- [Chris] So today we're going to answer a question
that we often get,
which is why is my IELTS reading score, not increasing?
And there are four key things
that we're gonna talk about today
to explain why students,
no matter how much work they do,
they still struggle to increase their reading score.
So when students email us and tell us,
my score is not improving, they're often frustrated
for one of two reasons.
Normally they say that they have done
some kind of reading course
that has lots of strategies in them.
So they'll say I have completed this course
or I am following these strategies.
And my score is not increasing.
Also commonly, we get students who say,
I have done all of the practice tests that I can find,
I've done all of the Cambridge books,
all of the online tests,
and my score is still not increasing.
And the problem is is that if you are just relying
on doing lots of practice tests,
this is not going to help you increase your score at all.
In fact, it can lower your score,
because if you're doing the wrong things,
practicing doing the wrong things
is going to lead to you getting worse not better.
Also many students have a misconception
about learning on a course or learning strategies
and thinking that these will automatically
increase their score.
In fact, if you do it wrong, it will decrease your score.
So in order to solve this problem,
we teach our students four simple things.
So what we do, is we explain to them
that the strategy that we're gonna use
is kind of like a car.
So I know that this is a beautiful drawing of a car,
I know that my drawing is amazing,
so thank you so much for complimenting me
in the comments on that.
But, a car has four tires, okay?
So it doesn't matter how good your car is.
You could have a brand new Tesla worth $100,000.
If one of your tires is busted,
that car is completely useless.
These four things over here represent the four tires
and if one of these things is missing,
then it doesn't matter how many practice tests you do,
it doesn't matter how many courses you do,
it doesn't matter what you do,
you will not increase your reading score
unless you do all four of these things.
So let's talk about what these four things are.
So the first thing you need
is you need a strategy for each question type.
So for example, you might have a true, false,
not given question
or you might have a matching headings question.
And these two questions are testing different sub-skills
and require a very different strategy
for each of these two different types of questions.
Now the problem is, is that many students
will learn a strategy and then go and do a practice test
or some practice questions
and then what they'll say is, your strategy does not work.
Well that is a problem with your overall approach
not with the strategy.
Because your goal is not to look at the strategy once,
it is to master the strategy.
So the key thing that you need to do at this stage
is master the strategy.
So what does master means?
Master means that you could teach that strategy
to someone else.
If someone asked you, what is the strategy
for true, false, not given?
You wouldn't have to look at your note,
you wouldn't have to check anything,
you would be able to tell them,
oh, step one you do this, step two you do this,
step three you do this, step four you do this.
And you can tell someone automatically what to do.
In other words, on test day,
you were able to look at a true, false, not, given question
or a matching headings question or multiple choice question
and do these strategy automatically
without even thinking about it.
The problem is, is that if you look at a strategy
but you haven't really mastered it,
that strategy is useless.
Your wheel here, your tire is broken.
So that brings us onto the second part
which is practice test.
So what a lot of students believe
is if they do more practice tests,
their score will increase.
Well, this is not true.
So what you need to do is approach practice test
a little bit differently.
Your goal here first is just to have a first goal,
which is to master the strategies.
So this means that you take a step by step strategy
and you take some practice questions
and you take as long as you want, time does not matter here,
what matters is you mastering the step-by-step strategy.
So if it takes you 1 1/2 hours or two hours
or three hours just to do one practice test,
that is absolutely fine.
The mistake that a lot of students make
is that they look at a strategy
and then they do a practice test under exam conditions,
they don't get the score that they need
and then they get very frustrated
and they'd blame the strategy, or they blame themselves
and they start to think I'm not good enough
and I'm going to fail this test, I hate this test.
(chuckles)
And then they give up.
You don't need to feel that way.
So first of all, you take a strategy
and you apply it to practice test
and take as much time as you want
because you're just trying to master that strategy.
Take as much time as you want,
think about what you're doing.
And then once you are comfortable using the strategies,
you can use the practice test for goal number two.
Goal number two, is do it under exam conditions
because you're just trying to find out your weakness.
So you're gonna do a weakness analysis.
In other words, you're looking at your mistakes.
What mistakes are you making?
And are there any patterns to these?
So that takes us on to the third thing here,
which is mistakes or weakness analysis.
So you're going to think deeply about each mistake.
And the reason why you're doing this is
you are trying to establish any patterns.
Are there any common reasons
why you are getting a low score?
So for example, if we have a look over here at our mistakes,
let's say you get 10 questions wrong,
and eight of them are spelling.
So you got eight out of 10 wrong
just because of spelling errors.
Or you might find that you got confused about the strategy
for a particular question,
or you might have worked out that
you couldn't find the correct answer
because you didn't understand some of the words
it was a vocabulary issue, or it could be a skills issue,
for example, you find it difficult to find the location
of the correct word that would be a scanning issue
or you find it very difficult to understand general meaning
that would be a skimming issue
or it could be a particular type of question,
for example, every time you do a true false,
not given question,
you really struggle with that particular type of question.
Or every time you do multiple choice questions,
you really struggle with that particular type of question.
And if you never do this, again you will have a busted tire.
And it doesn't matter how good everything else is,
it doesn't matter how good of a car you have,
if you have one busted tire, you are not going anywhere.
That car is completely useless.
You will not go anywhere.
Your score will not increase until you follow this system.
But that is not the end of it.
Once we understand what our weaknesses are,
what our common mistakes are,
let's say you look and you see that vocabulary is an issue
and true, false not given questions are an issue,
you cannot just stop there.
You wouldn't believe the number of students
that we work with.
Even we work with one-on-one and we tell them,
the only reason why your reading score is not increasing
is because of vocabulary
and this particular type of question.
And then they do nothing,
they go and do the test and then they fail.
You don't want to be one of these students.
What you want to do next is work on your weak areas.
So we want to take our weak area
and we want to convert that weak area into a strength.
So for example, we want to improve our vocabulary
or improve our ability to answer
true, false, not given questions.
So we're acting more like a sniper than with a shotgun.
It's a sniper approach.
We're not focusing on everything,
we're just focusing on one or two weaknesses.
But you must use these four things
and you must use them in order.
And then that brings us on to our last part,
whoops, which is all about time.
So every time I explain this to a student,
what the student will normally say is,
I don't have time to do all of this.
Chris, can you not just give me some quick tips
and that's going to really increase my score?
No, because there are no quick tips
that are going to increase your score.
So I had a recent student, a VIP student,
and she was a pharmacist, all right?
So I said, "Imagine I come into your pharmacy
with a headache,
so this is me with my headache,
I'm not very happy because I've got a headache,
and I say, can you give me some drugs,
can you give me some medicine to cure my headache?"
And she is a great pharmacist.
So she gives me some paracetamol to improve my headache.
Imagine I come back five minutes later and say,
your paracetamol, your medicine doesn't work
because I still have a headache, what would you say?
And she said, "I would think
that you were being very unreasonable and very difficult."
Yes, certain things take time, all right?
So if you have two students,
imagine we have two students
and one student let's say today is June 1st
and they've booked their test for July 1st
and they want to get everything done
as quickly as possible in 30 days.
Then we have another student, so today is June 1st
and instead of thinking about booking the test,
what they do is they just focus on the process.
They just focus on doing step one
and then step two and then step three, and then step four.
This student is going to get the scores they need
in the quickest possible time.
This student will probably fail
because they're trying to do everything
as quickly as possible.
And to go back to our car analogy,
this person, if they have a flat tire
and it's probably going to take them,
like 30 minutes to change the tire.
But if they want to get everything done in five minutes,
then their car is going nowhere.
And they're just going to be very, very frustrated.
This is what happens with students
who fail the test over and over and over again,
because they're trying to do everything
as quickly as possible
instead of doing things the right way.
If you follow the system,
you are going to see great results.
But if you miss one of these steps,
and you don't master the strategies,
you don't find out what your weaknesses are
and you don't work on your weaknesses,
then you are going to fail.
So just to recap, get some strategies that actually work,
that have been proven to work, and master them,
so that you can use them automatically on the test.
Master means that you could teach someone
what those strategies are without looking at any notes.
Then do a weakness analysis on your practice tests
and then work on those weaknesses.
Find out what, why you are getting a low score
and then turn those weaknesses into strengths.
(upbeat music)