[0:00]We researched the most popular IELTS reading tips and tricks, so you don't have to. We're going to tell you exactly what IDP and the British Council have to say about each of these tips and whether they lower your score or improve your score. So, without further ado, let's jump in. Tip number one. One strategy or 11 strategies. So, when you open the book and you're looking at the different questions, should you have 11 strategies? Or one strategy for each question? I think one strategy just to keep it simple. Um, maybe 11 different strategies, even if they're slightly different, so that you can have a different unique approach. According to what the question is, and uh, you can adjust and play along, depending on what you're being asked. Let's see who's right and who's wrong, and we'll help everyone watching at home. So, let's look at each of the strategies in a little bit more detail, and we'll find out what's like IDP and the British Council have to say. So, if you type into YouTube IELTS reading tips and tricks, the first video that comes up. Their first tip is the most important one. And their first tip says, understand the 11 different question types. So, it doesn't say which strategy to use, but it says that it's important to understand the different question types, and this is totally true. So, there's many, many different question types, and often students like strong students like yourself, who are very, very good at English, they get a band nine in speaking. Sometimes they can go and do the real reading test and they can mess it up, because they're like, I've never seen what is true, false, not given, what is matching headings? Normally people are used to like multiple choice or comprehension. These are completely new to them, so you should definitely familiarize yourself with the different types of questions. On the other end of the spectrum, there's this video with millions of views. And what it says is, "I'd first read the question, and then I start quickly reading the text, not paying attention to any detail, and when I feel okay, the answer is somehow here, I slow down, I carefully read the sentence, I read the second question, I resume reading the text, and this strategy allows me to finish my reading section much more quickly." And this is probably the more common advice that you'll see on YouTube. And especially on TikTok and Instagram and things like that, normally what you'll see is a video saying, "Use this one killer strategy." And it will magically answer all of the questions. Which one is actually true? And if we summarize that strategy, so it was quite, quite vague what they said, basically, most of these one strategies is skim, so read quickly, then scan for the general location, find generally where it is, and then read that area carefully and choose the correct answer. Okay. Sounds very simple, and normally I like simple things, but is it actually correct? Does it actually help you find the correct answer? Okay, so what we're going to do is you both have the same matching headings question. This is from uh, Cambridge English, it's a PDF, it's free on their website. I've included a link to it in the description, if you guys want to play along. So, you both have the same question, and guys at home, if you want it, just download it. So, I've given you this strategy, which is the one strategy that you can use for any question, and I've given you matching heading strategy. Going to try you first. See how effective it is. So, what I want you to do is go to section A. So, down below, Section A, and I want you just to skim it very, very quickly. All right, so I'm going to give you 10 seconds to skim it.
[3:42]Now what I want you to do is I want you to scan that to find information that will lead to the correct answer. And I'm going to give you 20 seconds to do that.
[4:01]Now, I want you to read carefully and find the correct answer. Have a look and you can look at the question, you can look, you can read carefully. Go ahead. Or are you completely lost? I'm completely lost. Oh, okay.
[4:17]So, does this work, this strategy that you just used? No. Not at all. So, let's do all together. We'll do, we'll do the exact same question, but we'll use a specific strategy, designed for this question. Okay? So, what I want you to do is don't look at the list of headings, okay? Just look at section A. All I want you to do is read Section A and imagine you were writing a title for that paragraph. So, a title that just summarizes what that paragraph means. Think about if you were writing a newspaper article just about that paragraph, what would the title say? I want you to do it separately, I'll give you one minute to do that. Should we write it down or? Write it down. Okay. Yeah, but don't say what it is, just write it down separately. Okay.
[5:19]Done? Mm-hm. Okay, can you read yours? Yeah. How government's involvement can damage environmental management. So, how the government's impact or involvement in in the environment, something like that. Yeah. And yours? Similar? Uh, impact but positive. So, how can a government contribute positively to environmentalism? Okay. Mm-hm. So, if we look at the two sentences, the commonalities are government and environment. All right, so it's govern, government is doing something on the environment. Now what I would like you to do is go back to the list of headings. So, up to the list of headings, and I want you just to look at them and identify any that match your title, any that match your heading.
[6:16]Go up the page, until it says key to sample task. What did you get? Five. What did you get? Five. Was that difficult? No, it was so nice. Was it difficult the first time? Yes, very difficult. Interesting. See, so it makes it nearly impossible to get the wrong answer. So, the strategy has been designed for that question. So, there's 11 different types of question and what I've done is design a system for each question, which dramatically increases the chance that you will get the score, um, or get the the correct answer. It also saved a lot of time because it's very quick. Exactly. Compared to the first time. Exactly. I gave you one minute, you probably wouldn't even need one minute. You could have read through that quite quickly and just like, governments impact on environment, like government's involvement in environment, and then if you look, it's like magic. There's not much magic in the IELTS test, and I don't believe in magic tricks, but that's as close to a magic trick as as you're going to get. If you'd like that strategy for matching headings and many, many other strategies. I put every single strategy that we have for all different types of questions into this PDF. It covers everything, plus lots of tips, all the advice that you need. It's free for you. It's normally we charge a huge amount for this document, but it's free for you today. Just go to the description or the pin comment and you can download it today for free. So, if we have a look at what the British Council say about this, they don't talk about having separate strategies, but if you look at the British Council website, on there you'll find teaching plans made for teachers, all created by very, very experienced British Council teachers. And the interesting thing about this is they have separate lesson plans for each different type of question. And that's exactly the way we taught at the British Council. We would have a lesson for matching headings questions, and a lesson for true, false, not given, and a lesson for comprehension questions because it's testing different skills and requires a different strategy. And it actually states on the British Council website is that each question is testing different reading sub skill. So, the skill that that particular question was testing was can you look at a paragraph and understand the general main idea of it? Like when you're reading a newspaper, you most people don't read every word, they just look through it, okay, that paragraph means that, that paragraph means that, quite quickly. That's what it's testing. And this is backed up by the Cambridge website and Pauline Cullen, a very famous and well respected IELTS teacher and author. And she says every question has one clear purpose to force you to use specific reading skills. In other words, each question is forcing you to do different things, so you need a different strategy for each type of question. So, again, am I attacking teachers? No, I'm not attacking anybody who teaches this, all right? If you are one of the teachers who teaches this strategy, think about why you're doing it. Students love simple strategies that that cut down on time. This is why you'll find it on things like TikTok and Instagram, because people just want, you know, quick fixes. Try to balance what your students want and what they need. What they want is to make everything as simple as possible, and I a big believer in making things as simple as possible, but only as possible. It's impossible to make these as simple as this. You need to be a little bit more complicated. But if you find a strategy anywhere in the internet, always test it in the classroom with students. Just like I did. So, that was a very quick demonstration of you could get this one strategy, test it with your students, and they're going to be completely lost, and then use a different one, and they find the answers pretty easily. Which one wins, you know, base it on real student results that you're with students in the classroom. But maybe I just got lucky and it only works for matching headings. What about a more difficult question, like true, false, not given? Let's see if it actually works there. So, that brings us on to the second tip for reading. We're going to test true, false, not given questions versus this. Really understanding the question, fully understanding it, or using tricks. Some students and some teachers just want tricks. Some of them work, some of them don't. Other teachers, other students want to fully understand the question, so they're completely confident on test day. So, which one would you choose? I would say understand. Okay, why? It's a more, more bulletproof approach. If you understand it, it's harder for you to go wrong than if you blindly follow a trick and it takes you down the wrong road. What about you? I really like the way you thought us um, a trick for the last question. Um, I think if you can give us something similar for the true or false and not given, it would be really nice. Okay, so let's see which approach is actually correct. So, if we go to one of the most popular YouTube videos on true, false, not given. Her approach is to help students understand the difference between true, false, and not given. So, what she says in the video is, "If it is true, the statement agrees with the information, if it is false, the statement contradicts the information, and if it is not given, there is no information on this." This video was posted nearly a decade ago, and IELTS is not changed since. But since that, there's been lots and lots and lots of videos talking about this is the latest hack, this is the latest trick. But maybe we got the answer nearly 10 years ago in this video. And you'll also find the exact same information on the IDP website. So, if you have a look at the IDP website, it says exactly the same thing. So, if the most popular video on YouTube is stating something very, very clearly, and IDP you're stating it so clearly, why is there so much confusion? True, false, not given is probably the question that we get the most emails about, just saying like, I have no idea, I really fear this question. It messes up a lot of people because they get very stressed out. And they're like, if I get one of these questions, I'm going to fail, and that can actually cause failure in itself. If you put into the search bar, IELTS reading true, false, not given tips and tricks. The titles of the videos that come up, if you have a look, what do you see? You see magic way, magic tricks, true tips, secret tips. This is why there's so much confusion, because there's so much information. And I'm not saying any of those videos are right or wrong, but they all contradict each other, and there's so much conflicting information. So, students get even more confused, when really the correct answer is understanding the difference between true, false, and not given. And I'm going to show you very easily how to understand the difference between true, false, not given in a second. But I just want to address something important. I'm not saying that you need to just focus on one strategy with us, but what I would recommend is instead of looking at, you know, 30 different YouTube channels or 10 different blogs, find one that you actually trust. Like, so for example, we've mentioned Pauline Cullen, a very, very reputable, reliable source, or IELTS Liz, or IELTS Simon. These are people who really, really know what they're doing, or you could look at our website or our channel. Hopefully you would agree that we know what we're doing, but pick one of us and just focus on that, and that is going to cure this overwhelm problem that many of you have. So, if we have a look at again what it says in this video. Number one, if it is true, the statement agrees with the information, number two, if it is false, the statement contradicts this information, and number three, if it is not given, there's no information on this. When we tell students this, they're like, look at me kind of blank the way you're looking at me right now. And the way that we overcome that is we personalize these statements. So, we get them to create like a little personal fact sheet, and then they create true statements, false statements, and not given statements. This helps people truly understand it. So, we're going to do this with both of you. So, what I would like to you to do is on the piece of paper, I would like you to write name and write your name. Nationality, city of residence, your age, and your profession. Now, based on this, I want you to write a true statement about yourself. A memorable true statement about yourself. If it was me, I would say, Chris is a citizen of Ireland. That is a true statement, or Chris is a teacher. Many people will disagree with that.
[14:50]Okay, what is yours? Isha lives in London. Okay, is that true? Yes. And yours? Priyanka is a teacher. Okay, is that a correct statement? Yes. Okay, what I'm going to do now is we're going to create a not given statement. So, a not given statement is a statement that we just cannot tell. There's no information there that we can verify is this true or false.
[15:19]Okay, my next one is Isha is 25 years old. Why is that false? Because Isha is 23 years old. Mine is Priyanka is 35 years old. Why is that false? Because she is 27. Okay. What I'm going to do now is we're going to create a not given statement. So, a not given statement is a statement that we just cannot tell. There's no information there that we can verify is this true or false.
[15:52]Okay, my next one is Isha lives in West London. So, looking at your fact sheet, could someone look at the fact sheet and then look at that statement and say that's true or false? Did you live in West London? No, it's probably not given. Yeah, there's no information about the location within London. So, you wrote, "Priyanka likes chocolate cake." Can we tell from the information whether you like chocolate cake or not? It's not given. Yeah, not not at all. So, it's either something that's closely related to what is in your fact sheet, so you live in London, but it's not really clear where, or it's just something that is not there at all, like which food you like. On test day, what you can think is if you're confused about true, false, not given, you can just remember that fact sheet and those three statements, and then think about what you're doing when you're looking at the different statements, and that should make it super, duper clear. And anybody at home can make that in five minutes, and that should make it clear to you, and that's the biggest challenge for most people is understanding the difference between true, false, not given, and that little fact sheet technique removes that biggest problem and makes it much easier. After you've done your true, false, not given fact sheet, I would recommend also learning the step-by-step strategy for true, false, not given questions. It will make them even easier. It's in here along with all the other strategies, plus all the tips. We normally only give these to your VIP students, but they're for today, it's free. You can download it by going to the description or the pin comment and download it before we take it away. These strategies are great, but my problem is that I can't finish the test on time. Yep, that brings us to our final tip, which is, skimming and scanning or use a strategy. All right, so a lot of people use time management tips that are all around skimming and scanning, and then other people use strategy to make sure that they get everything done on time. So, we're going to compare both of these and see which one is the winner. So, skimming and scanning, they're skills, they are reading skill. Skimming is reading quickly to understand the general meaning, and scanning is like if you go to the cinema, you don't read every single time. You scan, okay, where's Superman? Okay, what what time, 5:00 p.m. Okay, you didn't read the whole every single movie, you just find a keyword, and that finds the location of where you want to go. Same with reading the phonebook. You don't start with A, you would you would scan to where you're going, skip to where you're going, and then or when we did have phone books, but you might be too young. What's that? What's a phone book? I'm showing my age. But I think this is one of the most misunderstood areas, and a lot of people see tips on YouTube, just like skim and scan, you'll quickly find the correct answer, and that will mean you get everything done on time. Let's see if that is actually true. So, if we look at this very, very popular IELTS tips video with millions of views. Her first tip is, don't read slowly, you should just skim and get the main idea, and then scan and get the detail. And then she also says, don't spend too much time reading the passages. You'll find this again and again and again, just skim, scan, find the correct answer, all very quick, all good, but is this actually the case? So, if we go to the IDP website and look at an article there called, how to skim and scan for keywords in your IELTS test. It states, in order to help you decrease the amount of time it takes to complete the reading section of the IELTS test, you need to practice using skimming and scanning techniques. So, so far, so good. IDP says that these are skills you should be using, but what they're saying is they're just tools. And like any tool, you can use a hammer or a saw, but if you use it incorrectly or use it the wrong way, then you might be in trouble. Like you can't use a hammer to cut a piece of wood, you can't use a saw to hammer in a nail. So, you need to think about them a little bit more strategically. Like, when do I use skimming, and when do I use scanning? So, if again if we go back to Cambridge, the Cambridge website, Pauline Cullen's article, she says every question has one clear purpose to force you to use specific reading skills. So, telling students, don't read slowly, just skim, and don't spend too much time reading the passages is actually poor advice. It ignores the most important skill, which is actually close reading, or some people call this reading for detail. So, not skimming, not scanning, actually finding the correct answer or where the correct answer might be and really reading in detail and taking the time to fully understand that. That's why a lot of students use skimming and scanning, but still get lost, because your job at the end of the day is to find the correct answer, not to just get through things as quickly as possible. So, anything that doesn't focus on helping you find the correct answer, even if it is quick or fast or helps with time management, does doesn't actually help in the long run. Understood. So, if we look at the PDF download, I've sent it to you on your computers. So, you'll see like for this question, it involves first skimming and then scanning. Some questions like this one have more scanning than skimming, and then other questions don't really talk too much about skimming or scanning, they talk more about reading for detail. Like every and sometimes they're in the order of skim then scan, others are scan then skim, and then all in different orders. They're using those tools in different ways. So, different questions are teaching different skills. So, you're using all of these different techniques and skills in different ways. So, what we do is we teach you all the tools, how to use them, and then for each question, in what order to use those tools.
[21:46]So, which one is the winner?
[21:50]Should we just skim and scan and try and do everything as quickly as possible, or should we use strategy? Strategy. Why? Always better to understand something than just uh, try to skim and do it focusing just on time. I agree with her. And the other thing that you might not think about is, okay, skimming and scanning sounds like a shortcut, but what happens if you get lost on a shortcut? It turns into a long cut. So, by trying to do things quickly and use magic tricks and magic hacks, you can get lost in the reading. Like we've seen at the beginning of the video, when we tried that technique with you, you were just completely lost. So, by trying to give people shortcuts, you can often create long cuts. And that's why you should learn each of the strategies for each of the questions and familiarize yourself with those. It might sound like a little bit of extra work, but it is much better than going and doing the test and failing it. You know, some of the students that we work with have failed three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 times. You wouldn't believe the number of times they do it, and a lot of the students that we speak to are using just skim, scan, one easy trick. Whereas if they had have learned it one time, spent a bit of time doing it, they could have got the score that they need first time. And that's what we want for you guys. So, download it, work on it, and then you'll get the score that you need next time. I also felt like uh, skimming and scanning can like make um, you misunderstand the passage. Mm-hm. And then you can make a mistake, honestly. Exactly, because I was, I was realizing when I was doing the first time, I understood it completely wrong, but when I read it the second time, it was different. Mm-hm. And and think what is the your job in during the reading test? Your job is to find the correct answer. Your job is not to get through the reading as quickly as possible. So, anything that doesn't focus on helping you find the correct answer, even if it is quick or fast or helps with time management, doesn't actually help in the long run. Understood. But some of you might be thinking you don't have time to study every single question, or there might be just one particular question that you're having trouble with. If that's you, or you just don't know where to start, I would really recommend this video where we're going to show you how to identify your weakest areas in reading. The question types that you need to focus on first. So, watch that video, then that will shortcut your way to finding out the question types you need to work on, and then you can work on strategy for that type of question. See you then.
