READING COMPREHENSION in Exams, Tests - Strategies, Tips and Tricks - Building Reading Skills

Hello and welcome back.

This lesson comes from a request by

Aditya from Maharashtra, India.

Aditya says he is preparing for a competitive exam and he has

to do reading comprehension exercises as part of the exam,

and he wants to know the best way to do these.

Before we start, if you want to request a lesson, just leave a

comment.

In your comment, tell me your name, and I will

mention you in the video.

OK, in this lesson I will give you some important tips and

strategies for reading comprehension exercises.

I will give you a reading plan that

you can follow, and there are exercises in this lesson for

you to practice.

Alright, now my teaching experience is mostly with exams

like the IELTS and TOEFL, but the tips that I give you in

this lesson will help you in any exam situation.

So the first thing is: when it comes to reading in an exam,

budget your time.

That means: you should know how many

reading passages there are in the exam, how many exercises

there are and how much time you have.

In the IELTS exam, for example, there are three

reading passages and you have one hour to do all of them.

So then divide your time amongst

those passages – for IELTS, you might spend roughly 20 minutes

per passage.

In some exams, one passage might be shorter or

easier, and another passage might be longer or more

difficult.

In that case, obviously, you should plan to

spend less time on the short passage, and more time on the

long passage.

And you should time yourself – if you are allowed to wear a

watch in your exam, look at your watch and keep track of

the time.

If you plan for 20 minutes per passage, stick to

that plan.

Now, if you’re not allowed to wear a watch, then

use the clock in the room or hall, or ask the invigilators

how much time you have left.

Alright, that’s the first thing: budgeting your time.

So now the exam starts – and you

have the first reading passage in front of you – what do you

do?

Well, I’ll tell you what you should NOT do – don’t start

at the beginning and read slowly to the finish.

Many students do this – and the

problem is that when you get to the end, you will have

forgotten a lot of the details in the middle, and when you

read the questions, you have to go back and read the passage

again to find the answers.

Instead, here’s the plan that you should follow: your first

step in reading should be to skim the passage.

What does that mean?

Well, skimming is actually something that we do

with milk.

It’s when you heat or boil milk, and the fat rises

to the top in the form of cream.

Removing that layer of fat is called skimming.

When it comes to reading, skimming means to read the

surface of the text quickly to understand the overall message.

So if there’s a heading or title to the passage, and if

there are subheadings, read all of these first.

They will tell you the subject of the text.

Then read the first sentence of each paragraph – they will give

you a good idea of the overall message.

Let’s practice this.

You see two paragraphs on the screen,

but only the first sentence in each paragraph is visible.

Stop the video, read the sentences

and try to understand the main topic in each paragraph.

Alright, so what do you think the topic of the whole passage

might be?

It could be the negative effects of social

media on children.

What about the first paragraph?

What is it about?

Well it says that using social media can affect a

child’s writing skills.

And the second paragraph?

It says that some people don’t agree with

this – that is, the first paragraph – for two reasons:

scientific reasons and practical reasons (pragmatic

means practical).

This is what you have to do – in each paragraph, read the

first sentence or at most, the first two sentences and ignore

all the other information.

This should only take one minute or

so for all the paragraphs (depending on the length of the

passage) – don’t waste a lot of time on this – you’re only

reading quickly to understand the main ideas in the passage.

We’ll come back to these paragraphs in a moment.

OK, now you have a rough idea of what the passage is about.

What do you do next?

Well, the second step is to find the

easiest exercise – this might be the first exercise – if it

is, great.

Or it might be some other exercise – but find the

easiest exercise, and read the questions.

This is extremely important – before you read the text in

detail, you should always read the questions.

Because they will tell you what information

you need – so that when you read the passage, you will be

able to pick out the answers.

As you’re reading the questions – make sure to fully understand

what they are saying – read them carefully.

Also you should underline the key words – just

two or three important words that can help you to identify

answers.

For example, let’s say you have a true or false

exercise with these two questions.

Now, you don’t know the answers because you have not read the

passage.

But what words can you underline to help you find the

answer?

Stop the video and think about it.

In number one, I would underline ‘likes’ and

‘shares’ because these are the focus of this question.

In number two, I would underline

‘Scientific studies’ and ‘writing skills’.

So you should do this underlining for all the

questions in the exercise.

After you have done that, it’s now time to read the full

passage.

As you read, it can be very useful to use your finger

to guide your eyes.

You should read naturally but you should

also be looking for any of the key words you underlined or any

related words (we call them synonyms).

And if you find the key words or their synonyms,

you should slow down and read carefully.

Let’s practice – you see the two paragraphs again but this

time you have the full text.

Stop the video – read the paragraphs and try to find the

answers.

OK, number one is false – because the first

paragraph says users are encouraged to keep their

messages short and trivial (trivial means not important,

not containing much value), so this is the opposite of the

statement in the exercise.

Number two is true – the second paragraph says “Few studies

have shown a correlation…”

Correlation means relationship.

And ‘Few studies’ means not many studies.

Note that it does not say ‘A few’ – ‘A few’ means

some – it’s positive.

But just ‘few’ means not many – it’s

negative.

The point here is that in a long passage, reading and

understanding the questions, and underlining words in them

before reading the text will help you to find the answers

more easily.

You can also underline the answers in the

passage to help you check your answers later.

OK, I want to give you some important advice at this point.

In any passage, you will come across words that you don’t

understand.

Take the word ‘erosion’, for example.

Maybe you don’t know the meaning.

What can you do?

Well, you can try to guess its meaning from

the surrounding information – this is called context.

So you might guess that it means ‘to

destroy’ or ‘to reduce something over time’ – and this

is correct.

But sometimes you won’t be able to guess the

meaning.

In that case, move on.

Never get stuck anywhere in the passage.

Whether it’s the meaning of a word or maybe

you’re not able to find an answer to a question– do not

get stuck – it will eat up your time.

Instead, if you’re not able to understand something,

make a mark and move on to the next question.

If you have time, you can come back to it

later.

OK, so in this way, you should do all of the questions in the

first exercise, and then move on to the next exercise in the

passage.

This time, again, follow the same process – read

the questions, understand them, underline, and only after that

read the passage and find the answers.

The passage will be easier to read now because you

have already read it for the first exercise.

Finish the passage, keep your eye on the

clock, or on your watch, keep to your time budget, and move

on to the next passage.

This is the process.

Alright, to close this lesson, I want to give you a general

tip on how to improve your reading overall.

There are two important challenges to being

successful at reading : they are vocabulary and practice.

If you are struggling with reading

in an exam, one big reason could be that you don’t have

enough vocabulary for that type of text.

Another problem could be that your reading skills

need to develop more.

The solution to both of these is to read more, and to read

widely.

Don’t just read the newspaper or the latest romance

novel.

You should find various types of reading material –

read novels but also read magazines, self-improvement

books, history books, other kinds of non-fiction books,

read articles online – make reading a regular habit.

Whenever you read, keep a notebook and pen and write down

any new vocabulary that you learn.

Review this vocabulary regularly and try to use it in

your own speech and writing.

And remember: you can get lots of tips and tricks for reading

comprehension exercises, but you only become better at

reading by reading, so practice.

Alright, that brings us to the end of this lesson.

I hope you found it useful.

I’ll see you in the next lesson.