IELTS Energy 1482: IELTS Q&A from Reading Forums
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1482, IELTS Q&A from Reading Forums.

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

forward slash my score. Have you read questions about the IELTS reading exam in online forums, but didn't know if you could trust the answers? Today, we share answers to three questions found in IELTS forums and provide answers you can trust. This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

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Hello, Aubrey. How's it going today? I'm great. How are you, Jessica?

I'm good. I'm excited to be answering some reading questions for our listeners. Yes, we're doing a very exciting series where we are looking up some of the questions that have been posted online in forums and sharing answers that you can trust. You maybe have even seen these questions in forums, but could you trust the answers? Who knows? Who knows who is posting those answers? So we're giving you, for each part of the exam, answers that you know you can trust.

Yes, exactly. So on the last episode, we did listening. Definitely scroll up and find that. And today we're doing reading. So Aubrey, can you tell us the first question? Yes.

And now I can't find it. Jessica, go ahead while I find my points. Okay. All right. So here's the first question. I've noticed that when I answer the questions for each exercise in a reading passage, the specific part in the passage that supports the answer is not used twice.

What I mean is that if I find an answer for question number one in the first two lines of the first paragraph, those two lines will not be used again for the support of another question. Is this a valid conclusion? Is it correct? That is such a great question. They are really diving into the strategies of the exam to save time, right? So you don't have to read...

a specific part more than once if you know that there's not two answers there, right? So let's get this answer directly. If the answer was found in the first two lines of the reading passage, do you think another answer might be found there later on?

Very unlikely, right? These are answers that are found in order. So for each question set, you know if you find an answer, then you can continue skimming from there to find keywords for the next answer. But I guess what you're asking, Jessica, is then if they start a new question set,

Could there potentially be an answer in those lines? And that's definitely possible, right? It sort of starts over with each new question set. You have to start at the top. There could definitely be an answer still in those lines, but it would make sense for that to be very rare. Yes, that is 100% correct on all counts, Aubrey. You know your IELTS strategies. Yeah, for sure. So let's say it's like

questions one to five is sentence completion. You're not going to find the answer to number two in exactly the same place as you found the answer to question number one, right? So the answers are in order. They will move on through the passage. But like Aubrey said, let's say questions six to 10 are multiple choice. You still have to go back to the beginning of the passage to start looking for the answers for question six, right? So it is

possible that you could find another answer in the same place where you found a previous one. But like Aubrey said, it is rare.

Yeah, you're going to have the same keywords right there, the same ideas. So if you imagine writing these questions, imagine the exam writers looking for information to write these questions, it would be counterintuitive to then choose those same keywords, the same meaning from that same sentence. So very unlikely that they would repeat that way.

I mean, these passages are long, you know, they're on average information. Yeah, I think the average is like seven to 800 words per passage. And that's just the average. So passage number one might be a bit shorter passage three will be a bit longer. And yeah, so there's a lot of there's a lot of space for the answers.

And if you're reading carefully those two lines to find that answer, then the test writers aren't going to want you to already have read that information carefully to get another answer super quickly. Ideally, they're challenging you instead to have to find specific answers elsewhere in the text. Totally, totally.

Can you afford to take IELTS multiple times? Even if you can, you don't have to. On this podcast, we want you to get the scores you need on test day and be on to your future dreams. That's why we created our free IELTS band score quiz at allearsenglish.com slash myscore.

Find out for free what you'd likely get on the IELTS exam and get our free resources to increase your score. allearsenglish.com slash myscore. All right, my friend, what is the next reading question?

All right. Hello. I got my IELTS results yesterday. Listening 7.5, speaking 6.5, writing 6.5, reading 5.5. I am getting stuck because of 0.5 marks in the reading section. Does anyone think I should apply for a remark in my reading? Will it get increased? Oh, that's a good question. What do you think? What do you think about that?

There's always a chance that a score will get remarked for speaking or writing. But when it comes to your reading exam, these are a little more cut and dry. They're like more specific answers that are either correct or not. So it's very, very rare for a reading exam score to change with a remark.

100% especially these days, with so many people taking the computer delivered IELTS, right? There's no room for error. They're not. The computer is not going to make a mistake in grading your reading and listening. So for the most part, guys, applying for a remark just to change those reading and listening scores, it won't pay off.

Right, exactly. And the odds that that's going to happen, yes, for speaking and writing, definitely possible. It's a little more subjective, the examiner grading these exams. But like Jessica said, with reading and listening, if there were some kind of mistake in one of those exams, it would have been cut before you sent in for this remark, right? There's so little room for error. Exactly, exactly. All right. What is our third and final question today?

All right. How can I do the reading test faster and correctly within one hour without the time shocking me? Please, I need help. That is a great question. I know. I love the way it's written. It's so perfect. Yeah.

Without a system of strategies for finding the answers quickly, the time would shock you. If you don't have strategies and you're just trying to like read the entire passage and then look at the answers and take your time finding all of the answers going back and forth between question, passage, question, passage, multiple times just for one question, you're definitely not going to finish the exam and you will be surprised when it's over. You're like,

I barely started the second passage. Exactly right. This is not just a reading comprehension exam. The exam writers know that you don't have time to read these entire passages in depth, in detail, and still have time to finish all of these questions. So you have to have strategies that help you avoid doing that. You can't plan on reading every question. You have to know how to find the answers in that text. Yeah.

Exactly. And part of the strategies is knowing how IELTS writes these exams, right? So like we mentioned in that first answer,

There are some questions that are found in order in the passage. So that saves you time knowing that, right? You don't have to start at the beginning of the passage for every single question. But there's other questions that are not in order, like matching headings to paragraphs, for example. So you need to know these things and you need to have strategies that account for these things. Yes, this is a huge time saver to know which

question types, the answers will be found in order and which won't. Because imagine if you don't realize they're in order and you're looking all throughout the passage or you find an answer and then start at the beginning, you're wasting so much time that you don't have. So you need to not only have strategies for each question type, you need to have a really good understanding of these types of things about the exam that can help you save time. Exactly, exactly.

So if you want to see the three keys IELTS strategies that have helped numerous students get a nine in a reading, check out our course guys, allearsenglish.com/keys. - Awesome, thanks Jessica. It's fun finding these questions and being able to provide answers that you guys can trust. - Exactly, exactly. We will see you next time. We're gonna continue this forum series and next time we're gonna talk about writing.

Awesome. I will see you there. 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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