IELTS Reading – Master Paraphrasing and Score Band 7
15:57 Share

Hello there IELTS students. Welcome to IELTS Podcast. You no longer have to worry, fret or panic about IELTS because we are here to guide you through this test jungle. Enjoy these IELTS tutorials and if you need more help or want to access the thinnest online course you can visit us at ieltspodcast.com. What's reading?

how to paraphrase. Paraphrasing is an insanely valuable skill for your success in the IELTS reading. I'm going to give you some very detailed, practical advice with real-world examples so you can get to grips with this key skill. And I believe in

valuable, practical and actionable tutorials. This is why we are developing more tools to help you pass the IELTS exam. Smart students nowadays are using tools rather than just information to help them accelerate and pass the exam faster than ever before.

We are getting success stories now. We had Marta a few weeks ago. We have Anna. We got Jess. We got all these success stories coming out from students using tools to prepare. Of course, we cannot prepare for the entire exam just using tools. A little bit of information is necessary as well. And when you do get that information, just make sure that it's information that tells you

how to do what has been explained rather than what to do. There's a big difference there. And amateur inexperienced tutors will tell you what you need to do to get a band seven or higher.

Whereas the more experienced and reliable tutors will tell you how to get the skills you need for a band seven. And that's the main goal for this tutorial with regards to IELTS reading. We're going to give you some we're going to go deep.

very deep on a key skill you need for the IELTS reading exam. I'm going to give you very practical examples so you might want to grab a pen, write down these sentences because it will just help you learn faster and it transforms this tutorial from a passive listening exercise into an active one which is incredibly more valuable. So let's dive in to the world of IELTS reading. So imagine

for a moment that you are at the front of a mountain and this mountain is your IELTS journey and at top at the top is your band seven and some of you might be thinking I can't climb that mountain but let me tell you you can you can and you will you're going to get there you see

The IELTS reading test is not just about reading. It's about your strategy. It's about your skills. And most importantly, it's about your mindset. Now, I could tell you to practice, practice, practice, which is what a lot of useless IELTS tutors do. Practice, practice, practice. But that's telling... That's like telling a fish to swim. We're going to go much deeper than that.

So let's start with the very basic. Both the general and the academic are 60 minutes. You've got 40 questions. You probably all know that and you're probably thinking it's very tough. And you're right. It is tough. Some of you might even think it's impossible. But the words tough and impossible, those are just words thrown around.

by the smaller students who find it easier to live in a world that they've been given rather than explore the power they have to change it. So here's the first golden nugget. In the IELTS reading test, the answer is always paraphrased.

And when you understand this skill, it's like finding a diamond in the coal mine. And it's just a question of knowing where to look for it. And that's exactly what I'm going to share with you today. So let me give you some high level examples of what you might encounter on the exam. And this will help you, you know, just get to grips with this fundamental skill of paraphrasing.

So let's just imagine we are reading a passage about climate change and you come across this sentence. The unprecedented rate of global temperature increase has led to a cascade of environmental repercussions, including, but not limited to, the accelerated melting of polar ice caps and the consequent rise in sea levels.

And then you see a question that asks, what effect has rapid global warming had on the world's oceans? So can you see what they've done there? They've rephrased unprecedented rate of global temperature increase to rapid global warming.

they took the other phrase accelerated melting of polar ice caps and the consequent rise in sea levels and then they asked about the effect on the world's oceans it's just the same information it's just presented in a different way and this is why paraphrasing is such an insanely important skill

Just as a side note, you need it for the speaking and you need it for the listening because the information is going to be paraphrased there. And you definitely need it for the writing to paraphrase the question for when you're doing exactly the same skill as we are teaching now when you start off your IELTS essay.

Let's have a look at another reading text example. So let's say you are reading about the history of astronomy and you encounter this sentence on your test.

Galileo's revolutionary use of the telescope to observe celestial bodies marked a paradigm shift in our understanding of the cosmos, effectively challenging the geocentric model that had dominated scientific thought for centuries. The question might be, how did Galileo's observations change long-held beliefs about the universe?

Did you see the paraphrasing there? The revolutionary use of the telescope is paraphrased into observations. How did Galileo's observations? And then the next challenging the geocentric model is rephrased as change the long held beliefs. And then the word cosmos becomes universe.

So you're probably realizing now that this gets easier the larger your vocabulary is. And it's not an easy task to improve and extend your vocabulary bank, but it's not impossible. It usually comes through a high level of immersion in the language, a lot of reading and just checking the words that you don't understand.

and this comes with time and it's also a case of shifting these words that we know and shifting them from your passive vocabulary into your active vocabulary and trying to use them in an everyday environment and of course in context

which again is quite a tough challenge to do. This is why I fully recommend, you know, full immersion in the English language. If you love football, then listen to a podcast about the Premier League football

If you love, I don't know, architecture, listen to podcasts about architecture, but also try and go beyond your normal comfort zone. So you get this exposure to new vocabulary in its natural environment rather than just reading lists.

A quick fix to this is to listen to our IELTS vocabulary podcasts where we go into depth, we give you the topic specific vocabulary, but we give it to you in context as well.

And this is incredibly valuable, it's incredibly practical, and it just speeds up the process. But in an ideal world, you're taking your exam in four or five months' time, and you've got the time to dive into subject matter podcasts, such as the ones I mentioned, archaeology, technology, football, sports, whatever floats your boat, so to speak. Let's have another look at a phrase that's been paraphrased. So,

Imagine on the OR exam we're reading a text about psychology and we have the following sentence. Recent neurological studies have illuminated the intricate relationship between sleep patterns and cognitive function, suggesting that chronic sleep deprivation may have far-reaching implications for mental health and academic performance.

You might get a question such as: According to recent research, how might lack of sleep affect students? So here we have the phrase chronic sleep deprivation paraphrased as lack of sleep. Next, we have far-reaching implications of mental health and academic performance is simplified to affect students.

Again, according to recent research, how might lack of sleep affect students? And that phrase, that question relates to the sentence in the text. Recent neurological studies have illuminated the intricate relationship between sleep patterns and cognitive function, suggesting that chronic sleep deprivation may have far-reaching implications for mental health and academic performance.

So if you're doing the exam, you would read that question and then you need to know that that question corresponds to the sentence and then you would dig deeper and find the answer.

Find the information and it could be multiple choice, it wouldn't be sentence completion, it would probably be multiple choice. But there you've found the piece of text where you're going to find your answer through your ability to paraphrase and understand the ideas and the meaning in the questions and in the sentences.

It's all well and good me telling you about paraphrasing, giving you examples of how text is rephrased for questions and whatnot. Another skill when you're doing the reading test is just training your brain to recognize these patterns.

And once you see these patterns, you know what to look for and you can start seeing it far more frequently in the reading tests you do. And this builds on what I've mentioned in previous tutorials about reverse engineering the reading test, just digging in, getting a familiarity to how the questions are phrased, to the tricks they play like the misleading or the, what's it called?

where they correct themselves they say oh yeah it's at three o'clock oh no actually it's at 4 p.m you know all these mini corrections but you'd start to understand how the whole reading exam is structured just by reverse engineering it writing out a listening exam you can do the same reverse engineer it look at the script look at the questions start with the questions figure out which take

which technique for scoring the highest amount of points works best for you when you are preparing for the exam. Now, as you prepare for your reading test, you're going to start playing this paraphrasing game and you will use it for everything that you read. And you'll start to see how the same idea is expressed in different words.

And this is a skill and it's like building a muscle. And the more you exercise this skill or this muscle, the stronger it gets. So that brings me to the end of this tutorial. And the main takeaway here is try and focus on the ideas rather than the words. Okay. If you're just focusing on the words, it's like looking at individual trees and missing the entire forest.

And that forest is where the value is. The value is in the ideas. That's where you're going to get maximum points just by reading and extracting the ideas, extracting the meaning and extracting what has been communicated.

So, we're going to end this tutorial. If you are struggling then get in contact. Go to ieltspodcast.com and please take our tools that we offer for free. Take those tools like the AISA Checker and the IELTS Speaking Exam Simulator. Take them for a test run. Use them. This is what most smart students are doing nowadays to pass the exam quickly.

And hopefully we'll be able to interview you also on ieltspodcast.com as the next success student. So good luck. Keep moving. You will get there in the end. Have a beautiful day and good luck. Thanks for listening to ieltspodcast.com.