My Number 1 tip for saving time in IELTS Reading

Do you find it impossible to finish the IELTS Reading questions in 60 minutes?

A common complaint about IELTS Reading is that there is too much to read in too short a space of time: 20 minutes for each text! 3 texts! 40 questions!

And what’s more, you don’t even have extra time to write your answers on the answer sheet – you have to do all of that on top of everything else!

So what can you do about it?

You can’t change the length of the texts or the number of the questions or the time you’re given, that’s for sure.

BUT! You can change the way you approach the texts.

All of my Reading Lessons show you:

• how the questions are organised
• where you can find the answers quickly
• ways of saving time and NOT read everything
• easy ways of spotting correct answers
• how to dismiss incorrect answers
• how to use your common sense and background knowledge to get you closer to the right answer.

Let’s look at an Academic Reading Passage 1

I’m using a real test so that I can guarantee it is reliable in terms of the question types and difficulty. You can find the full test here.

Remember:

• 99.99% of the time, the questions always come in the same order as the text
• the text is divided in the same way as the questions
• the first set of questions relates to the FIRST HALF of the text
• the second set of questions relates to the SECOND HALF of the text

So what you need to do first is find where the first half ends and the second half starts.

This will save you so much time.

Look at the questions first – they are divided into

• True/False/Not Given (Questions 1 – 7)
• Multiple Choice (Questions 8 – 13).

How does this help?

Look at the second group (Question 8). This starts with some numbers.