Reading for IELTS - Academic and General

Reading is the second part of the IELTS test, and takes 60 minutes. It consists of three or sometimes four reading passages of increasing difficulty, and there is a total of 40 questions to answer. Though you can mark and write on the Question Paper, you must enter your answers on the Reading Answer Sheet, and be aware that no extra time is given for transferring your answers from the test booklet to the Reading Answer Sheet.


This book provides essential practice for serious students who are determined to achieve a high IELTS band score in the IELTS Reading paper.


Achieving a high IELTS band in Reading is not easy! Ignore books that tell you otherwise. Books on reading techniques and tips are fine but they are not adequate preparation for this important exam. There are no easy roads to success. It is a difficult job to read demanding texts in a short time span. You need to have already been exposed to different types of texts, have acquired a wide range of vocabulary and be very familiar with the types of questions that will occur in your exam.


This book is specifically aimed at those who are serious about their IELTS exams and determined to reach their goal of going on to further academic studies or qualifying for entry to another country.


In each section, you have to do several different tasks. These include:


Answering multiple choice questions
Writing short answer to questions
Completing sentences, notes, a summary, a flow chart or a table
Labelling a diagram
Classifying ideas into different categories
Matching (e.g. headings to paragraphs or people to ideas)
Deciding if ideas or opinions are correct, incorrect or not given

The questions test a variety of reading skills including your ability to do the following:

Identify the writer’s overall purpose.
Follow key arguments in a text.
Identify opinions and attitudes.
Locate specific information.
Distinguish main ideas from supporting details.
Extract information from a text to complete a diagram, summary, table or set of notes.