A variety of questions is used in order to test the wide range of reading skills of the candidate. These IELTS reading tests include reading for gist, reading for main ideas, skimming, reading for details, understanding logical arguments, recognizing writer’s opinions, attitude and purpose.
There are 40 questions based on three reading passages with total of 2,000 to 2,750 words.
ACADEMIC READING TRAINING
The academic versions include three long texts ranging from descriptive to factual todiscursive and analytical.Texts are taken from magazines, books, journals and newspapers and have been written for non – specialist audience. The topics deal with the issues which are interesting and accessible to the candidates and are of general interest.
At least, one text contains a logical argument.It may contain non -verbal materials such as graphs, diagrams and pictographs.If it contains some technical terms, then glossary is provided.
GENERAL READING TRAINING
This versions of test contains extracts from Notices, Books, Magazines, advertisements, company handbooks and manuals.It contains materials that are encountered daily in an English speaking environment.
The first section ‘social survival’ contains texts that are related to basic linguistic survival in English which contains tasks about retrieving and providing general factual information.
The second section ‘Training survival’ contains training context. This sections contains more complex language with some elaborated expressions.
The third section ‘General training’ which involves extended prose with complex structure. This section focuses on descriptive and instructive rather then argumentative texts.
IELTS READING MARKING AND ASSESSMENT
One mark is awarded for the each correct answer in the 40- item test. There is no penalty for wrong answers.
Steceducation focuses on the following to develop reading skills :
- Speed reading Techniques
- Skimming and deep scanning for specific information
- Understanding the text
- Locating keywords and reading glossary
- Summarizing the text
- Identifying the arguments
- Understanding descriptive, instructive and argumentative texts
