Read the
instructions carefully!
✓ Which paragraph(s) talk(s) about (object of topic)?

Task Information: Flow-chart Completion

• requires you to understand a description of a process or sequence of events.

You have to:

• scan the text to find specific information using the words in the flow-chart to help you
locate the part you need. This may be one or more parts of the text or the whole text.
The information is not always in the same order as the flow-chart.
• find one, two, or three words or a number in the text which answer each question and
copy them into the gaps.

TIPS

✓ Check the instructions and make sure you write the correct number of words.
✓ Some parts of the chart don’t have a gap in them. They help you to find the
right part of the text.
✓ You never need to change the word you copy (e.g., from a noun into a verb or
singular to plural

Task Information: Table Completion

Action plan:

1. What important information do the instruction give you?

2. What should you think about when you look at the gaps?
3. Are the words you need all in the text?
 4. Can you change words or use different words with the same meaning for your answer?
5. Do you have to spell the words correctly?

Task Information: Sentence Completion

More or less the strategies are the same but PAY ATTENTION to how many words you
have to write and what word class you need to use.