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2 - IELTS Reading Skills
2 - IELTS Reading Skills
There are three key IELTS Reading skills that you need to master in order to do well
in the Reading test. These are:
Skimming
Scanning
Detailed reading
If you’ve read some of my other lessons in this section of the website, you will have
heard me mention ‘skimming’, ‘scanning’ and ‘detailed reading’ many times. This
page is where you’ll learn what they are and how to do them.
There are also two other things you need to understand for a high score:
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?
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.
Understanding the general meaning of a text will help you to scan for the correct
information and find the right answer.
Epics Training and Consultancy, Arusha-Tanzania 0689 626 310/0754 211 404
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.
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.
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.
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.
Epics Training and Consultancy, Arusha-Tanzania 0689 626 310/0754 211 404
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.
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.
Epics Training and Consultancy, Arusha-Tanzania 0689 626 310/0754 211 404
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.
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.
Text Given
Questions
1) At which university was the study carried out?
3) What does the report recommend that people should do to reduce the risk
of dementia?
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.
defend – protect
issues – problems
recollection – memory
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:
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)
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.
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.
Epics Training and Consultancy, Arusha-Tanzania 0689 626 310/0754 211 404
Detailed reading
The last of our 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
I have one final IELTS Reading skill for you. It could be argued to be the most
important of all. It’s guessing the meaning of a word from context.
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.
There will be words in the reading texts that you don’t understand.
You won’t panic when you see unfamiliar words during the test.
To discover the most effective way to record and learn vocabulary, read the lesson: