How can I learn to manage my time in the Reading test?
IMPORTANT: do not attempt a practice Reading test under timed conditions until you can get the score you need. It is completely irrelevant if you can finish in 60 minutes if you can't get the score you need. If you need a Band 7 and you only get a Band 6, nobody will care that you finished the test in 60 minutes. The only thing that matters is YOUR SCORE.
There are several reasons students run out of time or rush and make mistakes in the Reading test. You need to decide which of the following are slowing you down, and the work on the necessary sub skills.
- You can't quickly find the part of the text that contains the answer.
Solution: You need to get better at skimming and scanning. You can probably scan, but you might not be able to skim. Very few students can skim. You can't skim if there are too many words you don't know. You can't skim (= read very quickly understand the main idea of a paragraph) if you can't ignore details. If you don't know if something is a detail until after you've read it, you aren't skimming. Learn to skim and improve your vocabulary.
- Complicated grammar takes a long time to decipher.
Solution: Improve your general reading skills. You don't have to learn how to produce complicated grammatical structures, but you do need to be able to understand them.
- You read words and sentences that do not contain the answer. In other words, you don't (or can't) ignore the irrelevant information.
Solution: Follow the strategy. This probably means you need to master the sub skills.
You might know that you are supposed to skim to find the relevant part of the text, but you might not actually be able to skim. Skimming means reading very, very, very quickly to find the main idea only. You ignore every single detail. If you cannot ignore the details, you cannot skim. If you cannot skim, you cannot follow the strategy. Learn to skim.
- When you find the part of the text that contains the answer, you read the words and sentences too slowly.
Solution: Increase your reading speed.
Finally, if you want to get better at reading, you have to read and read and read, and then read some more. There are two ways to approach reading, and you need to practice both separately (you can't do both at the same time):
- read to learn new words and improve your vocabulary
- read for meaning (= you think about why this or that information is included, why the author used this word or that word, why the author used this expression instead of that expression, etc.)
