IELTS Reading - Multiple Choice
Objective: IELTS reading multiple choice and skimming and scanning practice.
You won't have time in the reading test to carefully read the whole passage all of the way through, so you need to find the answers in the text quickly.
This lesson shows you how skimming and scanning can help with this.
Identifying the question type
Before you start any reading pasage, you should firstly take a look at the question stems to get an idea of what you may need to look out for.
So now look at the IELTS reading multiple choice questions below this reading.
If you look at the question stems, you will see that names are often mentioned e.g.James Alan Fox, John J. DiIulio, Michael Tonry. So this immediately tells you it is a good idea to underline 'names' as you read the text.
You will then be able to quickly scan the text later to find where the answers are.
Looking at the question stems first also gives you an idea of what the reading is about.
Underline / highlight key words
As you read the text, you should get into the habit of highlighting words that you think may be important and will help you find answers later.
These are often nouns like names, dates, numbers or any other key words that stand out as a key topic of that paragraph.
Looking at the IELTS reading multiple choice questions quickly first may help with this.
IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Questions
This type of question follows the order of the text. So when you have found one answer, you know that the next one will be below, and probably not too far away.
When you start looking at the questions, you should underline key words in the question stem to help you find the answers in the text.
Look at the IELTS reading multiple choice questions again - as you will see, key words have been highlighted. You can use these to help you scan the text to find the answers more quickly.
Reading in detail
When you read the text for the first time, you should focus on the topic sentences, and skim the rest of the paragraph.
But once you start answering the IELTS reading multiple choice questions and you have found where the answer is, you will need to read the text carefully in order to identify the correct choice.
Tip: Do not think that just because you have found some words in the multiple choices (a, b or c) that match the words in the text that this must be the right answer.
It's usually not that simple so you must read the section where you think the answer is carefully.