IELTS reading and some techniques to improve ielts reading skills for students

KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ 
98 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC MINORITIES RESEARCH
IELTS READING AND SOME TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE 
IELTS READING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS
Dinh Thi Bac Binha
Dinh Thi Kieu Trinhb
Banking Academy
a Email: dinhbacbinh@gmail.com
b Email: trinhdk@hvnh.edu.vn
Received: 5/5/2019
Reviewed: 15/5/2019
Revised: 27/5/2019
Accepted: 10/6/2019
Released: 21/6/2019
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25073/0866-773X/308
The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is recognized as an accountable tool to assess whether a 
person is able to study or train in English. Every year, thousands 
of students sit for IELTS. However, the number of those who are 
recognized to be capable enough to take a course in English is 
somehow limited, especially for those who are not major in 
English at their universities.
IELTS Reading is considered as a discerning skill and it is of the 
equal importance to listening, speaking and writing in obtaining 
the objectives of IELTS of band 6 or 6.5. Being teachers of English 
at a training institution, the authors recognize that students can 
make time-saving improvements in their reading command under 
their teachers’ insightful guidance.
Keywords: IELTS reading; Skimming; Scanning; Academic.
1. Introduction
The burgeoning number of students entering 
overseas universities and the international labor 
market has prompted a necessity to establish a 
standardized language test for the evaluation of 
leaners’ language proficiency. As a result, one of 
the most extensively employed tests serving this 
purpose is the International English Language 
Testing System (IELTS). IELTS has become a 
worldwide trusted mechanism to assess learners’ 
ability, thus having been integrated in the curriculum 
of many education systems. The test covers four 
skills including Reading, Listening, Writing, and 
Speaking. Each skill demands distinctive teaching 
methods to stimulate the motivation in students. 
There has been numerous research into the strategies 
for imparting the modules regarding Listening, 
Writing, and Speaking whereas the field of Reading 
has not received much attention. Reading has never 
been considered as an interesting task, especially 
when it comes to reading tasks of more than 2000 
words with intensive acquisition. Furthermore, 
the constant exposure to academic language 
together with extensive background knowledge has 
debilitated any attempt to conquer the lengthy and 
nerve-wracking IELTS reading passages. Hence, 
they have posed a real challenge to instructors 
in the long-term for the maximum effectiveness 
of transferring the skills to learners of different 
levels. This study works on the effort to identify the 
applicable reading teaching techniques to IELTS 
Reading exam for leaners on the preparation of the 
test. 
2. General perceptions of reading
2.1. What is reading?
Reading can be regarded as an activity of 
intensive interaction between readers and the 
passage which leads to reading fluency. Reading 
requires a great deal of efforts from readers to 
decipher the true meaning by using a variety of 
linguistic and expertise knowledge. Moreover, 
the complexity of reading has triggered many 
researchers’ endeavor to perceive and work out the 
smooth reading process by scrutinizing the process 
of element skills (Grabe, 1991). Consequently, 
researchers have pinpointed the componential skills 
as followed: 
1. Automatic recognition skills
2. Vocabulary and structural knowledge
3. Formal discourse structure knowledge
4. Content/world background knowledge
5. Synthesis and evaluation skills/strategies
6. Metacognitive knowledge and skills 
monitoring
Studies carried out over the last thirty years has 
changed our assumption of reading as a process of 
decoding. As Carrell and Eisterhold considered 
reading as a “guessing game’ in which the ‘readers 
reconstruct, as best as he can, a message which 
has been encoded by a writer (1983, p. 554) 
As Grabe view reading as an “active process of 
comprehending [where] students need to be taught 
strategies to read more efficiently (e. g., guess from 
context, define expectations, make inferences about 
KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ
99Volume 8, Issue 2
the text, skim ahead to fill in the context and so 
on)”. (1991, p. 377) 
Paran believed that reading is an “activity 
involving constant guesses that are later rejected or 
confirmed’. That is, a reader does not read all the 
sentences in the same way but relies on a number of 
words – or ‘cues’ – to guess the coming sentences” 
(1996, p.25). Zhang (1993) believes that Afflarbach 
compares reading process to hypothesis testing 
(or draft-and-revision) where the reader arrives at 
the main idea after revising the initial hypothesis, 
provided that the reader holds relevant background 
knowledge. 
2.2. Classification of reading
* Classification of reading according to the 
reading manner
The word reading has a number of common 
interpretations. It may mean reading aloud, a very 
complex skill, which involves understanding the 
black marks first and then the production of the 
right noise or reading may mean silent reading and 
this is the interpretation (Moorman et al, 1994).
* Classification of reading according to the 
reading purposes
To the extent of purposes, reading can be 
classified into extensive reading and intensive 
reading.
2.2.1. Intensive reading
As reading intensively, readers have in their 
mind the purpose of achieving full understanding 
of the logical argument, the rhetorical arrangement 
or patterns of the text, its symbolic, emotional and 
social ever stones, of the attitudes and purposes 
of the author and of the linguistic means that they 
employ to achieve their ends. This type of reading 
means ‘reading short texts to extract specific 
information, this is an accuracy activity involving 
reading for details’ (Grellet, F., 1990:2)
The objective of intensive reading is 
understanding a text in detail.
2.2.2. Extensive reading
This is the case in the context that readers 
have general understanding of the text without 
necessarily understanding every word (Hedge, 
2003). The object of this kind of reading is to cover 
the greatest possible amount of text in the shortest 
possible time. Skimming and scanning are of this 
type. 
For skimming, readers go through a passage 
quickly, jumping over parts of it in order to get 
the general idea of what is about. People read 
skimmingly to get the gist of the text but not to 
find the answer to particular questions. According 
to Wood, J. (1990: 92) in “Teaching English as an 
International Language’ skimming occurs in the 
followings:
When the reader looks at the content page of 
the book, or at the chapter headings, sub headlines, 
etc. This is sometimes called previewing. Another 
example is when the reader glances quickly through 
a newspaper to see what the main items of the day. 
This will often mean just glancing at the headlines
If the purpose of the reader is to find out which 
chapter of a book is about geography or which 
advertisements in the newspaper show information 
about housing, people need scanning for relevant 
details. It is the case when readers go through a text 
vary quickly in order to find a particular point of 
information. In fact, this kind f reading is selected 
as people are looking at indices, dictionaries, 
maps, labels, reference materials, advertisement, 
etc (Hafiz, 1989). To this kind of reading, readers 
are required a very deep understanding of the 
blackmarks on the paper with short texts. They must 
achieve full understanding of the logical argument, 
the rhetorical arrangement or patterns of the text, 
its symbolic, emotional and social over stones, of 
the attitudes and purposes of the author and of the 
linguistic means that they employ to achieve their 
ends (Haller, 2000). Through intensive reading, 
readers must arrive at a profound and a really 
detailed understanding, not only of what it means 
but also of how the meaning is produced. The 
question ‘how’ here is as important as the question 
‘what’.
3. Reading in IELTS
3.1. Purpose of the reading test
The IELTS Reading test is designed to assess 
reading command of candidates with a variety 
of skills. In particular, it is to check how well the 
readers read to get the general sense of a passage, 
how well they get the main ideas, the detail, how 
well they understand inferences and underlined 
meaning, how well they recognize a writer’s 
opinions, attitudes and purpose, how well they can 
follow the development of an argument.
3.2. IELTS reading overview
There are three passages in the IELTS reading 
test totaling approximately 2,500 words taken from 
books, journals, magazines and newspapers. These 
passages are written for a non-specialist audience 
and are on academic topics of general interest 
and involving a wide range of academic subjects: 
astronomy, cultivation, history, etc... (Gabb, 2000). 
They range from the descriptive and factual to 
the discursive and analytical. Each text might be 
accompanied by diagrams, graphs or illustrations, 
and candidates are expected to show that they 
understand these too.
There are 10 to 15 questions following each 
reading passage. The questions are of a variety 
types: multiple choice, matching, true/ false/ not 
given, sentence completion or summary tasks.
KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ 
100 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC MINORITIES RESEARCH
A reading test comprises of three sections: 
Section 1 contains two or three short factual 
texts, one of which may be made up of 6 - 8 short 
texts related by topic, e.g. hotel advertisements. The 
topics are relevant to everyday life in an English-
speaking country.
Section 2 contains two short factual texts 
focusing on work-related issues, e.g. applying 
for a job, company policies, pay and conditions, 
workplace facilities, staff development and training.
Section 3 contains one longer, more complex 
text on a topic of general interest.
3.3. Reading competence requirements
Each IELTS reading lasts 60 minutes. Candidate 
are supposed to be able to skim – to read around 
170 words a minute and do not spend as long as 15 
minutes in total reading three passages.
To be able to deal with the requirements in 
IELTS reading, students must have ability to: 
*Skim-read quickly. Candidates are supposed 
to identify the main idea of each reading passage 
in general and of each paragraph in particular. To 
fulfil this, it is advised that students do not read 
supporting sentences and ignore unknown words or 
phrases (Drucker, 2003).
*Identify key words. With this, students scan 
the reading texts and the questions to spot the names 
of people, names of places, and dates that are in the 
reading passage.
*Identify paraphrase. Students should be able 
to identify the similarity in the meaning of the 
questions and that expressed in the reading passage 
(Grelette, 1990).
*Manage time. The reading test are made up 
of 40 questions of which, some are easy, others 
are of medium difficulty and the rest are extremely 
difficult. In order to score the best, student should 
concentrate on the easiest questions that they can 
answer before spend the remaining time for more 
difficult ones. 
*Expand vocabulary. For IELTS readings are 
for academic purposes. There is a requirement for a 
good command of words, expressions and phrases 
(Brown, 1994). Students are advised to enrich their 
academic vocabulary as much as possible.
4. Some implications to enable students to 
acquire IELTS high score
Most researches on reading now focus on the 
effective reading strategies that increase students’ 
comprehension. 
It is essential for teachers of reading classes to 
recognize the learning objectives for their students 
who are supposed to have capacity to read a variety 
of reading texts in English about various subjects. 
At the same time, reading class is to build a 
linguistic knowledge to facilitate reading command 
as well as schematic knowledge (Abraham, 2002). 
Furthermore, teachers are advised to equip their 
students with ability to adopt adequate reading style 
for different purpose and develop their awareness of 
the structure of any reading passages
*Teachers should teach anything important 
before their students see the reading passages
This is the pre- reading stage in any reading 
class. This stage set orientation, motivation and 
choice of reading strategies for students to cope 
with upcoming reading passage. In this stage, 
teachers are assumed to provide their students with 
vocabularies, active background knowledge and 
some reading skills (Hammer, 1992).
*Teachers should use analogies conduct 
skimming and scanning
Normally, this is advised in the while – 
reading stage which aims at developing students’ 
competence in comprehending a written passage 
with both linguistic and schematic knowledge 
(Abott et al, 1990). Students may have some 
obstacles in recognize the difference between these 
two reading strategies and teachers are suggested 
not to teacher them together 
*Before skimming, teachers should use flash-
reading and predicting 
Prior to skimming, Flash-reading is advised 
to use . This involves trying to get as much 
information as possible from a text in a very short 
time (Anthony & Richards, 1980). The major goals 
of flash-reading are to predict the topic by looking 
at titles, subtitles and headings, and to work out the 
thesis statement. Then, when the students read the 
passage again, they would identify the topic after 3 
-5 minutes skimming the passage and confirm their 
pre- assumption. 
*Checking questions should be asked after 
skimming
This is the job of the teacher to give their 
students questions for those the answers can be 
produced simply and that generate the specialist 
background knowledge in the reading passages. 
These questions are to force students to read the 
whole reading passage again (Carrell et al, 1989).
*Teachers should ask their students to do 
summarizing in pairs
Students are asked to spend about 2 – 3 minutes 
summarizing the text with a partner without looking 
at the reading passage. This activity is considered 
as a good way to see if students have picked up the 
main ideas in the reading text.
*Paraphrasing techniques should be 
demonstrated from the questions
Reading classes are to give students 
opportunities to practise some skills whereas, in test 
KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ
101Volume 8, Issue 2
situations, students are supposed to be countable on 
their existing competence and familiar strategies. 
Teachers, therefore, are advised to introduce new 
techniques and get their students masters them 
through exercises and questions. Teachers then 
should demonstrate some paraphrasing techniques 
with the first question as an example, and then get 
students to practice the remaining questions by 
them selves or with a partner.
*Students should practise guessing unknown 
words
Unfamiliar words is always an obstacle for 
every reader. Students, therefore, should practice 
guessing unknown words when learning reading. 
Teachers are advised not to give definitions of the 
words straight away but try to demonstrate the 
contextual clues. In IELTS reading, unfamiliar word 
are often technical terms and students can find a 
clear definition of the word in the passages. In other 
context, logical connectives, parallel expressions 
and collocating words can also provide enough 
clues to work out the meaning of an unknown word.
*Teachers should set their students realistic 
goals
It is certainly quite infeasible to set a goal 
that students get 40 correct answers. To achieve 
27 correct answer should require adequate time 
management skills. Notice should be given that 30 
out of 40, equivalent to IELTS 7.0 in the Academic 
score is a very good one and students should 
concentrate on the 27 easiest question rather than 
the 13 most difficult ones.
*There should be a separation between 
academic vocabulary and technical vocabulary
It is certain that, when reading, students come 
across many unknown words because reading texts 
in IELTS are rather academic. And it is the teacher’s 
role to enable students to identify the right words to 
learn. There are 3 groups of vocabulary: 
- Mainstream vocabulary. There is an 
estimation of 2000 – 3000 words in English and 
these are considered as everyday language and most 
of them are known to the students
- Formal vocabulary. This group consists 
of around 1000 word families in which, many 
adjectives and verbs are included. These words 
are not commonly used in daily communication but 
many of them are again known to students. 
- Specialized vocabulary. This accounts for 
the largest proportion in IELTS Reading. They, 
however, are always defined in the reading passage.
Students should be helped to identify the 
difference between the two last groups of vocabulary 
and put priority to acquire academic vocabulary. 
*Students should be encouraged to do task-
based reading outside class
Students are advised to practice what they have 
learnt in reading class because reading requires a 
corporation of reading skills, linguistic competence 
and adequate reading strategies. This can only be 
obtained through a lot of practice.
Below are examples of task – based reading:
- identify the topic sentence
- identify academic words and technical words 
in the reading passage
- identify pronouns with the nouns
- find the writer’s argument and do some writing 
to respond
- find names of people with their opinion or idea 
and paraphrase it
4. Conclusion
 The number of people wishing to study overseas 
or to take a course offered in English is increasing 
and the International English Language Testing 
System (IELTS) is popular as these people have 
to sit for this test to assess if their English is good 
enough to enroll such courses. In this paper, the 
authors look into reading skill to the extent of IELTS 
reading description, reading skill requirements and 
then give some suggestions for teachers to perform 
well in reading class in order to enable their students 
to get the highest possible score in the test.
KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ 
102 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC MINORITIES RESEARCH
ĐỌC IELTS VÀ MỘT SỐ KỸ THUẬT NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC 
IELTS CHO SINH VIÊN
Đinh Thị Bắc Bìnha
Đinh Thị Kiều Trinhb
Học viện Ngân hàng
a Email: dinhbacbinh@gmail.com
b Email: trinhdk@hvnh.edu.vn
Ngày nhận bài: 5/5/2019
Ngày phản biện: 15/5/2019
Ngày tác giả sửa: 27/5/2019
Ngày duyệt đăng: 10/6/2019
Ngày phát hành: 21/6/2019
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25073/0866-773X/308
Tóm tắt: Hệ thống kiểm tra tiếng Anh quốc tế (IELTS) được 
công nhận là một công cụ để đánh giá liệu một người có thể học 
hoặc đào tạo bằng tiếng Anh hay không. Mỗi năm, hàng ngàn sinh 
viên tham gia kỳ thi IELTS. Tuy nhiên, số lượng những người 
được công nhận đủ khả năng tham gia một khóa học bằng tiếng 
Anh còn nhiều hạn chế, đặc biệt là đối với những sinh viên không 
theo học chuyên ngành tiếng Anh tại các trường đại học.
Kỹ năng Đọc IELTS được coi là một kỹ năng khó và có tầm 
quan trọng tương đương với các kỹ năng nghe, nói và viết trong 
việc đạt được các mục tiêu của IELTS tại mức 6 hoặc 6.5. Là giáo 
viên dạy tiếng Anh tại một cơ sở đào tạo, các tác giả nhận ra rằng 
sinh viên có thể cải thiện kỹ năng đọc của mình dưới sự hướng dẫn 
chi tiết của giáo viên.
Từ khoá: Kỹ năng đọc IELTS; Kỹ năng đọc lướt; Kỹ năng đọc 
quét; Nội dung học thuật.
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