Tuesday 28 December 2010

IELTS test format - Academic Reading

The second part of the test is the reading section. The reading section is divided into 3 parts; 60 minutes to complete the section and 40 questions. This gives you 20 minutes per reading passage.

You have between 1500 and 2500 words in total to read and answer the questions. If we average each reading passage there are 666 words to read and answer the questions in 20 minutes.

Let's break this down: You have approximately 13 questions to answer per reading passage; 666 words average to read giving you around 1 minute and 5 seconds to read, understand and answer the question.

The first reading passage is relatively easy and progressively getting more difficult, although it is not necessarily the case that the first reading passage maybe easier.

The reading passages are usually on various topics and at times the vocabulary will be very topic specific and technical. Do not worry about this, this is the whole idea of the test. Can you extract the information required of you to answer the questions.

The best thing to do is to go into a habit of reading various types of articles, books, news, magazines etc.

I will give further details on skimming and scanning in a later post. Watch this space!!!

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