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Daily Lessons with Simon, ex-IELTS examiner

Monday, March 11, 2019

IELTS Reading: gap-�ll
Read the following text about pedestrian zones in cities.

A large number of European towns and cities have made part of their centres car-free since
the early 1960s. These are often accompanied by car parks on the edge of the
pedestrianised zone, and, in the larger cases, park and ride schemes. Central Copenhagen is
one of the largest and oldest examples: the auto-free zone is centred on Strøget, a
pedestrian shopping street, which is in fact not a single street but a series of interconnected
avenues which create a very large auto-free zone, although it is crossed in places by streets
with vehicular tra�c. Most of these zones allow delivery trucks to service the businesses
located there during the early morning, and street-cleaning vehicles will usually go through
these streets after most shops have closed for the night.

In North America, where a more commonly used term is pedestrian mall, such areas are
still in their infancy. Few cities have pedestrian zones, but some have pedestrianised single
streets. Many pedestrian streets are surfaced with cobblestones, or pavement bricks, which
discourage any kind of wheeled tra�c, including wheelchairs. They are rarely completely
free of motor vehicles.

Fill the gaps below with NO MORE THAN 3 WORDS from the text.

1. In some cases, people are encouraged to park ________ of the town or city centre.
2. The only vehicles permitted in most pedestrian zones are those used for ________ or
________ cleaning.
3. Certain types of road surface can be used to ________ tra�c.

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Monday, March 04, 2019

IELTS Reading: 9 ways to use practice tests
Here are 9 di�erent ways to use practice reading tests.

1. Do a full one-hour test to see what score you get.

2. Do a full test with no time limit (or a longer time limit, like 2 hours).
3. Do just one reading passage in 20 minutes.
4. Do one reading passage with no time limit (or longer than 20 minutes).
5. Work on a particular type of question only e.g. true, false, not given.
6. Do tests with the help of a dictionary, and see if that helps you score.
7. Simply read a full passage and see what you understand. Don't do the questions.
8. Get the answers from the back of the book, and try to prove why they are correct.
9. Make vocabulary lists and 'keyword' tables.

Instead of just testing yourself, try to use practice tests in a variety of ways. This will make
your study time less boring, and you'll probably learn more. Maybe you can think of other
creative ways to use practice tests.

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Monday, February 25, 2019
IELTS Reading: yes, no, not given
Read the following passage about 'habits'.

“All our life, so far as it has de�nite form, is but a mass of habits,” William James wrote in
1892. Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered
decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively
little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night,
whether we save or spend, how often we exercise, and the way we organize our thoughts
and work routines have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, �nancial security,
and happiness. One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that 40
percent or more of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but
habits.

Do the statements below agree with the ideas expressed by the author? Write YES, NO or
NOT GIVEN.

1. The majority of choices we make on a daily basis are conscious decisions.

2. Saving money is the key to �nancial security.
3. Habits account for at least 40 percent of the things we do each day.

Note:
The passage above comes from a book called The Power of Habit. If you're looking for a
book to read, I de�nitely recommend it.

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Monday, February 18, 2019

IELTS Reading: choose the headings
Read the passage below and match each paragraph with one of the following headings:

1. Lobster habitats
2. Why lobsters must be measured when caught
3. Adult male lobsters are a prime catch
4. Lobster �shing methods
5. The world’s heaviest lobster
6. Di�erent types of American lobster

A) The American lobster is a species of lobster found on the Atlantic coast of North
America, chie�y from Labrador to New Jersey. It is also known as Atlantic lobster,
Canadian lobster, true lobster, northern lobster, Canadian Reds, or Maine lobster. It can
reach a body length of 64cm, and a mass of over 20 kilograms, making it not only the
heaviest crustacean in the world, but also the heaviest of all living arthropod species.

B) Most American lobsters come from the northeastern coast of North America, with the
Atlantic Provinces of Canada and the U.S. state of Maine being the largest producers. They
are caught primarily using lobster traps, although lobsters are also harvested as bycatch by
bottom trawlers, �shermen using gillnets, and by scuba divers in some areas. Maine
completely prohibits scuba divers from catching lobsters (violations could result in up to a
$1000 �ne).

C) In the United States, the lobster industry is regulated. Every lobster �sher is required to
use a lobster gauge to measure the distance from the lobster's eye socket to the end of its
carapace: if the lobster is less than 83mm long, it is too young to be sold and must be
released back to the sea. There is also a legal maximum size of 130mm in Maine, meant to
ensure the survival of a healthy breeding stock of adult males.

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Monday, February 11, 2019

IELTS Reading: keyword review
The table below shows keywords from the last �ve reading exercises here on the blog.

Are you familiar with the following words / phrases?

- to undermine
- cutting-edge (adjective)
- to herald
- to lengthen / stretch out / draw out
- to emphasise / over-articulate / exaggerate

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Monday, February 04, 2019

IELTS Reading: multiple choice
Here are two multiple choice questions from Cambridge IELTS 13. Choose the best answer
for questions 27 and 28, and explain your answers if you can.

Relevant part of the passage:

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their
makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an arti�cial composer has had
audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score.
Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in
prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates art that could not have
been imagined by the programmer.
Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we
can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity?
‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational
creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They
are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

Multiple choice questions:

27. What is the writer suggesting about computer-produced works in the �rst paragraph?

A  People’s acceptance of them can vary considerably.

B  A great deal of progress has already been attained in this �eld.
C  They have had more success in some artistic genres than in others.
D  The advances are not as signi�cant as the public believes them to be.

28. According to Geraint Wiggins, why are many people worried by computer art?

A  It is aesthetically inferior to human art.

B  It may ultimately supersede human art.
C  It undermines a fundamental human quality.
D  It will lead to a deterioration in human ability.

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Monday, January 28, 2019

IELTS Reading: examples from Cambridge 13
Here's an excerpt from reading test 1, passage 1 in Cambridge IELTS 13:

Tourism New Zealand website

On the website, visitors can search for activities not solely by geographical location, but
also by the particular nature of the activity. This is important as research shows that
activities are the key driver of visitor satisfaction, contributing 74% to visitor satisfaction,
while transport and accommodation account for the remaining 26%. The more activities
that visitors undertake, the more satis�ed they will be. It has also been found that visitors
enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive, such as visiting a marae (meeting
ground) to learn about traditional Maori life.

Are the following statements true, false or not given?

1. It was found that most visitors started searching on the website by geographical
location.
2. According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.
3. Visitors to New Zealand like to become involved in the local culture.

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Monday, January 21, 2019

IELTS Reading: choose the title
Read the following article, and choose the best title from the list below.

The setting is decidedly modest: a utility room in a red-brick house at the end of a cul-de-
sac in Wales. But if the hype turns out to be right, this may be the starting point for an
energy revolution in the UK. Householder Mark Kerr has become the �rst British owner of a
Tesla Powerwall, a cutting-edge bit of kit that the makers say will provide a “missing link”
in solar energy.

Like many owners of solar panels, Kerr and his family have a basic problem. They tend to
be out at work and school when the sun is shining and the 16 solar panels on the roof of
their home in Cardi� are producing power. The excess they miss out on is fed into the grid
and they make a return on it but it does not seem right that they do not get to use the
power from their panels. However, from now, energy produced but not used during the day
will charge the Powerwall and can then be used to provide them with the energy they need
when they’re at home and their lights, music centres, computers, televisions and myriad
other devices need feeding.

Choose title A, B, C or D. Can you explain why the others are wrong?

A) The UK energy revolution.

B) Wales at the forefront of technology.
C) New device could herald energy revolution.
D) The problem with solar panels.

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Monday, January 14, 2019

IELTS Reading: true, false, not given
Read the following text about photosynthesis in plants.

Although some of the steps in photosynthesis are still not completely understood, the
overall photosynthetic equation has been known since the 1800s.

Jan van Helmont began the research of the process in the mid-1600s when he carefully
measured the mass of the soil used by a plant and the mass of the plant as it grew. After
noticing that the soil mass changed very little, he hypothesised that the mass of the
growing plant must come from the water, the only substance he added to the potted plant.
His hypothesis was partially accurate—much of the gained mass also comes from carbon
dioxide as well as water.

In 1796, Jean Senebier, a Swiss pastor, botanist, and naturalist, demonstrated that green
plants consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen under the in�uence of light. Soon
afterwards, Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure showed that the increase in mass of the plant as
it grows could not be due only to uptake of CO2, but also to the incorporation of water.

According to the text, are the following statements true, false or not given?

1. We now fully understand the process of photosynthesis.

2. Van Helmont's hypothesis did not take into account that plants consume carbon
dioxide.
3. De Saussure demonstrated that both carbon dioxide and water contribute to an
increase in mass in plants as they grow.

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Monday, January 07, 2019

IELTS Reading: go deeper
When you do a practice reading test or even a short reading exercise, I think you can do
more than just test yourself. You can go deeper into the passage and look at vocabulary,
grammar, sentence structure, coherence etc.
For example, did you think about the word 'parentese' when you read the passage in last
Monday's lesson? And did you note down any vocabulary? e.g. drawn-out, plays a vital role
in, is characterised by, verbal signal, capitalise on...

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Monday, December 31, 2018

IELTS Reading: yes, no, not given
Read the following passage about how parents speak to infants.

'Parentese'

Parentese, the exaggerated, drawn-out form of speech that people use to communicate with
babies, apparently is universal and plays a vital role in helping infants to analyse and
absorb the phonetic elements of their parents’ language. An international study shows that
infants are so good at analysing this speech that by the age of 20 weeks they are beginning
to produce the three vowel sounds common to all human languages — “ee,” “ah” and “uu.”

“Parentese has a melody to it. And inside this melody is a tutorial for the baby that
contains exceptionally well-formed versions of the building blocks of language,” explains
Patricia Kuhl, a University of Washington neuroscientist.

The new study examined di�erences in how American, Russian and Swedish mothers speak
to their infants and to other adults. The study shows that parentese is characterised by
over-articulation that exaggerates the sounds contained in words. Mothers in the study
were, in e�ect, sounding out “super-vowels” to help their infants learn the phonetic
elements of language.

“In normal, everyday speech adults generally race along at a very fast pace,” Kuhl says.
“But we know it is easier to understand a speaker when they stretch out sounds. That’s why
we tend to speak more slowly and carefully to increase understanding when we teach in
the classroom or talk to strangers. We also do this unconsciously with babies, giving them
an improved verbal signal they can capitalise on by slowing down and over articulating.”
(Source: www.washington.edu)

Do the statements below agree with the author's claims?

Write yes, no or not given.

1. ‘Parentese’ is not common to all cultures.

2. Parents tend to lengthen and over-emphasise certain sounds when speaking to infants.
3. Adults are aware that they need to use parentese when speaking to babies.

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Monday, December 24, 2018

IELTS Reading: more keywords
Here's a table showing the key vocabulary from the last few reading lessons here on the
blog.
Posted by Simon in IELTS Reading | Permalink | Comments (6)

Monday, December 17, 2018

IELTS Reading: paragraph headings
Read the following passage about cognitive behavioural therapy:

A) Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach: a talking therapy.

CBT aims to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions, behaviours and cognitions
through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure in the present.

B) The particular therapeutic techniques vary, but commonly may include keeping a diary
of signi�cant events and associated feelings, thoughts and behaviours; questioning and
testing cognitions, assumptions, evaluations and beliefs that might be unhelpful and
unrealistic; gradually facing activities which may have been avoided; and trying out new
ways of behaving and reacting. Relaxation, mindfulness and distraction techniques are also
commonly included.

C) Going through cognitive behavioural therapy is not an overnight process for clients; a
typical course consists of 12-16 hour-long sessions. Even after clients have learned to
recognise when and where their mental processes go awry, it can in some cases take
considerable time or e�ort to replace a dysfunctional process or habit with a more
reasonable and adaptive one. CBT is problem-focused and structured towards the client. It
requires honesty and openness between the client and therapist, as a therapist develops
strategies for managing problems and guiding the client to a better life.

Choose the best headings for paragraphs A, B and C from this list:

1. A slow process
2. A new type of therapeutic approach
3. The bene�ts and drawbacks of CBT
4. A goal-oriented therapeutic approach
5. CBT therapists are always honest with their clients
6. The range of CBT interventions

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Monday, December 10, 2018

IELTS Reading: I can't read fast enough!
If you believe that you can't read fast enough, you've got the wrong idea about how to
improve your reading score.

The key to IELTS reading is to learn to read better, not faster.

Reading better means that you understand what you are reading, and that you notice
straight away when you reach the part of the passage that contains the answer. If you read
too quickly, you'll probably miss the answer and waste time going back to look for it.

Note: If you really are a very slow reader (when reading English), this is probably because
your overall level of English is low. In other words, you're at beginner to intermediate level
at the moment, and you have to think about every word as you read. This is a normal stage
in language learning, and you shouldn't rush to read more quickly.

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Monday, December 03, 2018

IELTS Reading: choose the best summary
Read the following description of a book called 'What are Universities for?'.

Across the world, universities are more numerous than they have ever been, yet at the
same time there is unprecedented confusion about their purpose and scepticism about their
value. What Are Universities For? o�ers a spirited and compelling argument for completely
rethinking the way we see our universities, and why we need them.

Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that universities need to show that they help to
make money in order to justify getting more money. Instead, he argues that we must re�ect
on the di�erent types of institution and the distinctive roles they play. In particular we
must recognise that attempting to extend human understanding, which is at the heart of
disciplined intellectual enquiry, can never be wholly harnessed to immediate social
purposes - particularly in the case of the humanities, which both attract and puzzle many
people and are therefore the most di�cult subjects to justify.

At a time when the future of higher education lies in the balance, What Are Universities
For? o�ers all of us a better, deeper and more enlightened understanding of why
universities matter, to everyone.

Which statement best summarises the book's message?

A) We do not necessarily need universities nowadays

B) Universities should be harnessed for social purposes
C) Universities must justify the money they are given
D) We need to change our understanding of the role of universities

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Monday, November 26, 2018

IELTS Reading: �ll the gaps
Read the following passage about nocturnal animals.

Nocturnality is an animal behaviour characterised by activity during the night and sleep
during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus its opposite “diurnal”.
Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed senses of hearing and smell, and
specially adapted eyesight. Such traits can help animals such as the Helicoverpa zea moth
to avoid predators. Some animals, such as cats and ferrets, have eyes that can adapt to both
low-level and bright day levels of illumination. Others, such as bushbabies and some bats,
can function only at night. Many nocturnal creatures, including most owls, have large eyes
in comparison with their body size to compensate for the lower light levels at night.

Being active at night is a form of niche di�erentiation, where a species' niche is partitioned
not by the amount of resources but by time (i.e. temporal division of the ecological niche).
For example, hawks and owls can hunt the same �eld or meadow for the same rodents
without con�ict because hawks are diurnal and owls are nocturnal.

Fill the gaps in the summary using words from the list below it.

Nocturnal animals sleep during the daytime, whereas ______ animals are awake during the
day and they ______ at night. Animals that are active at night tend to have ______ hearing and
smell, and they may have ______ eyesight. Nocturnality allows animals to hunt for prey
without having to ______ with predators that are active during daylight hours.

most, sensitive, asleep, con�ict, diurnal, compete, exceptional, sleep

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Monday, November 12, 2018

IELTS Reading: paragraph heading
Read the following paragraph about the inventor Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices
that greatly in�uenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture
camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. He was one of the �rst inventors to
apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of
invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the �rst industrial
research laboratory. Edison is the fourth most proli�c inventor in history, holding 1,093 US
patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in
particular, telecommunications.

Choose the best heading for the paragraph from the list below.

A) The creator of the �rst industrial research laboratory.

B) A pioneering and proli�c inventor.
C) Edison’s contribution to mass communication.

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Monday, November 05, 2018

IELTS Reading: 3 study tips
Here are 3 study tips to help you improve your reading:

1. The best way to get better at the reading test is by doing more reading. Do as many
practice tests as you can, and read other things e.g. books, newspapers and online
articles.
2. Try doing a reading test without a time limit, and with a dictionary. If you still can't
get the score you need, you'll need to look carefully at what you are doing wrong.
 3. Spend time analysing your mistakes and the correct answers. If you don't understand
why an answer was right or wrong, ask a teacher to help you. You'll improve more
quickly if you learn from your mistakes.

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Monday, October 29, 2018

IELTS Reading: it's all about the paraphrasing!
There were some great examples of paraphrasing in the 'which paragraph?' exercise that I
shared in last Monday's lesson.

Here's a table showing the key phrases:

AI = arti�cial intelligence

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Monday, October 22, 2018

IELTS Reading: which paragraph contains?
Today's reading passage is a bit longer than usual, so I'm attaching it as a document. Click
on the link below to download it.

Download 'which paragraph contains?' exercise

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Monday, October 15, 2018

IELTS Reading: which paragraph contains...?
Click on the link below to try today's reading exercise. The questions are at the end of the
passage.

Click here to open

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Monday, October 08, 2018

IELTS Reading: practise the general test too!
The General Training reading test is a bit di�erent to the Academic test. However, the
techniques you need to use to �nd the answers are the same:
- Underline key words in the question.
- Look for those words, or words with the same meaning, in the passage.

General Training questions are easier than those in the Academic test, so I often give my
students a section from a GT test as an introduction to the reading exam.

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Monday, October 01, 2018

IELTS Reading: true, false, not given
Read the following passage about ancient uses of the word 'talent'.

The word ‘talent’ comes from the Latin word ‘talentum’, meaning a sum of money, and
from the Greek ‘talanton’, meaning a unit of money or weight. An ancient Greek talent was
26 kilograms, which was approximately the mass of water required to �ll an amphora - an
ancient jar or jug.

When used as a measure of money, the word ‘talent’ typically referred to a weight of gold
or silver. A Roman talent was around 33 kilograms of gold, while an Egyptian talent was
27 kilograms and a Babylonian talent was 30.3 kilograms. At the current price of around
38 US dollars per gram, a Roman talent of gold would cost roughly 1.25 million dollars.

Another way to calculate the modern equivalent to a talent is from its use in estimating
military pay. During the Peloponnesian war in Ancient Greece, a talent was the amount of
silver needed to pay the crew of a trireme (a warship requiring about 170 oarsmen) for one
month. Alternatively, a talent of silver was said to be equivalent to the value of nine years
of one man’s skilled work.

Are the following statements true, false or not given?

1. For the ancient Greeks, a talent was the weight of water in a particular container.
2. In modern terms, the Roman talent would be equivalent to a considerable amount of
money.
3. A ‘trireme’ was the name of a group of ancient Greek warriors.
4. The Greeks were the �rst people to use the word talent in its modern sense.

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Monday, September 24, 2018

IELTS Reading: which books to use
If you want to do some realistic IELTS reading practice, the only books that I recommend
are Cambridge IELTS books and the two 'O�cial Practice Materials' books.

Here are some problems that I've seen in other 'uno�cial' books:
 Tests can be too easy or too di�cult.
Topics may be covered that would never appear in a real test. For example, a passage
about the politics of a particular country would not be used in a real test.
The answers in the passage might not be in order. In real tests, answers to most
question types are almost always in order.
Questions are badly written and confusing.

You can still use uno�cial books for reading practice. Just don't expect the tests in them to
be realistic.

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Monday, September 17, 2018

IELTS Reading: another keyword table
Here's a table of key vocabulary from the last �ve or six reading exercises here on the blog.

Remember: The aim of these tables is to highlight paraphrasing. The more you practise
recognising paraphrasing, the better you'll get at the IELTS reading test.

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Monday, September 10, 2018

IELTS Reading: gap-�ll summary
Read the following passage about animal migration.
(Source: National Geographic)

Large migrations are some of nature's greatest spectacles. Wildebeest and zebra chase the
rains through the Mara ecosystem every year, monarch butter�ies trace a path from Mexico
to Canada and back, and tiny songbirds �y nonstop for days at a time. And now scientists
are starting to �gure out how they know where to go, and when.

Some of these animals, they’ve found, have their migration pathways written into their
genes. A songbird hatched in a laboratory, having seen nothing of the natural world, still
attempts to begin migration at the right time of year and in the right cardinal direction.

But large mammals like bighorn sheep and moose are a di�erent story. Wildlife researchers
have long suspected that they require experience to migrate e�ectively, that their annual
journeys are the result of learning from one another, not of genetic inheritance. A new
study, published Thursday in the journal Science, suggests that those hunches may be
correct—some animals must learn how to migrate.

The existence of collective information and knowledge, that can be passed from older
animals to younger ones, is a form of “culture,” researchers explain. And when animals
learn as a result of social interaction and the transfer of this information, that’s a type of
cultural exchange—as opposed to genetic.

Fill each gap in the summary below with ONE word from the passage.

Scientists believe that ______ are responsible for some animal migrations. Songbirds, for
example, do not need to learn when and in which ______ to migrate. On the other hand,
bighorn sheep appear to ______ migration habits from the herd. They, and other mammals,
seem to have a ______ that is passed from one generation to the next through interaction and
exchange of ______.

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Monday, September 03, 2018

IELTS Reading: 'keyword technique' steps
I often talk about the "keyword technique" in my reading lessons. But the "keyword
technique" isn't special; it's just a convenient name that I use. Here's what I mean when I
use this name:

1. Read the �rst question and underline "keywords". These are the words that you think
you will need to search for in the passage. They are the words that communicate the
meaning of the question: normally nouns, verbs and adjectives.
2. Read the passage at normal speed from the beginning. Look out for the keywords from
the question, or any words which have a similar meaning (look for synonyms and
paraphrasing).
3. Underline the keywords that you �nd in the passage.
4. Read the sentences around those keywords carefully. You may need to read them
several times.
5. Check back to the question, and compare it with the relevant part of the passage.
6. Decide on the answer.

Note: The main point of the "keyword technique" is that you have some speci�c words to
look for in the passage. But remember: Locating the answer is just the �rst step. The second
step is reading carefully, making sure you understand what you are reading, and comparing
with the question.

To see me use the "keyword technique" in a quick video lesson, click here.

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Monday, August 27, 2018

IELTS Reading: easy 'General' reading
A few people have asked me to look at some examples from the General reading test. Try
the exercise below; I'm sure you'll see that it's basically the same as Academic reading, just
easier.

Read the following information about some medicine.

(Source: Cambridge IELTS book 3)

Do the following statements agree with the information above? Write YES, NO or NOT
GIVEN.

1. You should lie down after you have taken the medicine.
2. You must stop taking the medicine if your eyesight is a�ected.
3. You must stop taking the medicine when you feel better.
4. The medicine is suitable for a person of any age.

Note:
What were the 'keywords' that gave you the answers?

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Monday, August 20, 2018

IELTS Reading: is the answer in the �rst sentence?
Students often ask me this: Is it possible to match paragraph headings to the correct
paragraphs by reading the �rst sentence of the paragraph only?

My answer is: sometimes. The problem is that this 'technique' doesn't always work. For
example, try the following exercise.

Choose the best heading (1 or 2) for the paragraph below. Which sentence gave you the
answer?

1. The impact of telecommunications on population distribution

2. The bene�ts of working together in cities

It was once assumed that improvements in telecommunications would lead to more

dispersal in the population as people were no longer forced into cities. However, the ISTP
team's research demonstrates that the population and job density of cities rose or remained
constant in the 1980s after decades of decline. The explanation for this seems to be that it
is valuable to place people working in related �elds together. 'The new world will largely
depend on human creativity, and creativity �ourishes where people come together face-to-
face.'
(Source: Cambridge IELTS 6, test 2)
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Monday, August 13, 2018

IELTS Reading: locate, then understand
You've probably read my advice about underlining 'keywords' in the question and then
searching for those words in the passage.

But people sometimes �nd the keywords and still get the wrong answer. Does this mean
that the 'keyword technique' doesn't work? No. If you found the keywords but still got the
wrong answer, the problem must be this: you didn't fully understand what you read.

Remember that the keyword technique involves 2 steps:

1. Locate the answer: underline keywords in the question, then read the passage until
you �nd those words (or similar words that have the same meaning i.e. synonyms or
paraphrasing).
2. Understand fully: read the relevant part of the passage carefully, make sure you
understand it fully, and check it against the question until you are sure that you have
the right answer.

Remember: Keywords don't automatically give you the answer. They help you to locate it,
but then you'll need to understand the relevant sentence(s).

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Monday, August 06, 2018

IELTS Reading: it's a vocabulary test!
I've said before that IELTS Reading is a vocabulary test. If you don't understand the words
that you read in the questions or passage, you probably won't get the right answer. Here's
an example from one of my video lessons:

Is the following statement true, false or not given?

Some sewage networks built by the Romans in the UK were made out of wood.

Relevant part of the passage:

Roman towns and garrisons in the United Kingdom between 46 BC and 400 AD had
complex sewer networks sometimes constructed out of hollowed-out elm logs.

Tasks:
- What answer would you give (T, F or NG)?
- Which 'keywords' would you underline in the question and passage?
- Which words do you need to understand in order to get the answer?

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