 At IELTS Advantage we've helped hundreds of students get a band nine in their IELTS reading test and what I thought I would do today is show you a simple technique that we use to help students get a band nine in their IELTS reading test. I'm also at the end of this video going to give you a free reading course that has helped thousands of students get a band seven, eight or even nine in their IELTS reading test. So as you can probably see the clue to improving to a band nine level is looking at your answers and so every IELTS reading test looks the same. It has three sections section one, section two and section three and then it will ask you a range of different types of questions. Now the combination of questions will vary from test to test but it always has these three questions and then there are about 10 or 11 different question types such as true, false, not given, matching headings, multiple choice. You need to be aware of these. You also need to make sure that you use real official practice tests if you want to know where to get real official practice tests and not use fake tests. I'll put a link in the description and somewhere in the video to show you where you can get real practice tests. It's really important for this technique that you use practice tests that are official. So Cambridge English practice tests or practice tests from the British Council or IDP. If you use other practice tests this technique will not work. So the first thing you need to do is do an official practice test under exam conditions. That means a practice test that you've never used before. It is best if you do two or three of them but for the purposes of this video I'm just going to show you what we would do if a student did one. So what we would do with our student is we would get them to focus not on the questions that they got correct but the questions that they got wrong and this will reveal how they are going to get a band nine. So let's look at some common scenarios to show you how we can help you improve. So let's say we have our first student and we notice that they get all the questions correct except this question, this question, this question, this question, this question, this question, this question and this question. So by looking at their wrong answers we can see that for this particular type of student what they need to do is just focus on two question types. They obviously have got all of these right, all of these correct, all of these correct, all of these correct and section three is the most difficult part. So it shows that there's no problem with their reading skills, no problem with their vocabulary. But every time they get a true false not given question or a matching headings question, they're very likely to get that question wrong. So for this student what they need to do is just focus on a strategy for matching headings and a strategy for true false not given. And if they do that they're going to dramatically improve their IELTS reading score because they are thinking and improving strategically. They're not trying to improve everything. They are identifying the key problem and then fixing that key problem. Or as we say on our VIP course, turn your weaknesses into strengths. So we've identified that this student has a problem with these two types of questions. They're going to turn this weakness into a strength. And then it's very likely that they are going to get a very high score if they fix these two question types. Now let's look at a different student. So this student gets nearly all the questions correct, but they get this one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong and this one wrong. So section one is quite easy. Section two gets a little bit more difficult and section three gets even more difficult still. So if the student is getting all or mostly section one and section two correct, but when they get to section three, they get nearly all section three wrong or most of their mistakes are in section three. This is an indication that this student needs help with their reading skills and or their vocabulary. Most of the time it will be both because section three, the text is going to be more difficult. The words in that text will be more difficult to understand. And the reading skills required, it requires more skimming, scanning, close reading. So for this student, most of them are incorrect. So we need to help this student mostly with their vocabulary and their reading skills. It could also be for a student like this where they're getting mostly section three wrong, where they are running out of time. So they had no problem in the first two sections, but they're running out of time. If they have a timing issue, then we need to help them with the different types of questions familiarize themselves with the different types, help them with the strategy for those different types of questions, and then slowly build up speed. So if you had a problem for it, let's say this student just could never get everything done on time. What we would do is we would start off very slowly with this student, we would say, okay, take 90 minutes to do everything properly. Can you get everything correct in 90 minutes? Let's say they do that, or they get nearly all of it correct in 90 minutes. Well, let's try it then in 80 minutes, and then 70, and then 60. So we're slowly building up speed. And that's how we would help that type of student. So we've helped student A, who just needs help with true, false, not given and matching headings, student B, who obviously needs help with vocabulary and their reading skills, and students C, who just needs to improve the speed at which they do the reading test. Now let's say we're working with a student and they get this one wrong, and this one wrong, and this one wrong, and this one wrong, and this one wrong, this one wrong, and this one wrong. So this is quite unusual because this particular student only has problems when they actually have to write the word. And they had no problem actually getting the correct answer. They got the correct answer for all of these. They have no problem, therefore, with sentence completion or summary completion, because they actually find the correct answer. However, this student spelt equipment wrong, concerns wrong. They're a problem with the spelling of procedure, injuries, sunlight, transpiration and weight. So for this student, they do not need to work on strategy. They do not need to work on speed. They don't need to work on vocabulary or reading skills. They just need to work on spelling. So as you can see, each student is very, very different. And we need to understand what their weakness is first, and then we attack that weakness. And spelling, there are different ways that we can help students with their spelling. But unless that student did this analysis, this weakness analysis, they would never be able to really understand their problem. Imagine this student goes and does like a very long reading course at a school somewhere. And they learn all of these different strategies and techniques and everything. They're not actually going to improve because the real issue is spelling. And it takes about, you know, one hour to figure this out. Now we have another student. They get that one wrong, that one wrong, that one wrong, that one wrong, that one wrong, that one wrong, and that one wrong. So as you can see, matching information, matching headings, matching statements, this is a particular type of problem with matching. Each different type of question tests different reading sub skills. So matching one of the sub skills that you need to learn for that is scanning. So scanning for the location of the correct answer. So with this student, often you will hear people saying things like, Oh, I just get lost and I run out of time. Well, really, it's not the student getting lost or losing focus or running out of time. It is just they really need to work on their ability to scan, or it might be a skimming issue, or it might be that whenever the question requires students to really read carefully and think deeply about the answer, they get those questions wrong. So they need to work on close reading. So to summarize, it is extremely rare for a student to just be bad at reading and just continuously get low reading scores. There is always a reason. Normally, it's one or two of these reasons. What you need to do again is get official practice tests, do at least one, better to do two or three under exam conditions, and then do this analysis of your weaknesses, and then turn those weaknesses into strengths. If you want to know how to do that in more detail, check the description. There is a free reading course that has helped thousands of people get the reading scores that they need. And if you need any other help, feel free to get in touch with us at IELTS Advantage. If you have any suggestions for further videos, any feedback, feel free to put them in the comments. If you didn't like this video, feel free to give it a dislike. Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed the video.