IELTS preparation made easier
Members Academy
Log in
If you need to increase your IELTS Reading speed in order to complete the test in 60 minutes, here are 10 time management strategies that will help.
It is quite a challenge to
in just 60 minutes.
Especially when you’re already exhausted from the Listening Test and still worrying about the Writing and Speaking Test! (And you probably didn’t sleep well the night before!).
This lesson gives you some ways to speed up your reading during your preparation, and gives you test-day strategies that WORK.
This is not exactly a time-management technique, but you need to stop worrying about getting ALL the answers correct.
You only need 23/40 (Academic) or 30/40 (GT) to get Band 6.
[See my IELTS Band Score Calculator]
So they’re not expecting you to get 40 correct answers in 60 minutes.
Time management technique: Don’t waste time on an answer you can’t find.
Move on and find an easier question that you CAN answer!
Reading speed comes from:
So when you’re preparing for the test, you need to work on a combination of these.
Building your vocabulary is essential. It’s also essential to become familiar with the types of texts that IELTS uses, and how the questions work.
At the start of all my Reading Lessons, I talk about the structure of the text.
IELTS texts can be divided into two basic types:
If you know how IELTS texts work, you will learn how to predict answers and know where to find them quickly in the text.
This is a huge part of your time management strategy.
Most people find True/False/Not Given questions difficult at first, but when you’ve done enough practice, you’ll see that there are patterns that will help you quickly guess the answer e.g.
So you need to learn how these work together with other rules about different question types (e.g. ‘You can use any letter more than once’ ‘Use no more than two words and/or a number’)
Is it better to look at the questions first? Or read the text first?
There is some disagreement about this, but I asked IELTS teachers on Twitter, and 75% said you should look at the questions first.
This is good advice. The questions are divided according to the text, so if you look at them first, you will know which parts of the text to focus on and which you can ignore (see my video above as an example).
When you’re skimming a text, use ‘clues’ to help you and UNDERLINE keywords as you go through.
The title will normally tell you what type of text it is and therefore how you should approach it e.g.
This is a good way to skim the full Reading (by reading the first lines of each paragraph). The first line often (but not always) helps you Match Headings. There’s a really good example of this here.
First names, company names, places, abbreviations e.g. UFOs [Unidentified Flying Objects]
Capital Letters are especially useful for Matching People of course!
Dates, statistics, costs etc can help you find information really quickly.
These are often used for unusual words that they will explain for you – they can help you find the information quickly e.g. to complete a table in this passage about ‘Stepwells’:
e.g. Most stepwells are found dotted around the desert areas of Rajasthan (where they are known as baori).
TABLE: ‘One of 21 baoris commissioned by Queen Navathatji’
These are words that they don’t expect you to know, and they often explain the term by saying
– commonly known as ‘____’,
– often referred to as ‘_____’
The answer is often a gapfill answer.
Learn to recognise these prompts and to ignore words you don’t understand – you probably don’t need them.
The best preparation you can do to improve your reading skills is to take your time over each text, making sure you understand as much as you can, learning essential words and using a dictionary when you need to.
BUT leading up the the exam, you will have to improve your time management skills and train yourself for the time limit.
Start by just doing 20-minute texts.
Then build up to 3 texts in 60 minutes, using an alarm to stop and move to the nex text after every 20 minutes.
Now you can focus on strategy. Some people spend less time on Task 1 (18 mins) and more time on Task 3 (22 mins).
Some people do the opposite, because they can get more correct answers in Task 1, which is slightly easier.
This all depends on your level and experience, but make sure you practice your strategy BEFORE test day so that you find what works best for you.
In the video above, you can see me using these time management strategies with a General Training Part 3 called ‘The Birdmen’.
You can see how the questions are divided according to the text, and how you can easily use the names and dates (capital letters and numbers) to find the answers.
But you still need a good vocabulary to get all the questions correct.
Strategy will never replace understanding, though with a little practice, it will definitely help!
Reading is a skill, and like any other skill, you get better the more you do it.
But make sure you’re reading the right stuff.
Only use reliable tests: I would stick with the Cambridge Practice Test Books.
Reading is processing information. And any kind of processing can be done faster, and you can train yourself to do it faster.
And the way to train yourself to read faster is to read a lot more, to read anything, read newspapers, read novels and read academic texts.
Be a reader. Get into the habit of reading different types of materials a lot and you will be able to process information more quickly.‘
Finally, here is the advice that my IELTS trainer gives his students about how to improve your IELTS score.
‘You should consider the reading test as three tests not one test because one of the biggest problems students have is they get only about half of the way through the third passage and only answer 30 questions, not 40.
If you can train yourself to read the passage and answer the questions in 20 minutes, done, move on to the next one. I think that that can help people to do the test more quickly.
Do you need motivation, high-quality materials, a roadmap, feedback, guidance and an IELTS specialist teacher?
Get instant access to all courses, challenges, boot camps, live classes, interactive and engaging classes, 1:1 support, and a friendly tight-knit community of like-minded learners to get you to Band 7+.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Hi Jonas. Sorry I missed your comment and thank you for coming to my website. There are lots of tips here to improve your score,
Best wishes
Fiona
I am Jonas, I wrote ielts ukvi academic and obtained overall band score of 6.0, with individual score as follows; speaking 7.0, writing 6.0, listening 6.0, reading 5.5. Am seriously in need of help to improve my score. Especially reading and writing.