Understanding IELTS: Reading

Video transcript

Hello, everyone my name is David Lewis and I’ve been your lead educator for this IELTS reading
course. It’s the end of week three and that also means it's the end of the course. It’s always a little bit
sad when we come to the end but hopefully it's actually a point of positivity for you as you have
developed your skills over these three weeks.

I have to say as a starting point for this video that I've been really impressed with all the excellent
work that you have been doing across the course. I know the other educators have said the same
thing and it's great to see so much effort going in and hopefully you will continue this effort once we
are done.

Now as Neeraj mentioned in last week's video these are obviously difficult times for many of us and
the way that you have come together as a group of participants on this course and worked together
shared ideas and helped each other I think has been a real testament to the kind of effort we need
not just on this course but in society at the moment. That we can all come together for a common
cause and achieve things as a human race, shall we say. Hopefully, this attitude will continue after
this course and after the crisis at the world is feeling, at the moment.

Anyway, let’s move on and think about some of the things that you've actually been learning this
week and across the course indeed. We’ve looked at all kinds of question types that may come up in
the exam by now and you looked at, we’ve looked at some key skills such as skimming and scanning.
Hopefully by this point in the course you know what those are and you're fully aware of everything
that might happen in the IELTS course, test sorry.

Specifically, this week we looked at one of your favourite, OK least favourite, question types, steps
3.7 to 3.9 we looked at the true, false, not given questions and of course the yes, no, not given
questions which are very similar. Now these questions always confuse people a little bit especially
maybe the difference between false and not given. Try to remember that not given really means
what it says - there is no information in the text. I do understand that occasionally that's difficult
sometimes because you think well if I just think about it a little bit and interpret, maybe there's some
information there. But in the case of IELTS you really are just looking at does the information written
in the text clearly state it’s true, clearly states the opposite, so the statement is false, or is it just not
in the text, it is only in my head, in my imagination. OK? Anyway, another thing to consider here is,
‘what's the worst case scenario?’ Worst case scenario is you choose the wrong answer and you get
no points for it. There’s normally only about three of these questions, so that means you could still
get 37 right. That’s not bad, you’d get a really good band score with 37.

Now moving on, we had lots of tips from people we had tips from teachers on the course, tips from
educators during the course and on 3.11, three point eleven, this week we had a whole bunch of
excellent tips from you the participants and I'm going to go through reasonably quickly a few of those
now.

For example, Debanjan Bhattacharyya, he says practice a lot within a certain time frame. Yes, that's
important, have a study plan but also when you do a test keep to the time of the test.

Understanding IELTS: Reading

© British Council 2020
 Understanding IELTS: Reading

Mukhammad my favourite tip - don't panic! And if anyone has been on Exploring English and heard
me talk about one of my favourite books they’ll know why the words ‘don't panic’ are among my
favourite. Yeah, it's very important don't panic during exam just keep going, get as many answers
down on paper as you can and ideally them all, of course.

Nawara says it's important to concentrate on the test day so that means getting a good night's sleep
the day before, absolutely essential fine.
Vy Ngo has many many tips -avoiding getting stuck at one question is one, I agree and there are four
or five others, so go and read that comment to see all the really good tips there.

And Hilary suggests that we need to be a bit honest and brutal with ourselves, don’t pretend that we
are better than we are, I think is what she’s saying. And she’s also saying that when you do a practice
stick to the time limit, that’s sixty minutes. I agree with that, I mean maybe when you first start it’s ok
to give yourself a little bit more time but make sure as you practice you reduce the time and get it
down to the sixty minutes, that way the score that you see when you mark your practice test is more
realistic.

Now finally at the end of the week we also give you a chance to do a whole practice test and I really
like this comment from Kaddijatou who says 32/40 my highest reading score ever. That’s a great
achievement, it shows that the tips are helping but it's not because it’s our tips but because you as a
student have applied them. So well done not only to Kaddijatou but to all of you who have done well
because you have used the knowledge, we’ve given you, the ideas we’ve given you.

Now another thing we’ve looked at this week is computer and paper-based versions of IELTS. 3.12
and 3.13 have information about that. Many people often ask which one is better. Neither are better,
they are the same. What's better is the one that suits you. That could be because of the time it's
available or it could be because you're particularly comfortable with pen and paper and you hate
computers, well don't do computer then, or it could be you love computers which case, of course, do
the computer version, it's a simple as that.

Now, I think that's it really as a summary of the course and what we've done this week. Now just
because we’re finished that doesn't mean you stop practicing, so please keep working hard after this
course and if you would like some more practice remember this is just one course out of four. We
have the Understanding IELTS programme where we look at reading, writing, speaking and the
listening tests, so please make sure to join the other courses for further tips for the other parts of the
IELTS test.

So that’s goodbye for me, hopefully we’ll meet again in another course and now a quick word from
the other educators

Understanding IELTS: Reading

© British Council 2020