 I interviewed four students who were struggling with IELTS reading and eventually got a band nine so that you can learn exactly how they did it. Interestingly, all four band nine students said the same four things and that's exactly what we're going to teach you in this video so you can go from struggling with IELTS reading to getting the score that you need more easily. Let's start off with Valentin who went from a band six in reading to a band nine. What tier would he have to say about strategy? I had a big struggle with destruction. I could be easily distracted by true false not given questions and I really hated all the questions related to topics so when you should place topics for different parts of the text I really hate them. So what Valentin said there was that he found certain question types distracting and he talked about hating true false not given and hating matching headings questions and this is very very common for students who deserve a very high score like they deserve a band eight or a band nine but they're getting a low score. They're getting a five or a six and the reason is that they hate certain questions which means that they go into the test and when they see the question they're very distracted as Valentin said and that wastes a lot of time and leads to lower scores. So in terms of overall strategy what we did with Valentin was give him a step by step strategy for true false not given and for matching headings and this removed all of the fear and ensured that he got all of those questions correct which improved his overall score and don't worry we will give you those strategies at the end of this video and the other students that got band nine will show you what they did for those questions as well but overall we want to remove any distractions or any fear from the test so that we can perform to our best ability on test day. Now let's check out what Priyanka said about strategy. So she went from band seven point five to a band nine. Each type of question has a trick like for filling the blanks or just answering the question you can skim the paragraph you should not read the whole paragraph but like for the true and false and match the heading questions like that you have to read the paragraph so you should focus your time over there instead of the matching or filling the blanks. So what Priyanka said was each question has a trick now I corrected her on that and said you know what you really mean is a strategy. So there are no tricks that you can employ but you can employ step by step strategies for each different type of question and this is something that every single band nine student that we interview they all say the same thing you must have a strategy for each of the different types of question you learn that strategy you apply it on test day and then you're able to do what Valentin and Priyanka did which was go from you know band six to a band nine or seven point five to a band nine and don't worry she's going to go into more detail on the matching heading strategy later in this video but let's check out what Jazwan said in the video and he went from a band six point five to a band nine a huge increase. You don't have to have in a good knowledge and vocabulary especially for the reading part the main skills you needed are you know skimming and scanning and understanding different formats of the exam I mean like different question types and as you can see he agrees with Priyanka what he says is that each different type of question is testing different things they are different therefore you need a unique strategy for each of the different question types this is a huge difference between students who get like a band five point five six six point five and the students that get band eight and nine generally the lower level students will have one strategy for all of the different types of questions whereas band eight and nine students will understand that each question is different and they will learn and apply a unique strategy to each of the different question types and we're going to give you all of those at the end of this video finally let's take out Shorbani Shorbani went from about six point five to about nine and what she says in this clip blindly follow the strategies totally I would say that all the strategies that I learned from I'll disadvantage I just blindly followed those strategies I used to be highly confused and used to take so much of my time thinking that where is the answer but when I got the strategies and I blindly just followed the strategies and that that was really helpful so band nine students don't just look at strategies they don't look at a few YouTube videos or read a couple of books and look at the strategies they memorize the strategies they practice the strategies so that on test day they can blindly follow them they are not deviating at all from exactly what the strategy does you might think that this is a lot of work but it's all about putting in the work before your test so that your test is easy when Shorbani talks about blindly following the strategies what she is really saying is that she didn't even have to think about the strategies she had practiced them so many times that when she saw each question she automatically without even thinking applied those strategies this makes test day much much easier because you are not thinking about what to do on the test you're automatically applying everything which reduces stress reduces cognitive load and not only improves your reading but also means you have far more energy to apply to the other three skills you will be doing on test day now let's look at what the students say more specifically about the two most difficult the two most challenging question types matching headings and true false not given so what Priyanka says about matching headings is this I always used to do is like I always read the questions and all the headings which question is asking us to but we should not do that we should just straight away go to the passage and read the passage and with each passage we should give them particular idea of that passage or write somewhere that idea so that in the last you can match it what's your idea and what's given in question so this advice shows you how important strategy is if you were not following the strategy you would be getting lost because what most students do is they look at the headings the questions first and then they read the passage that means that they're going to waste a lot of time and they're going to be looking for things that are not there and they're going to get highly confused not know what to do we do exactly the opposite we taught Priyanka to look at each of the question paragraphs first and actually create their own headings for each paragraph and then you'd look at the list of headings and it's much much much easier because all you have to do then is match your headings with the list of headings in the question there now let's check out what Jaswant has to say about matching headings I love your tips Chris you know before I used to start you know just going through the paragraphs and you know I used to do all that but then you told me that you know you know don't see the headings before even starting the paragraphs right so that's the one key important that helped me to you know score that perfect mind in the reading exam so exactly the same advice exactly the same strategy and when you see successful people doing the same thing there's a quote success leaves clues whenever you see successful people in any walk of life doing the same things you should copy them now let's check out what Shrabani has to say about matching headings when it comes to matching headings we have to read the passage first make our own headings and then match those headings with the headings given so you know practicing this strategies and remembering those strategies this takes couple of sometimes need a lot of slow slow practice so not only did Shrabani give advice exactly the same as the other two Band 9 students she also gave advice about how she learned the strategies because Band 9 students as I said before don't look at a strategy once they memorize it and she talked about slow practice slow practice is when you get some real practice tests and you don't try and do them as quickly as possible you don't do them under exam conditions you open up the book you find the question type that you want to work on and you work on learning the strategy not on getting all the questions correct it doesn't matter at that stage that is why we call it slow practice you might take 20 minutes for one question or one hour for one question because your focus is on learning your focus is not on getting up to exam speed so very very good advice from another Band 9 student there so I'll give you that matching heading strategy in a lot more detail at the end of the video for free but let's see what they have to say about true false not given because it is completely different so let's check out what Shrabani has to say about true false not given for true false are not given next for example I used to read the passage first and for not given questions I used to be highly confused and used to take so much of my time thinking that where is the answer but when I got the strategies and I blindly just followed the strategies and that that was really helpful so as you heard there Shrabani would read the text first for true false not given and this would lead to a huge amount of confusion and this has knock-on effects on the rest of your test is if you think about it if you get lost with one type of question it wastes a lot of time and it also really increases stress so a lot of students that we work with deserve a band 8 8.5 9 but because they mess up one part of the test that means that the rest of the test is messed up as well because you're running out of time you're very stressed when you're stressed your brain is not working optimally so it is really really important that you establish what your weaknesses are and have a strategy for each of the different question types so let's check out what Priyanka has to say about true false not given and the differences between what is true what is false and what is not given if you have read the paragraph first and then you are reading the question then it's really easy to know that it's not given in the paragraph so you should market not given so what she's saying there is not that she read the text the paragraph first and then read the questions she's talking about comparing the paragraph that you think contains the correct information and the question statement and if you can't find any information in there then it's not given and really what band 9 students say over and over again is you must develop the confidence to write not given because searching a paragraph for something that is not there is like me telling you to go into the next room and find something that is not there it's going to take you a huge amount of time and you're going to get lost and you're going to get confused by practicing the strategy that will give you at the end of the video it gives you the confidence to immediately look and say okay this isn't here I can't find it let's move on and not given and then she says when something is there so when something is there then you have to think about is it true or is it false so if it's not there not given if there's something in there related to the question statement then you decide is it true or is it false but when something is there and you can correct that sentence that means it's a false so what she said there was if you can look at the text and think this is wrong I can actually correct it I can change it to something that is true then that is false but there are many other ways that you can do that but that is a very logical way of thinking about it so first of all is it there if it's not there it's not given if it is there then you need to decide is it true or is it false if you can correct the statement then it is false if you can't correct it if it's the same then it is true importantly don't just look at this short part of the video and think that you have mastered true false not given questions you need the strategy and you need to practice it slowly you need to master it and then apply it on test day we'll give you that at the end of the video now let's move on to time management it's very common for students to email us and ask us for time management tips but what by nine students say is completely different from time management tips let's have a look at what Priyanka says actually I never faced problem with time management since I started practicing like from first day I was able to complete my test in one hour so she never faced an issue with time management at all does this mean that you can't learn from her no because this is reflected in what Jazwan said as well for reading I've did like more practice on it I was reading some online articles as you always suggested in the course like I've been going through when reading the BBC articles so that really improved my skills a lot so he talks here about reading in a spare time to be honest with you Chris I was more interested in like you know wildlife so I was reading more more that kind of you know things that interested me that will make you to you know I'll read anything with ease right I don't have to struggle with anything he talks about reading something that he loves reading about wildlife find any like new vocabulary I will make a separate note of it and then here he talks about making notes about new vocabulary what has this got to do with time management so both these by nine students were reading in their spare time they were practicing that skill they were reading things that they enjoyed so they were doing it sustainably and regularly and they were actively reading they were improving their vocabulary as they were doing it this means that time management is not an issue at all you do not improve time management by learning time management tips you improve time management by becoming better at reading let me give you a quick analogy so Usain Bolt was the fastest man in the world is Usain Bolt better at time management than these guys are these guys behind Usain Bolt because they don't have the same time management skills no Usain Bolt is better at running these guys are not as good at running as Usain Bolt exactly the same with not only the reading test but also the writing test students that get a band nine do not think about time management at all when I did the real IELTS reading test I got a band nine in 20 minutes after 20 minutes I just went to the toilet and then came back and just stared at the ceiling that is not because I did anything magical or looked up top 10 magic time management tips the night before the test in fact I was in the pub drinking the night before the test it's because I'm a native English speaker and I am an IELTS teacher of course I should easily be getting a band nine but there is one extra thing that band nine students do related to time management that lower level students don't do so there are three sections in the reading test section one section two section three and they will get more difficult as you go through them let's have a look at what Shrabani has to say about that what I did I did some time bounding practice and I checked that each and every section how much time I'm spending and I realized that initially I used to spend a lot of time in the section one and section two so I used to have very little time left for the third section in an Excel sheet I marked my times like I'm taking seven minutes usually initially I used to take 10 minutes after that it came to seven minutes I told myself that I have to make it finished by five minutes and so this this type of practice actually helped me to you know complete the test within time and just once there's a very similar thing here so I don't know you know how much time I should allocate for each section so I try to complete you know first two sections in 30 minutes so that I will have plenty of time for my section three right so what they understand is because the questions get progressively more difficult they spend a lot more time on the more difficult questions later on in the test so most bad line students that we work with tend to not think about I must spend this number of minutes on each question or this number of minutes on each section what they generally do is they try to get section one and two done as quickly as possible correctly but as quickly as possible and then that gives them a lot more room a lot more time at the end to really think and focus in on the last most difficult questions so to summarize band 9 advice real band 9 advice from real band 9 students each question is different and you must have a separate strategy for each of them true false not given and matching head questions are difficult and can cause problems but not if you practice them and master them and apply a real strategy to those questions and then finally time management tips just don't exist it's all about improving your reading your reading skills and your vocabulary and if you get to that level band 9 is inevitable it just will happen for you so what you need to do now is check out this video or this video it will be here which gives you every single question type and strategies for all of those get some practice questions and practice them slowly until you've mastered them don't book the test until you're ready if you need any help with your preparation feel free to get in touch