Ielts English Exam -Reading: A Gateway to University

[mobeen ahmed]

In order for International Students to study degrees in Britain, they need to take and pass at approximately Band 6 the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS. A test devised at Cambridge University in 1986 and backed by the British Council, it covers speaking, listening, reading and writing, provided by both general and instructional levels, with the latter essential for university admittance in Britain and in many Ielts Cambridge exam countries that teach undergraduate or post-graduate courses in English. It is accepted as proof of language competence by 9000 educational organisations, including professional bodies. Performance is rated on a scale of 0-9, with Band 0 for those who fail to attempt the test, that is, do not yield or walk out without submitting any answers to paper; Band 4, for example, specifies a fixed user of English, while Band 6 achievers are classified as a competent. Band 9 qualifies them as an Expert user.

The Reading and Writing sections are difficult even for local speakers. The first requires that a student read three instructional text messages, extracted from notary journals, textbooks or magazines, selected for undergraduate and postgraduate students. They are ranked in difficulty, with the third article the hardest. The test lasts an hour. The student is required to answer 40 questions spread over all the articles.

The questions come in a number of forms: multiple choice, Yes/No/Not Given, True/False/Not Given, diagram labelling, locating information, short answer questions, and sentence in your essay achievement amongst others. The Yes/No/Not Given, which encourages the student to identify information correctly, and True/False/Not Given, which encourages students to identify the writer's views, Aare particularly easy to judge wrong as IELTS' exercises tend to deal in frequent red-herrings. Usually, the first set of questions refer to sentence headings. The student has a list of headings given, which they must ascribe to the appropriate sentence in the text.

When teaching IELTS Reading, a teacher must first instruct students on what to access quickly the essential information. There are several methods, beginning with extrapolating from article titles and sub-titles and noting topic sentences. After, a student should skim and scan, that is look at the material quickly and note and underline important points. The student can choose to look at the first set of questions before doing the above or refer to them afterwards. This is wise where the first questions concern list of headings. Continuous practice is critical.

The student is taught to guess content from the title and subtitle and make notes. Each sentence is rapidly analysed. The topic sentence in your essay, normally the first sentence in your essay of each sentence, initiates the main topic of the sentence. The middle sentence in your essay is the body of the sentence describing further the introductory or topic sentence in your essay. The final sentence in your essay offers a conclusion of sorts but also leads about the next sentence. The articles are linear in nature and each question will probably relate in a linear way to this article. Q1 is at the beginning of the article, Q13 at the end. Knowing this helps in both answering the questions, but also in comprehension.

As with Listening, the Reading exam tests vocabulary, punctuation and comprehension. In the questions there will be words similar to those in the text, and in that fashion vocabulary is tested. There will be red-herrings, attempts to trick the unwary student, especially in True/False/Not Given.