The Difference between Testing and Improving your IELTS Reading Score
📖IELTS READING: The Difference between Testing and Improving your IELTS Reading Score
☝️ The IELTS reading test is designed to test, not improve, your reading. One common mistake that many of my students make is trying to use practice tests to improve their reading skills.
☝️ Doing an IELTS practice test is mainly just going to test your reading skills, just like with listening.
❇️ It does not improve your reading very well. In the long-term, it does. Over years and years it will work but it is a slow way to improve.
❇️ And because IELTS readings are very boring you will probably lose motivation over time.
👍 The other option is to develop your reading using these #4 keys:
✅read a short passage,
✅read it more than once,
✅do different activities when reading,
✅take great notes.
👉The Keys
✔️Key #1: Read a short passage
✅ Don’t use a full practice test! Instead, read a single passage in a reading test or find a more interesting article online in the news or another page you like.
✔️Key #2: Read it more than once
✅ The reason why you should read something short is so that you can read it more than once.
☝️A whole book or a whole reading test is too long!
✅ And the reasons why reading something again and again improve (not tests) your reading is: you review the same words and improve the same skills.
✅ That’s the whole reason why you should read something more than once to improve your reading.
✔️Key #3: Do different activities when reading
☝️In order to improve your reading skills you have to read in different ways.
✅ One example of this is reading for gist or skimming. This means to read quickly for the main idea.
😊 Practice this one skill again and again and again until you get better at it.
✔️Key #4: Take great notes
🤔In my experience, one of the main differences between passive and active learners is the quality of their notes.
☝️Some students don’t take good notes and expect to learn English just from sitting in the classroom. This won’t work.
👍 Other students take pride in keeping beautiful, detailed notes and reviewing them.
🤔 Which kind of student do you want to be?
✅ When it comes to reading, vocabulary is king. And when it comes to vocabulary, the vocabulary notebook is king.
👨🏻💼 We hope you are enjoying the course and find it helpful in preparing for the official IELTS test.