IELTS Energy 1471: Travel This Passive Reading Practice for IELTS
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1471. Travel this passive reading practice for IELTS.

Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English, downloaded more than 22 million times with former IELTS examiner Jessica Beck and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com

Today, you will learn a great tip about IELTS reading. When the passive voice is used in a reading question, it can be confusing. We'll talk about grammar and parallel expressions today, so you'll be ready for the trickiest reading questions on IELTS. With the Venmo debit card, you can turn the spa day that your friends paid you back for into concert tickets that you can earn up to 5% cash back on.

where a spa day with the girls becomes concert tickets. Visit venmo.me slash debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank, and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated. Terms apply. Dosh cash back terms apply. Hello, Aubrey. How's it going? I'm great. How are you?

I'm great. I'm excited to talk about reading. We've done some amazing episodes lately about vocabulary and speaking. So, it's time to get back to another section of the test, reading. Yes, and reading is one of the exams where you have to have strategies. I mean, all of them, clearly, but reading

It's amazing the difference we see in students that take practice reading exams or take the IELTS exam and then learn our three key strategies, how much higher of scores they get. Yes, guys. So many of our students have gotten nines on the reading exam. So if you also want to increase that score, check out our complete course, allearsenglish.com slash K-E-Y-S. All right.

All right, let's get into it. So we got an interesting question from a listener. Aubrey, can you read that question, please? Yes, this is from Sarah, who said, "I feel like reading is very tough. Any reading tips, please? I find it difficult to interpret when it comes to passive voice. I can't find a word in the passage in order to answer the question."

This is such a great question, and I can really see how this could trip students up if they're looking for verbs in present simple and they're missing those past participles that you see when it's passive voice. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so passive is when we take out the subject of the sentence, right? And if the question is phrased in the passive and you don't know the subject of that sentence,

It can be difficult to know what to look for. So, yeah, I can see how that would be confusing. Today, guys, we're going to read a short excerpt from a New York Times article. And then we have created two IELTS questions with the passive voice based on this article. So we can show you guys how to find these answers. Aubrey, can you read first the short excerpt? Yes. All right.

Traveling off-season, booking early, playing with flexible dates, and going somewhere off the beaten path are tried and true budget travel strategies. But each year brings traffic patterns and perennial sales that can cue savvy travelers on when to book and when to travel.

Whatever the timing, it pays to shop for travel during low-demand spots on the calendar well in advance. That means usually booking domestic airfares 30 to 60 days out and international trips three to five months in advance. Reserve lodgings ahead too, but make sure they are refundable so that if prices drop, you can rebook at the lower rate.

Okay, so that would be a beginning of a reading passage, right? The reading passages on IELTS for the academic test, at least, are always going to be a lot longer than that. And you know what? It just occurred to me there is so much great vocab in that passage that I think next time, next episode, we're going to talk about that travel vocab. Yes, absolutely. So be sure to hit follow so you don't miss it.

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All right, let's get into a couple questions based on this article. Aubrey, what is the first question today? All right, our first question is, how can money be saved while traveling? Choose three answers. And then we have five possible answers. A, going on unpopular dates. B, traveling during the holiday season. C, planning ahead. D,

D, traveling for pleasure, not business. And E, going to unpopular places. Okay. So we have passive in that question, right? How can money be saved? Now that's tricky because that is the parallel expression for budget travel strategies in that first sentence, right? Exactly, right? And if you are very used to just present tense, you would expect

the subject here. How can you save money? How can one save money, really? But if you're used to looking for passive, this is a really great exercise to prepare for the reading exam. Then when you say, here, C, when you see B saved, that's going to trigger like, okay, money is saved. I need to look for parallel expressions for cost savings.

Yes. Awesome. All right. So let's get into the answers here. Let's go one by one. So A, going on unpopular dates. Is that in the passage?

So we did hear, I keep saying hear because I'm thinking of as an audio, but read. It could be listening practice today too. Yeah, right. It's both really. So in the passage, you would have seen traveling off season. And then again, perennial sales that can cue us when to book. So there were a few places where you heard and then calendar, low demand spots on the calendar. So all of these are parallel phrases for calendar.

you know, times that are not high demand, which though it doesn't explicitly say that, we know that holidays are the highest demand for traveling. Totally. So A is definitely one of the answers, but we need two more. So what about B, traveling during the holiday season? Do we see that in there?

And this is the opposite of that, right? You're seeing all of this about low demand. So we know that this would not be the holiday season. So you don't see it in the text and this would not be one of the options. Exactly. What about C, planning ahead? Is that in there?

Yeah, we saw booking early. So you know, if you would want to have read these options ahead of time, and you're listening for something to do with planning ahead. And when you hear right at the top of the or when you see it right at the beginning, booking early,

I keep wanting you to have heard it. You did hear it, right? Because you're on a podcast, but when you're reading the passage. Guys, this is why it's tricky to cover reading in an audio medium. Right, exactly. But you would have seen in the passage, booking early and would know that is a parallel expression for planning ahead.

Yeah. And then again, later in the article, right? Booking 30 to 60 days out. Yeah, that's planning ahead. All right, D, traveling for pleasure, not a business. I think we could use our like common sense, right? That that doesn't really fit.

with the question. That doesn't have anything to do with it being expensive or inexpensive, but nonetheless, we still have to make sure that that's not an answer. After reading through the passage again, I would know for sure that it does not say that. It doesn't even talk about the difference between pleasure and business travel, so that is not an answer, which means we are left with E,

And that has to be an answer because we need one more to make it three. So going to unpopular places. What's a parallel expression for that in the passage? And this is tricky because what it says is somewhere off the beaten path. So this is an idiom that you would need to be familiar with to know that that means unpopular places, destinations that not a lot of people go to.

And I think that idiom, like it's not a low-level idiom, but it is an idiom that you would be expected to know, that IELTS would think you would know, because a lot of students know that idiom, right? Yes, definitely. So let's move on to a true, false, not given question. I can imagine the passive could really trip you up on these as well.

Totally. All right. So here's the question. Cheaper fares can be found, there's the passive, can be found when booked a month or two in advance. So we would circle keywords first, right? I would circle month, I would circle two, I would circle advance. And then scanning the passage, I see 30 to 60 days out. So that's the parallel expression for the keywords in the question. And

And the next step is to read that whole sentence and compare to the question. Does it agree? Does it disagree? Or is there something not there? What do you think? Yeah, and we have here, that means usually booking domestic airfare 30 to 60 days out and

and international trips three to five months in advance. So you can see that it does explicitly state that when they are booked in advance, 30 to 60 days out, they are cheaper. So you know this answer is true. One thing that's tricky here is knowing that out, like there are a lot of meanings to this word out. And in this context, it means in advance, 30 to 60 days before your travel date.

Exactly, exactly. So that's the takeaway today, guys. Make sure that you are keeping in mind that there are parallel expressions, not just for words or phrases themselves, but also for the grammar. So don't let a passive structure in the question trip you up. You should still be able to match parallel expressions, understand the meaning, and get those answers correct.

Awesome. Be sure to hit follow guys so you don't miss our excellent episode coming up where we dive into some of this very impressive vocabulary from this reading passage. And I will see you there, Jessica. Awesome. See you next time, Aubrey. Bye. Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy. Hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish.com slash myscore.

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