Skimming skills in IELTS reading

One standard piece of advice on the IELTS  sreading paper is to read the questions before looking at the reading passage itself. The grounds for this are that few if any of the questions require an understanding of the passage as a whole and, since time is short, you want to concentrate on finding the details you need to answer the questions.

I’d question this advice for all candidates in all instances. There is an equally good argument for skimming the reading passage first to give yourself some idea of where to find the information you are looking for. If you can do this efficiently, you will save valuable time later by knowing immediately which part of the passage to look at closely (ie scan) to find the answer.

I’d only do this, however, if there is an end product to the skimming process. What I mean by that is:

• key words are highlighted or underlined
• brief (one or two words) notes aboutthe topic each paragraph
• an idea of how the passage is structured: thematically, chronologically etc

If you don’t have this sort of end product, you are probably wasting your time, because under pressure in the exam you can’t rely on remembering what you have skimmed through once. If you can’t recall what you have just read then the skimming process is no longer efficient, but a waste of time.

I shall be posting more about efficient ways to skim, but to practise your skimming skills in the meantime try this timed online exercise from the University of Victoria. Note that you need to complete it in 2 minutes.