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IELTS Reading Test: How to choose a time period (Mary Rose)

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Learn how to label a diagram and match dates in this chronological text about raising the Mary Rose.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Hi,
    I found your tips very helpful.
    Thank you so much.
    I just struggle to manage time in reading section.

  2. Thanks for your answers and analysis, Fiona!
    I’m still confused with Q2, I put ” FALSE” because I read the 3rd paragraph, “another sunken ship nearby”, so I got Mary Rose is NOT the only one. Could you please share more explanation on this question? Thank you, Fiona!

    • Hi Julia. That’s a very good question, and one that causes a lot of problems in Reading. Three things.
      1. Look at where ‘another sunken ship nearby’ comes in the order of the text. You will see that it comes later, in Paragraph 3. But question question 2 comes before Question 3 (Question 3 is all about the left side/right side of the boat). So the order of the questions tells us that the answer will be early on and BEFORE the topic of Question 3. So we need to look there first, and we can see that there is no information about how many other boats sank that day.
      2. The bit about ‘another sunken ship nearby’ does not tell us anything about the other ship. It does not tell us if it sank on the same day. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. We can’t find positive or negative evidence.
      3. For an answer to be FALSE we need evidence. The text should say the opposite of the statement. It should say e.g. ‘Many other ships sank that day’. But it does not say this.

      Always turn the statement into a question to see if you can answer it in the text. ‘Did any other ships sink that day?’ ‘How many other ships sank that day?’ If you can’t answer these questions, it’s Not Given.

      Does that help at all? Many thanks for your question – it really helps me see what people are having problems with, so I update the post to make it more useful. Thank you!