3 tips to improve your reading band score

Hello, everyone. Hong is back.

This video is part of a series of four videos, providing you with

some tips to improve your IELTS base score in a skill.

I have done one video about speaking and one video about listening.

If you have not seen them, you can check out the link

in the description box below.

And what are we going to talk about today?

What are we going to talk about today? Oh, it’s about reading, yes.

But before we begin, don’t forget to subscribe

to this channel, and check out our website,

We Love IELTS.org.

We all know that vocabulary plays a huge role in reading comprehension.

When we read a passage, we think that we understand

the words, but are you so sure that you understand things correctly?

Now, tell me, what does this word mean?

We have a sentence, She is running in a park.

So in this case, run means to move quickly.

What about this? She’s running a restaurant.

It means that she’s managing a restaurant, so in this case,

run means to manage.

Another example. The river runs into the sea.

It means the river flows into the sea, so in this case, run means to flow.

So we can see, with just a very simple verb like run,

it can have different meanings.

It can mean to move quickly, it can even mean to manage,

or it can also mean to flow.

So, what we need to understand is that a word can have different

meanings in different contexts.

So my first tip is when you learn a new word, try to

understand its multiple meanings, so that when you read a passage,

you are more likely to pick up the right

meaning and understand the passage much better.

So, besides knowing the word meaning, another very important technique

that we need to know is guessing the meaning from the context.

What do I mean by that?

Well, when you read a passage, you don’t necessarily know all

the meanings of every single word that you come across.

Why?

First, it is very difficult to know all of them.

And two, you don’t have to.

What we need to do is try to guess the meaning of the word we don’t know,

from the information surrounding it.

Let’s look at an example.

This from an Authentic Practice Test Book 9,

Test 2.

Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in

young children can have a major impact

on their development of speech and communication,

resulting in a detrimental effect on their ability to learn at school.

So you may not know the word impairment, or auditory function deficit.

But as you read, you understand that

it’s something resulting in a detrimental effect.

So we can safely guess that these words refer to

bad hearing conditions or disease in children.

See?

We could guess the meaning from the context.

What is our tip number two, everyone? Do you remember?

Yes, it’s about trying to guess the unknown meaning of the word

from the surrounding information and context.

In another video on IELTS reading tests,

one of my colleagues, Greg, he talked about

the two reading techniques called skimming and scanning,

which help to speed up your reading.

So, what do skimming and scanning mean?

Well, skimming is reading to find main ideas, but scanning is reading

to find details, looking for key words.

Oh?

Wait a minute, what does it mean to look for key words?

Oh, key words are the words that you highlighted from the questions.

So there are two steps, the first one is to highlight

key words from the questions, and step number two is looking for

those key words in the passage, so you can find the answers.

Oh, the exact key words? No, it’s not that easy.

It’s the paraphrasing. What? Paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing means to speak or to write the same information in

different words or expressions.

For example, instead of saying, Parents firstly teach their

children to say hello and farewell to other people, we can also paraphrase.

Being taught to greet other people is the first lesson that adults give

to their offspring.

Or we can also say, kids are asked by their

parents to exchange greetings with other people.

So, you can see three sentences, three different ways to express

the same thing.

That’s called paraphrasing.

And that is something that we see very often in reading IELTS.

So that’s why you should train yourself to recognise

paraphrasing so you can scan information better.

So what have we got so far?

Tip number 1, understand multiple meanings of vocabulary.

Tip number 2, guess the meaning by context.

And tip number 3, identify paraphrasing.

Now it’s time to practise.

This is an extract from a reading passage in the IELTS

15 Authentic Practice Tests, Test 1.

The topic is driverless cars.

You can pause the video for three minutes,

trying to answer questions 23 and 24.

Now let’s do it together.

First, we should underline some key words from the questions.

What we need to do is to find the two benefits of the automated vehicle.

Now, let’s look at the passage.

We can use tip number 1, trying to understand

the passage as much what we can.

But in case that there are words that you don’t know, you can use tip number 2.

For example, the word productive.

Maybe you don’t understand what productive means.

Let’s look around. To socialise or simply to relax.

So it means that to be productive is that you can do something else

while you’re driving.

The whole phrase, to be productive,

to socialise or simply to relax, is the paraphrase of, spend journeys

doing something other than driving.

In other words, the answer C is one of the correct answers.

Let’s move on.

We can also find other paraphrases like,

those who are challenged by existing mobility models,

is the same as, people who find driving physically difficult.

Or, enjoy significantly greater travel autonomy

is the same as, travel independently.

So, the last sentence is the paraphrase of the answer D.

So, by using the tip number 2 and tip number 3 as well,

we can identify the two correct answers, C and D.

Again, here is our quick recap, the three tips to improve your

reading base score.

Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you real soon.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel.

Thank you, and bye for now.