The Academic as well as General IELTS Reading section of the exam both last 60 minutes and tests your reading skills. Each has 40 questions. The 60 minutes includes the time you have to fill in the answer sheet.

This tutorial covers IELTS reading tips and advice to help you pass your IELTS exam. 

Here are the most common types of reading question types you can get on your reading test:

* Sentence completion

* True false, not given

* Summary, note, table, flow-chart completion

* Multiple choice

* Short-answer questions

* Matching sentence endings

* Diagram label completion

* Matching information

* Matching headings

Before preparing for your IELTS exam and learning different strategies and tips, it is VERY important to: change your mindset, focus and understanding of the test.

The IELTS reading tips that you will read in this chapter will work and must be applied with ALL question types, no matter what exam you are taking.

Remember these IELTS Reading Tips to increase your score:

1. It’s always paraphrased

If there were ONE most important IELTS Reading tip that I could give you, it’s this: 

it’s always paraphrased and the text can tell you if your answer is right 100%.

What does it mean and how does it work? 

It means that for ANY correct answer that you will need to choose from the options, there is ALWAYS a paraphrased fragment in the text that says absolutely the same. 

This is how you know whether that answer is 100% correct. Yes, it works. It got our IELTS candidates Bands 8.0 and 9.0. You will see specific examples for this in each subchapter by type of exam question.

So, in order to assess whether you have a good understanding, reading skills and command of these language complexities, tests are designed this way. IELTS tests assess your ability to understand the same (or similar) ideas hidden behind different wordings and expressions.

 2. Skimming and Scanning

The IELTS Reading examis about understanding information and that’s why vocabulary is crucial. But nevertheless, if you read in the usual slow, relaxed way you will not pass the IELTS test. 

What should you do then? Learn about two very particular methods to read. These are skimming and scanning: reading techniques that use rapid eye movement and keywords so that you are able to move fast through text lines for two different purposes. 

Skimming is reading rapidly in order to get a general overview of the material. 

We recommend that to skim in your reading exam, you should follow this process

* You should read the first paragraph attentively to get an idea of what the text is about

* The first and mostly second sentence of every paragraph closely, this will normally give you the main idea of the text.

* Always read the last paragraph thoroughly as this normally contains the summary.

Scanning is reading rapidly in order to find specific facts.

Keyword: rapidly. Remember this. 

The questions in the IELTS reading test will often include dates, names, numbers, new terms that are part of your answers.

When you are scanning the text in your reading test, be sure to :

* Always underline important specific information and numbers. You do not need to read every word. Look out for information like names, dates, figure, statistics etc

* From the question,