Reading on the Tube
Andrew HirstAt the end of the semester in Level 4, we are often reminded when we see our students’ IELTS scores that reading is one of the most challenging tests for them. Students have difficulty with the length of the passages, the topic of the passages, the number of new words, and how to answer all the questions in the given time. How can we help our students improve their reading band?
As well as having different themes in level 4 to help with the topics, giving students IELTS length texts as practice in class, and having a structured vocabulary course, it is also important to ensure the students are familiar with the different question types in the IELTS reading test and they know the best way to answer each of them.
Students often try to apply the same strategy to answer all of the different questions in the reading test. This strategy of looking for the same word in the question in the text rarely works in the IELTS test. Students need to have strategies for each type of question.
To help students with this, I have created videos for each type of question in the test. The videos give some information about the question and then show students the strategies for answering it. The videos are between 5 and 15 minutes long, and students have access to them on their Blackboard course. They can be used in different ways: students can watch them before they start focusing on the question type in class, they can be watched in class with the teacher, especially if some of the points need emphasizing, or they can be set as revision before a progress test or the actual IELTS exam.
Students have found the videos very useful and being able to watch them in their own time has helped them to successfully apply the strategies in activities in class and in tests.
I started to put the videos on YouTube last year and the final one was uploaded this semester. Now students can watch them any time on their laptop, iPad or mobile phone! The videos have had over 78,000 views, and have received some positive feedback from people taking IELTS in other countries. I’m now working on videos for questions in the IELTS Listening Test.
The music accompanying each video may not be to the students’ taste, but the strategies should be very useful!
Jason Thompson
SHCT
Links to the videos are below.
paragraph – information matching
sentence completion
short answer questions
multiple choice questions
true / false / not given
yes / no / not given
matching features
paragraph heading matching
summary completion (words given / not given) (words not given)
summary completion (words given / not given) (words given)
table / flow-chart / note completion:
