IELTS Reading: 5 skills you need to learn to score band 7, or higher

Many people tend to search what really can give better score in IELTS Reading test. There are simple answers for it: Learn skills for reading and strategies to improve your score. Although, tips and tricks have redundancy, but what it is not often said is which are the skills should be learned, let alone the details about them. Today, I am writing about the most essential skills you need to learn for the reading test.

First skill you need to learn is skimming the text. As soon you open your reading question paper, you need to apply this skill. Skimming means, you have to read the text very quickly to get the main discussing points in each paragraph. When you are done with the whole passage, it is important that you can tell why all the paragraphs are not same by the themes. In other words, you have to determine the key differences among paragraphs. By the way, what surprising benefit it can bring for you is the better time management in the test. 

Secondly, it is very important that you learn to scan. It makes bridge between passage and questions. Scanning is your ability whether after reading questions you can precisely locate the needed information in the passage or not.

Thirdly, learning paraphrasing. It is almost certain that you will not get even a single question which has not been paraphrased in IELTS reading test. Paraphrasing is the skill to express an idea in different way without changing the meaning.

Fourthly, it is very essential that you master on chunking, which is the ability to read text piece by piece to understand the passage easily and deeply. This skill is needed during Skimming, scanning and answering questions.

Finally, you need to learn intensive reading. Unlike skimming and scanning, “intensive reading” is your ability to deeply understand the text. This skill is needed to make compare, contrast, and justify information during answering questions.


Conclusion:To be frank, IELTS question paper is made to test your ability to use these 5 skills. So, better you improve them to get better score. Otherwise, it is nearly impossible to achieve  desire band score.