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Writer's pictureSidra Zameer

Master IELTS Academic Reading Skills|With SID|

Updated: Jul 1, 2020

How long is the IELTS Academic Reading paper?


The Reading test lasts 60 minutes. It’s on the same day after Listening test as Writing comes after it.


How many questions do I have to answer?

There are 40 questions in the test. Each question is worth one mark. You don’t have extra time at the end to copy your answers onto an answer paper – you have to do that during the 60 minutes of the test.

What do I have to read? understanding with British Council material.

There are three reading passages in the test. You have to read up to 2700 words in the 60 minutes of the Reading test – and you could meet a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary. Each one is up to 900 words long and the passages are taken from ‘books, journals, magazines and newspapers, and have been written for a non-specialist audience.’ The texts might contain images or diagrams but they won’t be very specialized or take any specialized knowledge to be able to understand them.


What kind of questions do I have to answer?

There are several short Q&As types; including MCQs, matching, sentence completion and more. In this course we’ll look at all of the possible task types and give you advice on how to prepare.


Skimming is to quickly get a general idea of the text without thinking about detail. It is very important in IELTS Academic Reading because you have so much to read in a short space of time and you need to quickly identify key information that will lead you to the answers. Scanning means looking for specific information in a text and it’s something we all do all the time when we’re reading. When you read a timetable to find out what time your train leaves, that’s scanning. When you look at a newspaper to find out the result of your team’s football match, that’s scanning. Reading a lot is another evergreen tip. Not only that you need to read but also you need to read various kinds of content. On economics, tourism, medical, nature and etc Improve Alacrity through taking a lot of practice; you won’t get much time to think and understand the text. Practice to speed-up your comprehension ability with different kinds of texts.


Managing unknown vocabulary is an important skill for IELTS Academic Reading..

–and for numerous situations when you’re using English or any language.

  • Don’t stop. If there’s a word you don’t know, don’t stop reading. Time is short in the test and you could waste time worrying about a word you don’t even need to understand. Also, if you read on, the meaning of the difficult word might become clearer – so keep going!

  • Have a guess. Look at the context. Is the word positive or negative. Use your own knowledge if you can. If the text is about chemistry, perhaps the unfamiliar word is a chemical of some sort? Use whatever information you have.

  • Use your knowledge of grammar. How does the word begin or end? Does it have a typical negative prefix (un-, im-, non-, etc)? Does it look like an adjective (for example ‘-able’) or an adverb (‘-ly’)? Have a guess.


Follow other Modules with SidTips.Speaking for 8 Bands.


Learn How To Read..

Before you read: What’s the topic of the article? What information do you think it will contain? Try to predict some vocabulary you think will be in the article, and imagine what you will learn from the article.

Read the article a first time, quickly: What is the main aim of the article? Did it contain the information and vocabulary you predicted before you read? Think about how you would summarize the article in two or three sentences.

Read the article again, this time more carefully: Now think about the topic of each paragraph. What words and phrases are new to you? Is the meaning clear even where you don’t understand every word? Here are some links for you to practice for IELTS Academic Reading; BBC History Extra Discover Magazine National Geographic https://about.flipboard.com/ Sherlock Holmes, the world’s most famous literary detective







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