Many students fear doing the Reading part of the IELTS test, as they do not know how to tackle it and are afraid of failing to answer the questions correctly and in time.

In this article, IELTS Game will describe two ways in which you can answer the IELTS reading passage section for academic and General modules and give you several more tips to follow.

Two approaches to answer IELTS Reading Section

Approach 1 to answer IELTS reading passage

One way to cope with the IELTS reading is first to go through the questions following the passage and then read the passage itself.

You may familiarize yourself with the first set of questions, answer them, and move on to the next set of questions.

Alternatively, you can have a quick look at all the questions before you start reading the text.

Advantage

By doing so, you’ll be familiar with the types of questions and the information required, which will allow you to easily identify the parts of the text to locate the answers.

In the example questions below, names of people must be matched with the opinions they hold.

Knowing this is required before you read the passage, you’ll be able to mark the parts of the text where you can see the corresponding people’s names and views.

ielts reading example 1

Disadvantage

Reading the questions first may prove ineffective if questions are complicated and hard to grasp, especially if they are on the subject you know little of.

In this case, it will also be more challenging to remember what kind of information you need to find in the text.

The following example questions would take a long time to read, particularly because they are multiple-choice questions, and are not easy to understand without a prior introduction to the topic.

ielts reading passage example 2

Approach 2

You can also tackle the reading section by going over the passage first.

A useful technique while doing so is writing down a few notes next to a paragraph to remind you its content.

You should learn to read very quickly and spend no more than 5 minutes to read one passage.

You can also underline information that you think may be important such as conclusions, results or opinions.

In the example paragraph below, you can see some notes and underlined parts.

ielts reading example 3

Advantage

By familiarizing yourself with the passage first, you’ll get a complete picture of the issue discussed.

You’ll know the layout of the text, the purpose of individual paragraphs and the location of different details.

As a result, identifying the answers should be an easy job.

Disadvantage

If you are not a quick reader and don’t manage to summarise a paragraph in a few words, you will most likely fail to retain the information.

Consequently, when you turn to questions, you’ll need to reread the passage.

Also, the reading process itself will take too long to leave you enough time for attempting all questions.

You should try both methods to see which one fits you better given your level of preparedness and personal preference.

Either one requires a great deal of practice to help you feel at ease with it.