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Winsdor

Summary

Upcoming Schedule:

- Alexa's visit: Wednesday. - Sam's arrival: Tomorrow. - Webinar topic: Speaking skills.

IELTS Reading Test Strategies:

- Focus: Language over ideas. - Approach: Directly to questions, skim for clues and keywords. - Techniques: Use synonyms and paraphrases, avoid time on overall comprehension. - Goal: Efficiently locate specific language within time limit.

IELTS Reading Test Tips:

- Identify keywords in questions. - Locate relevant information using keywords. - Beware of traps and contradictions. - Time management: Move on if unsure. - Gap fill exercises: Choose grammatically and lexically fitting words. - Practice: Identify keywords and synonyms in questions.

IELTS Test Format and Scoring Overview:

- Versions: General and Academic. - Computer-based option: Available for both versions. - Paper-based test advantages: Less screen fatigue, note-making. - Computer-based test advantages: Faster results (3-5 days), daily availability. - Reading section differences: Academic version more challenging. - Test format choice: Consider factors like test availability and personal preferences.

IELTS Reading Question Approach:

- Skimming strategy: Quick, surface-level reading. - Prediction: Type of word for gap fill. - Keywords: Focus on specific nouns and verbs. - True/False/Not Given: Focus on qualifying words. - Scanning: Look for synonyms, verify accuracy.

IELTS Reading Test Preparation:

- Question types: Start with difficult texts, allocate time. - Order: Same type questions follow text order, except paragraph matching. - Time management: Skip difficult questions, answer all (no penalty for wrong answers). - Practice: Individual sections and full tests. - Vocabulary: Keep a word list of synonyms. - Extensive reading: Improve overall reading skills and English proficiency.

IELTS Reading Test Structure:

- Versions: Academic, General, Life Skills. - Academic version: More challenging texts. - General version: More general interest topics. - Life Skills version: For certain UK visas. - Structure: Same number of passages, words, question types. - Academic preparation: Beneficial for general test takers. - Test duration: 60 minutes for 40 questions. - Question types: Multiple choice, true/false/not given, sentence completion, etc. - Focus: Find specific information. - Instructions: Read and follow carefully. - Skills assessed: Moral decision-making, understanding collocations.

Summary made by Jill White Voice Notes Assistant (https://t.me/JillWhite_voice_notes_bot?do=open_link)

test. All right, well, here we go.

We're going to talk about IELTS reading for the next hour and a quick overview for everyone. When we look at IELTS reading, we're going to talk about the test format and scoring because IELTS, the tests are very different.

Some of them are very different in terms of the reading test. It's really important to know which format you want to take and the scoring can be different as well.

So we'll look at that in detail. We'll look at the test structure of the reading part of IELTS, different question types, and then most importantly, some strategies for performing well on the reading test.

And yeah, like I said, first we'll start with the test formats. Does anyone know in the chat, maybe you can write, how many versions of IELTS are there, are available?

Any ideas for numbers? Anna says two, Aljona says two, General and Academic, Nadezhda, also two.

Yeah, a lot of you are right. I mean, those are the two main ones.

So there are actually maybe three at least, well, three in total, I should say, definitely three. And the different ways that you can take them is you can do the paper-based version of the exam, or you can do the computer-based version, like we talked about earlier.

And this works for all the different versions of the exam, unless you're doing, you know, one where, for example, the life skills, which we'll talk about, that's only in person. But yeah, you can see with the computer-based, this is kind of what it looks like.

So with the computer-based, you can see there are a number of different things that are, you know, different from the paper-based. So there are 52 minutes, so you see the timer up here.

You don't have a timer in front of you if you're doing the paper-based exam, but there is a clock, of course, that you can look at on the wall. Yeah, you just choose the questions with your mouse, you click, and you have the text here on the left side.

The image quality is not so good, but this is basically what the reading test looks like if you do the computer-based version. So maybe you're trying to decide what's best, paper-based or computer-based.

Well, this obviously totally depends on you, and maybe also on your test center. Maybe they don't offer the computer-based.

But some advantages of paper-based is, first of all, you don't get as much screen fatigue. Does anyone know what the word fatigue means?

Any ideas of a good synonym for fatigue in the chat? Tiredness.

Yeah, Nadezhda, that's exactly right. Screen fatigue is tiredness that results from looking at a screen for too long.

Maybe you experience...experience this when you're studying or working. I know sometimes I experience it when I'm working right, looking at the screen too long can can kind of hurt your eyes.

Some people experience this more intensely than other people. For them, it's probably better to take the paper based version.

There's also, um, the ability for paper based to draw more freely. You can, you know, make notes with your pencil in a way which is more comfortable, maybe, too.

Um, and some people like to flip pages by hand. Maybe that's something, uh, that you can feel you're in more control of than just clicking.

And also, uh, an important factor, too, is that most of the practice material that's available for IELTS is available in the version of the paper based exam. A lot of the computers don't have the ability to understand what's going on.

So, um, it's a little bit different. So, um, it's a little bit different.

So, um, it's ayour results in a week, you shouldn't take paper-based. You should take computer-based because you get your results in three to five days.

For paper-based, it takes exactly 13 days and paper-based isn't always offered every day. Computer-based, if it's offered at the test center, can sometimes be offered on a daily basis.

So these are really important factors to think about when you're planning. How long do I have to take the test?

How fast do I need my results? What makes me more comfortable?

Because that will have a big impact on how well you perform. So also the different versions of the test are really important to think about.

So everyone who said general and academic earlier are absolutely correct. There is the academic version of IELTS, which is, like it says, just more academic.

The reading material is a little bit more challenging than the general academic version. Academic isn't different from general IELTS in every test section, but it is different in the reading.

It's the same in listening, it's the same in speaking, and it's partly the same in writing. But with the reading tests, you have different texts, okay, and they're on more academic topics and therefore they're more challenging.

We'll see that this impacts the score that you receive, but it's a really important thing to keep in mind. The general version, here the topics are more general, and so you can talk about things, you read about things of a more general interest.

There's also a third test called life skills. Now this is much less common than general and academic, and this is mostly just used for only for the UK, for example, and only for certain types of visas to the UK.

So often if you're like a spouse of somebody who lives in the UK, like a husband or wife, then you might have to take this life skills version and it's just basically speaking and listening. You just have a conversation with another person who's doing this test and the examiner, and it's much shorter than academic in general.

There's no reading test on this version of IELTS, and it's not as common, right, as these two, of course, so we're not going to focus on life skills as much. And sorry, I just realized I made a mistake.

It should say life skills there, not like skills. So yeah, that's another option, but probably not relevant for most people.

Anyway, regardless of the version of IELTS that you take, the structure will be exactly the same. You'll have the same number of passages.

You'll have the same number of words in these passages, and basically the same question types. The only thing that's different is that the texts are a little bit more academic for the academic version.

All right.Like I said, this impacts the scores. Because the texts are more challenging for academic IELTS, if you get 39 correct, you get a 9.0. For general, if you get 39 answers correct, it's only an 8.5. So you need to get more answers correct if you do general, because it is easier, right?

So there's a bit of a different scoring system, which is important to keep in mind as well as you're preparing for the exam. But in most cases, if you prepare for academic and then you take general, you can do really well on general.

It doesn't hurt you to prepare for academic reading. In fact, it probably only benefits you because the academic reading is more challenging.

It makes the general reading test easier to do. They're testing the same skills, the same ability to find synonyms.

Very similar language will be used, but just slightly more complex context will be used for academic reading. So don't worry if you're taking a course and a lot of the readings are for the academic version.

You can still study them and do well in the general version. Now if you're taking the academic test, you probably don't want to spend a lot of time on the general reading practice examples, because they are probably too easy for you.

You need to be able to have some experience doing academic texts. All right, let's look a little bit more at the structure.

So as I said, general or academic, the structure is the exact same. So it's important to be familiar with the structure before you take the test, because even if you have a good level of reading, you might not do so well on the test if you're not prepared for the kind of structure that IELTS has in particular.

So let's take a closer look. Does anyone know in the chat maybe how many questions there are in IELTS reading?

How long you have? How many minutes?

So Natalia says 40 questions, Anna says 40 questions as well. Exactly right, yeah.

Does anyone know? Alena says 60 minutes.

Natalia, Alena, exactly right. You have 60 minutes and 40 questions.

So what this means is basically you have 1.5 minutes per question. That's not a lot of time to read a question and then also read a whole text and then find the right answer within the text.

So because of the fact that IELTS is not testing your knowledge of the overall text, they're just testing your knowledge of certain parts of the text. And because you only have 1.5 minutes for each question, this has a really big impact on how you take the exam.

And we'll talk about these strategies later, but this is a really important thing to keep in mind.you only have 1.5 minutes for each question. Obviously, for more difficult questions, maybe you spend two minutes.

Easier questions, only one minute, but you get the idea. There are 14 possible question types.

So there are a few that are more common than others, but there are a variety that you need to be familiar with. And in all of the reading tests, regardless of the format, you have three passages, okay?

Three texts that you have to read or that you have to use to answer the questions. For each of these passages, 12 to 14 questions, you'll have to answer, and they become more difficult as they go on.

So we'll talk later about this number 15, 20, 25. Basically, it's just about how you use your time.

Because the passages are more difficult in the end of the test, you might spend more time on the last passage than you do on the first passage. So this is a key thing about the structure that will impact our strategies.

These are the question types, if you're curious. You know, it's useful to know about these and to get practice with all of them.

But just from looking at, you know, from my experience teaching IELTS for many years, and then also from looking at some research that's been done on the different question types, the most common ones by far are these multiple choice questions. One of the most common ones.

True, false, not given. Identifying this information is really common as well.

And then also these sentence completion tasks. All of these completion tasks are kind of the same kind.

They're all probably the most common types of questions. One where you have to choose a title for the text.

This is probably the least common in my experience, or one of the least common ones, right? If it is on your test, maybe it's just one question in the whole test.

All right, but multiple choice, true, false, not given, all of these are really, and sentence completion, these are all really common question types. But there will be a variety of question types on your test, right?

Even if one is more common than the others, you'll have to answer a number of different question types. So this one probably looks familiar to you if you did the homework, not the homework, but the task before our webinar.

What kind of question type is this? What do you have to do in this kind of section in IELTS reading?

Maybe you can tell me in the chat, what is the goal for this task?A lot of you will probably be thinking, wait, why are you asking me this question? It's written right here.

Do the statements agree with the writer? Everyone can see this.

Why is Alex asking us this? Well, partly because a lot of people, a big problem they have when they're doing the reading test is that they don't read the instructions, actually, and maybe they misread the instructions and all of their answers are incorrect.

So if it's a section about yes, not given, and you do all of these wrong, maybe you write instead of yes, you write true, or you write false instead of no. All of your answers are going to be incorrect when you write that because it's not asking you about true, false, or not given.

It's asking you about yes, no, or not given. And it's not asking you if something is in the text.

It's asking you, does this information agree with the views of the writer? A really important piece of advice for IELTS reading is always to read the instructions, and especially when it tells you how many words you can write.

Because if you write the right answer, but maybe you write three words instead of two, when you can only write two, you'll get it incorrect. You'll receive an incorrect score for that question.

Always read the instructions. Now, thinking about skills, this is also testing specific skills.

If I show you, for example, some phrases from the questions, and then show you the parts of the text where you can find the answers to the questions, maybe you can tell me which of these phrases below goes with this phrase, ability to make moral decisions. Which of these phrases is most similar to this phrase?

And you can just type this in the chat if you want. Any ideas?

Nadeem says, yeah. The first one Natalia says, exactly, right?

Maybe, you know, maybe you're not familiar with this phrase, the moral high ground. This is a strange collocation to stick to a high ground.

It's not something that you hear a lot. It's not something that you hear a lot.

It's not something that you hear a lot.You have here the word moral. So we know, OK, maybe there's some similarity there.

An ability to do something. Well, if you stick to something, you're doing it, right?

So maybe it's not the opposite of this phrase. I don't see any words that are direct antonyms or opposites for the words in this phrase.

So no is probably not a good answer choice. If I see this phrase, yes is probably the best one, right?

It is similar to making decisions in reality. The moral high ground is when you have the kind of, you have an advantage over the other person because you make a moral decision, whereas they don't make a moral decision.

They make maybe a financial decision, whatever. So if you're sticking to the moral high ground, you are making moral decisions.

So the answer for this one should have been yes. But we only have part of the question.

You can see here in the original question for this reading, we had here ability to make moral decisions. And then there's also another part, prevent us from promoting the interests of our communities.

So there are more than just one phrase in this question. And you can see for this one, prevent us from promoting the interests of the communities.

Which phrase that's underlined is most similar maybe? Or can tell us most about this answer?

I see from Aliona says the third one. Nazim, same thing.

Yeah, exactly right. This is very similar to that phrase.

They even have the word our communities. So Ailts has done you a favor by just repeating a phrase for you.

Now, is this similar to what's written here? Or is it different from what's written there?

Does it seem like this agrees with the rest of the question? Does it seem like this agrees with the writer that we can become prevented?

Or does it seem like it's very different from what the writer is saying? Because if you promote the interests, you discriminate in favor of these interests, right?

Is there anything in the text about preventing us from promoting the interests? Does anyone see a word similar to prevent in the text?I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know.

Maybe we don't have enough information. What do you think?

Let's look at the next one instead. Silicon police would need to exist in large numbers.

So we do have Silicon police in the text. It's pretty easy to find it in the text.

But does the text say anything about the fact that they would need to exist in large numbers? We're kind of just looking at the task from the homework.

Nadezhda says no. Marina says no.

No information. Now, I didn't underline this phrase, but notice here, they might be so good at doing it that we won't even notice them.

We won't even notice them means that there aren't very many, but still, there's nothing in here that tells us about the numbers. Maybe there are a lot of them, but we just don't notice them.

There's nothing in here about numbers in particular. So if you said not given, you're exactly right.

All right. So yeah, the first one does agree with the writer, but this one, we don't have enough information.

So we don't have any synonyms for this phrase in large number or antonyms. So we can't choose that one.

And then this is from the last question from your task before, where it asks us, many people are comfortable with the prospect of their independence being restricted by machines. And the phrase that I underlined here to connect to this phrase was few of us are likely to welcome such a future.

Does that seem like it's agreeing or disagreeing with this sentence here? Oh, yes.

And Anna, this is IELTS, not TOEFL. I guess that's what you're asking.

Yeah. What does everyone think?

Is this agreeing that we are comfortable with the idea, the future prospect, the future idea of losing freedom, or that we are not comfortable?Natalia says, disagree. Someone says, false.

Yeah, exactly. So was it Aljona said, yeah, few of us, not many.

This is a really good example of how IELTS often tries to test your knowledge of yes, not given. They'll give you a word in the question, like many, and then in the text, it will be the antonym, like few.

So here we know it's not not given. It is given, but it's the opposite of what's written in the question.

If we're likely, if we're not likely to welcome such a future, we're uncomfortable with this future. So you can see here, even without reading the whole text, even without reading the other paragraphs in the text, I'm able to answer these questions for IELTS reading.

And this is important because given the time limit that we talked about, you only have 1.5 minutes per question. You don't want to spend a long time reading the overall text.

You probably don't want to spend more than a minute or two looking at the overall text because all of the answers you need, you can find by starting with the questions and then going to the text. IELTS is a test not of your overall comprehension skills for reading, although comprehension skills will help you, of course.

But IELTS isn't asking you to show those when it's asking you these questions. It's not asking you to make inferences, which is when we kind of draw connections between things that aren't in the text.

Everything that IELTS reading asks you about is in the text. So when you're doing IELTS, remember to remind yourself sometimes this is not a test of ideas.

It's a test of language. It's above all a test of how well you can use language.

The complexity of ideas, the complexity of your reading skills are not as important as language skills. So why this is important?

Well, you don't have to, like I said, try to read the full text first. And we'll talk about that later.

You just have to focus on the language. Obviously, the more language you have, the more ideas you have.

So it is important to improve your language because it gives you more ideas. But you don't have to think too much during the reading test.

If you are thinking too much, it might be a problem if you're not thinking about language. If you're thinking about ideas, you might be doing the wrong thing in the reading test.

So that's an important thing to keep in mind for IELTS reading, also for IELTS listening. It's good to think of these as synonym games, paraphrase games.

And this will help impact how we prepare for IELTS reading. Before we do that, I saw some people were raising hands.I think it was Amina, or if you have any questions, you can write them in the chat, of course.

So Marina was asking, read not for gist, but for scanning. Yeah, Marina, both of them actually are important, but the questions, the answers, you'll usually find by scanning, but we'll talk about how reading for gist can also help you find where to scan.

If nobody has any questions for now, we'll look then at these different strategies for doing IELTS. So because, like I said, you only have 40 minutes, I'm sorry, 60 minutes to answer 40 questions, you don't have a lot of time to read the full text, and none of these questions ask you about the overall meaning of the text.

They only ask you about specific language from the text. So one thing to do is to go straight to the questions when you read.

If you do look at the text, maybe you just skim the text. Skimming is when you just look on the surface of the text.

So you're not reading all of the words, you're not even reading any words, you're just looking at things like the organization. Are there, how many paragraphs are there?

Are there letters in front of the paragraphs? That usually means that you'll have to do a matching activity.

Do you see a lot of maybe names in one text? Capital letters are easy to find.

Letters where there's a big letter like A instead of A, like that. If you see some letters with A and maybe there's a name like Archer, then you know, okay, I might have to come back to this text when they ask me about somebody who has the name Archer.

Or maybe you see the word Vladivostok or Kazan, then you know that when you see a question about Vladivostok or Kazan, you'll be able to go back to that question. Or St. Petersburg, sorry, I forgot there's a St. Petersburg attendant in here as well.

So yeah, before you start looking at the questions, you might just look really quickly at the text surface, but don't swim in the text. Don't try to go any deeper than the surface, okay?

Stay on the surface and maybe only a minute is needed for this kind of thing. This skimming.

Now, what do you do after you go to the questions? Well, this is what we did a little bit earlier, but even before you start thinking about the keywords, you can also try to predict what will be in the question gap.

If it's a gap, for example, it's especially useful. So maybe, you know, there's something like this company was known for pushing the, and then you can only write one word.

What does everyone think? What kind of word will be?in this gap here, a noun, a verb, an adjective.

So a lot of people saying noun, Alena is even guessing a word, limits. Yeah, everyone's saying noun, great job.

Yeah, so not just a noun, but also I think Alena said limits because it does look like a plural noun. If you know this collocation, maybe pushing the limits or maybe you know the phrase pushing the boundaries, which is basically the same thing as pushing the limits.

But either way, we see the word the, and we can only write one word. So we know we're probably gonna have a noun and it could be plural because we know the collocation, push the limits from previous experience.

If you're someone who saw this collocation, this word combination, if you know the idiom pushing the boundaries, then this idea might come to your mind when you're looking at the questions. So that's a really important thing to do even before you go to the text.

Think about the kinds of words that will be in the text. I'm sorry, in the questions based on the sentence.

He was born on a, here I know, it's going to be some kind of day of the week, right? It can't be January because we don't use a before January.

And we say he was born in January. So your knowledge of these words before the gaps will really help you.

And that's why I said in the previous session, improving your overall knowledge of English will always help you in these exams. So that's a really good strategy when you're doing gapful questions.

Also for maybe the ones where you have to match information to paragraphs. If you saw that there were a lot of names in one paragraph, and one of the options is which paragraph is about different views from different scientists, then you'll know, okay, this is obviously the paragraph with all the names, but then you have to go and check, of course.

Predicting though is a very useful tool. And yeah, basically the words before the gap too are really useful.

So another thing that you will need to do in almost any question type, not just gapful where you fill in the gap, but in most question types, you need to find something called keywords. So keywords are a really crucial part of doing well on the IELTS reading test.

We saw some earlier, actually, when we were looking at that reading passage, we saw some phrases that were the keywords in the questions. What are keywords though?

How do we know which words in the questions will help us find the right information in the text? Well, there are, you know, anything can be a keyword, but it's not usually a preposition or an article.

Although as we saw with the example, born on a Monday, that was really helpful to know.the article. A is used with a day of the week, not with a month.

But most often keywords are nouns and verbs that have specific information. So if you're reading a text and they use the word people in the question, it's probably not a very useful keyword because first of all, it's not very specific.

People can be used to talk about many things. And so in the text, you might not be able to find the answer very quickly with people.

People also doesn't have a lot of synonyms. It's just, you know, people, human beings.

What else can we say there? If the passage is about computers, obviously the word computer is not going to be a very useful keyword.

It's not very different from all the other words in the text. So it doesn't help you eliminate the other parts of the text.

It doesn't help you zoom in on the most important part. So you want to look for specific information.

Common specific words don't have any synonyms. If it's a name like archer, for example, there's not a synonym for archer or maybe a name like the wooly mammoth, a type of animal.

There aren't really any synonyms for wooly mammoth. So these words are very specific, but they might not have synonyms.

But more important in IELTS are words that do have synonyms. So you can see here this last one, words that can generate a lot of synonyms or can be paraphrased.

This is probably the most important skill that will help you do well in the reading test. In many ways, because English has so many words, because English is like, you know, the offspring of two different languages almost, or has a lot of different loan words as well.

English has a great, you know, a very wide vocabulary. And there are many synonyms in the in the English language.

And so one way to test how well someone uses the language is to test how many synonyms they know. And that's one thing that IELTS reading is definitely trying to do.

So a really common thing will be like the word detrimental, which might be in the question. And you have to find in the text, a sentence with the word negative.

Or it might be a phrase like at fault. And you have to find in the text, something like was to blame.

This is one of the most common things that IELTS reading questions will ask you to do. Sometimes the paraphrases, especially in the last passage in a reading test, can be quite difficult.

They can be quite different from the original phrase. But there's still some kind of connection.

There's a lexical connection. You don't always have to think about it in terms of the ideas.

You just have to think about it in terms of the language. And then with true, false, not given questions, as we talked about earlier, this is a really common question type.

And this qualifying information can be really important.focus on if it's a true false not given or yes no not given. I think Aljona or someone said earlier that they said few was the opposite of the word many.

Well this qualifying word few is really useful to focus on if it's in the question or the word many was in the question and few was in the text but these are really common in true false not given. IELTS likes to test how well you can understand antonyms of modifying or qualifying words.

All right so this is really important before you even look at the text maybe you just skim the text but then before you look more deeply you look at the questions and you try to find these keywords then you can go to the text and when you're looking at the text try not to stand in one place for too long. What you need to do is with your eyes you're trying to scan the text and if you've used a scanner before to scan documents you know that scanners can move pretty quickly.

You don't have to move that quickly but you're looking for something specific you're not just trying to read for an extended period of time. So after you find these keywords you're looking for those synonyms that we talked about but again the key thing is here not too deeply.

If you're standing still you should skip the question go to another question because you need to move on and if you're thinking too much you're probably overthinking it so you should also probably stop thinking and try and find something that is more similar to the word you're looking for. And finally right once you find a synonym you can be confident that you have the right answer when you have two synonyms at least.

Sae-Jean is asking are the cameras off? Yes I can't see any of your cameras so if you're making faces I don't see them or raising your hand I don't see that either.

But yeah that's the key thing here right once you find a synonym then you know okay this is the right context for the answer. Maybe it's not the right answer IELTS will try to trick you sometimes by giving you one synonym and then the answer will be different than in the question.

But once you find two synonyms this is when you should be thinking okay I am very confident now that I'm in the right part of the test. All right so your metal detector should be beeping very loudly because you're close to the right place.

So once you find the what you think is the right answer this is when you should still trust yourself right don't doubt yourself too much with these things but you should try to verify okay this famous phrase right trust but verify when you when you do this in IELTS you just want to make sure that your answer is correct.is 100% correct, and the easiest way to do that is just to make sure first of all that you have two synonyms, or one synonym at least, but also try to make sure that there are no words that obviously contradict or disqualify your answer. So a typical example would be, instead of many, the text will have the word few.

Everything else will be similar to the question in the text, but a keyword like many will be few instead, which will make the answer different from what you expected. So just be careful with IELTS reading, because as I tell some of my students, the speaking test, the writing test, they're not trying to trick you.

The listening test is trying to trick you, and the reading test is also trying to trick you. They're trying to kill you in a way, the IELTS reading test.

They're sometimes giving you information that seems correct for the question, but in reality once you look a little bit more closely, you can see it's obviously not correct, and it will always be quite clear that it's not correct because of some word that makes it contradicted. So again, the purpose here though is not to make you doubt too much.

You don't want to spend too long on one question. It's better just to move on to another question if you're doubtful, if you're too doubtful.

Yeah, and also if you're doing a gap fill, make sure that the word actually fits in the sentence because maybe you chose an adjective and you didn't look at the actual context of the question, and the sentence only allows a noun when you read it more closely. So just make sure that it actually can work grammatically and lexically in the question sentence, okay?

And yeah, that's pretty much the main way to do the IELTS reading test, and you'll find, you'll be surprised at how similar a lot of the questions are in terms of the strategy that you use. So what I want to do is practice using this strategy a little bit.

You can see we all have, you can all see here we have a set of questions from the same text you read for the pre-task assignment, and you can see there are some questions from 24 to 26. I just want everyone right now to spend about 30 seconds to one minute and try to find keywords in these questions, okay?

Once you find the keywords, you can write them in the chat, all right? Try to find two keywords for each sentence, okay?

Again, we'll take about one to two minutes for this.you you All right, uh, had about one minute so far. Any ideas maybe for number 24 for key words in this sentence?

DBC. Natalia, what what does that refer to?

Any other ideas, uh? I was saying earlier, the words before the gap are usually very useful when you have a gap fill exercise.

Oh, Natalia already found the answers. That's what it was, uh, allocated.

Yes, that's a really good word to choose because allocated is one of those words. You can just see when you when you see such a word, your IELTS radar should be beeping because this is exactly the kind of word that IELTS likes to test your knowledge of to find out what your test score is.

Um, what about any other words in this sentence? Are there any others that maybe are key words are?

Yes, Kausar, that's a really good, uh, thing as well because we know it has to be plural. If it's R, it can't be professional authority, can't be reduced illness.

Those aren't plural words. So we are able to eliminate false friends, the way, yes, Dilnoza, I know it seems like a simple word.

But the way is very good because the way has a lot of synonyms in English, and it can be paraphrased. Most importantly, it can be paraphrased in different ways.

Uh, so IELTS will will definitely try and do that limited role on a.very good. Limited role is another thing that can be paraphrased quite flexibly.

So, we already have a few really good keywords. What about for the next sentence with 25?

However such a change. This sentence what would you select as the keywords here?

Certain. Yeah.

Again, the words before the gap, always very useful. Do you think this will be a singular word or a plural word if it comes after uncertain without any article?

Nadezhda says plural. Yeah.

We can't say in certain professional authority. Sounds a bit strange anyway.

So, yeah. Most likely certain.

Most likely. Any other keywords in here?

Maybe after the gap as well. The words after the gap like we saw earlier with allocated can be very useful.

There. Yeah.

So, we know. Something that can have things, can possess things.

Level. Yeah.

How about their current level? Let's combine this.

This phrase, this whole chunk might be paraphrased. A lot of different ways to say not having in English, right?

Like lacking or being dispossessed of something, right? So, this could be a useful one as well.

What about in 26? We have basically now we just have another sentence afterwards.

You don't really have to look at this sentence too closely, but if you're struggling to find where number 26 is, this kind of final sentence might help you to limit where you're looking in the text because these questions will be in the same order as the text very often. So, if you know where this sentence is that has a lot of keywords with it is important that AI goals blah, then you know, okay, the answer will be somewhere before this or maybe just after it, but not very far from it.

All right. Well, we have a lot of different keywords and you all did a brilliant job because those are exactly the words that I had in mind and those are exactly the words that will help you to find the answers.

So, you can see here we have currently as one of the keywords. Does anyone see in this passage a synonym for currently?

Or maybe you see a synonym for has a limited role. We'll start with either of those two.

Just type in the chat if you see one.And if you're translating every word, if you're reading every word, that's not the, you know, your brain shouldn't be doing that. Your eyes should be moving smoothly from word to word without stopping to think about the meaning of every word.

So yeah, I see already, very good. Already here.

I could rewrite the sentence with the word are currently here, right? That would, you know, the meaning wouldn't change.

That would have the same meaning. So that's a good synonym or paraphrase.

A limited role in something. Is there anything in here about a limited role?

Or a role in doing something? Some input.

Yeah. If you have some input in something, in a process, then you have a role in the process.

Maybe in a company, somebody has input in the decision-making process. They can contribute.

They can play a role in the final decision. And the word way here is just paraphrased as how.

Are allocated, paraphrased as are used. So we know we need a plural noun.

Here we go. This is the answer right here.

You can see all of the clues that we need are in the questions. And they're not clues that make us think too much about the meaning or hidden connections.

They're clues about the language, which is on the surface of the text, right? Same thing here with certain people.

I think someone was saying earlier certain was a keyword. And it definitely is here, right?

Because when we're talking about something, a certain example, we could think about the word some, for example, or just think about examples in general, e.g. meaning examples. So we have some examples down here.

Does anyone see a synonym for not having in the text? Close to some humans or senior doctors.

Depriving Natalia says. Really good, Natalia.

That's exactly right. If you are deprived of something, you don't have it.

Your current level of something is the level that you presently have. Sometimes we use the word enjoy to mean have when we're talking about a level, if you enjoy a level of comfort in life.

That's the level of comfort that you have. And it's usually a good level if you enjoy it, right?

So now we have the answers for this one as well. Now here we need, you know, the thing is senior doctors.

So when we go back to the questions, we have to be careful because in this question type, we don't just write down senior doctors. We have to write down a paraphrase of senior doctors.which is professional authority.

So that's basically how you do the reading test. You never have to, you know, change the form of a word from the text.

All of the answers you need when you have to write a full word, all the answers you need will either be given to you, like in this one here, medical practitioners produce illness, or they'll be in the text, and you just have to write letter for letter, word for word, what's in the text. So that's a really good thing about IELTS reading, is that you shouldn't make any spelling mistakes because all the answers you need when you have to write the words are written for you in the text.

And as we just saw, all of the answers you need have synonyms in the questions. So it really is a kind of synonym game.

There are some questions where you have to do a little bit more paraphrasing than other questions. You have to read a little bit more than other questions, but the majority of them are just testing your language skills.

All right. So that's one really important tip to remember when doing IELTS.

Other tips, if you're doing the, or when you're doing the test, remember that you have more difficult texts as you go on, and you don't have to start with the first text. You can start with the final text, for example, and you can spend 25 minutes on the final text and only 15 minutes on the second text and maybe just 10 minutes on the first text.

Or maybe you spend even less time on them, and then you have more time to check at the end. So that's an important thing.

You can start at the end and you can use your time however you want, right? You aren't timed for each passage.

You're timed for the overall reading test. I mentioned this already.

Also, the questions that have the same type. So if you're doing matching questions or multiple choice questions, very often they're in the same order as the text.

But that's not always true. When you have to match a statement to a paragraph, then you have to look at totally different paragraphs.

But most of the questions where they're not asking you to match paragraphs to statements are typically in the same place in the text. The answers for these questions, I should say.

For paragraph matching question types, which are not in the same order, their answers are not in the same order as the text. For these, you can often just read the first paragraph.

I'm sorry, the first sentence of a paragraph and the last sentence of a paragraph. And that usually gives you the most important information about the paragraph.

So, you know, whether you need to look more closely within that paragraph. And also, don't be afraid if you're spending a lot of time on one answer.

Don't be afraid to skip it. You can always come back to it.after you've answered the other questions, and sometimes in the process of answering a later question, you see the answer for a previous question, and then you can come back to it.

Or maybe you're just, your brain is not working for a second. You can't think of a synonym in the same way that your brain fails you when you try to think of the name of a famous actor, right?

This happens to us all. You just need to give it time to reset.

And sometimes going to the next answer, the next question can help you to have that time to reset. On the same, by that same token, in the same way, never leave an answer choice blank.

So if you skip an answer, always come back and write something down because in IELTS, you don't receive negative points. I think some of you are, some of you said you're going to take the SAT.

In the SAT, you can get negative points for wrong answers, which is very sad. I remember being very nervous about that.

In IELTS though, there are no negative points for wrong answers, only positive points for correct answers. So if you have a multiple choice answer type, A, B, C or D, you have a 25% chance of getting it correct.

So you're shooting yourself in the foot, as we say, you're doing yourself a disservice by not answering the question. It's good strategy to answer every question.

And also, you know, when you're doing the reading test practice, it's good to do individual sections so that you can focus on them and revisit them. It can be quite exhausting to do a full test, but you do need to practice doing some full tests before your exam, if only because you need to become familiar with how much energy it requires.

40 minutes, I'm sorry, 40 questions over 60 minutes is pretty intensive reading. So you need to become used to that level of intensity, that level of energy that's required.

A good teacher or a good course, whatever, will help provide this exam-like conditions or environment for you to practice in. And also, a final thing is to just keep a word list of different synonym pairs from the reading exercises you've done.

So maybe you saw, for example, not having, and you write something like depriving as a word pair. You can just write a simple list of synonyms like this.

You don't have to make it too complex. Maybe you see something like detrimental, right?

And you wanna remember this word and just write it with negative. It helps you keep these synonyms together in your mind.

If you can think in terms of synonyms, you can already think in terms of IELTS reading. So that's always a good strategy as well.

All right, yeah, and then there's just a final word here. Obviously, all of these tips are really good when you're preparing for an exam, but remember, you're not just preparing for the test.

You're also trying to show your level of English.So anything you can do to improve your overall reading level will help you in the reading test. Even though you don't have to use the kinds of skills we use when we're just reading for pleasure, if you're reading for pleasure as a habit, you'll be able to use your other skills more comfortably.

The skills where you have to find synonyms, find keywords, because you learn them passively when you're reading for pleasure. And iron strengthens iron, right?

The extensive reading skills we learn when we're reading for pleasure or just browsing the internet, reading something for work, these same skills help us when we're trying to do reading that's required in tests. The more intensive reading, scanning for synonyms, looking for words that fit in the gap.

So a final word here is just keep reading. If I can put it into two words and make sure that as you're preparing for the exam, you're not just doing IELTS reading, but doing other reading as well, because that'll help you in the end to improve your overall level, which is what's being tested.

All right. I think that's it for me, and I'll be happy to answer any questions all of you have.

If you don't have any questions, thank you all very much for coming. I see a lot of answers in the chat already.

So, yeah, thank you. Some of them have been answered in the Q&A about the sheet of paper when doing computer-based.

That's right. With computer-based, by the way, you don't have extra 10 minutes at the end to transfer your answers.

So if you're writing them on a sheet of paper, be careful that you have enough time to write them on the computer, right? With the paper-based, they give you 10 extra minutes to transfer your answers to your answer sheet, but not with the computer-based.

Are there any other questions? Or, Julia, did you want to say something maybe about microphone?

But there is a question about reading topics. Ah, yes.

Yes. Sorry.

Okay. So the most recent reading topics.

Yeah, I mean, there's no list like that, Alena, but there is a list of common topics in IELTS reading. So IELTS reading covers certain topics like, you know, education is a common one.

Health is a common one. Technology.

So if you're reading a lot within these topics, it can help you become more familiar with these overall topics. But another important thing, Alena, is that IELTS never tests you on language which is topic specific.

So if you're reading about artificial intelligence, they're not going to test whether you know a synonym of nanotechnology or bit processing or something or semiconductor chips. They're only asking you about words which an advanced user of English will know, a general user of English.

You don't have to be a specialist in the topic to do it.well on IELTS. So yeah, seeing a lot of thank you.

So yeah, thank you all for coming, of course. It's been really a pleasure to talk about this.

And are there any other questions, maybe, about the reading test in particular? Or maybe you have a question from earlier that I can answer while I'm here?

No? If you do have other questions, yeah, you can always put them in the Telegram channel, and someone can answer them there.

Or they might ask another teacher, including me, to answer them. So yeah, feel free to post your, are there any tips with sentence completion?

Oh yeah, just one final question here. Yes, Saida Jan, with sentence completion, often the sentences, so OK, you mean with filling in the gaps?

Yeah, often, Saida Jan, you can guess the word form of the missing word. Or if you have a language, a knowledge of collocations, which maybe you learned from a course or from our Telegram channel, from just your reading, you might be able to guess the word, like someone earlier guessed, push the limits.

So building your knowledge of collocations, of word partnerships, is really useful. And also just trying to guess what kinds of words are missing from the gap.

And then making sure to check them after you find the right word. Make sure it fits in the sentence.

Yeah, I hope that helps. Thank you, Alex.

Yeah, thank you all for coming. Did you want to say anything?

Yeah, just very briefly. Спасибо всем за сегодняшний вечер.

Было очень интенсивно. В следующий раз Алекса мы увидим в среду.

А завтра мы ждем Сэма. И у нас будет вебинар по поводу спикинга.

Всем большое спасибо. До встречи.

Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Bye. Bye.

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