And the Reading test

This is where things get a little more complicated as candidates taking the General Module test will get different texts from those doing the Academic Module, but they will have the same number of questions to answer.

In most cases, using your background knowledge is very useful (see Phrase of the day post) as it will help you connect things and answer questions quicker.

However, there are situations when this background knowledge, more specifically your studies, will cause you some trouble. Here’s how.

While teaching an IELTS preparation class one day I noticed that a student in the back row was becoming very upset as I was going through the answers for an Academic reading text. The topic of the text was research in the field of psychology.

The student got most of the answers wrong, so at the end of the lesson I talked to her to offer some encouragement as it was the first time she was taking the test. That’s when she told me that she wasn’t upset because of the wrong answers. She was upset because she felt the text had outdated information (she had recently graduated with a Bachelor degree in Psychology) and she had chosen answers based on what she had learned. I explained to her that these texts don’t always have the latest and most accurate information as it takes some time to create the questions for an IELTS test.

True, our first instinct when we read something is to put it either in the ‘Agree’ or ‘Disagree’ box in our head. But that’s not something I recommend during the test. The information you have (or may not have) in the text is what you must base your answers on.

 
Until next time, Good luck!