So I can't teach you how to read. That is way beyond my pay grade. But I can tell you the
five biggest mistakes that students make when taking their B2 first and C1 Advanced reading
exams and then you won't make these mistakes and that will make the examiners happy which
will make you happy which will make me happy and then life will be marvelous so let's go!
[Music]
Yes I know, I know, this is really boring but underlining can help you choose the correct
answers and also check that you've chosen the correct answers. For part 5 of the B2 first
and the C1 Advanced reading and use of English paper you should underline why you have chosen
an answer and maybe even underline why you haven't chosen another. That way when you're
checking your answers at the end you're not going to have to try and figure out why you
chose an answer or why you didn't choose another one. Seriously this will save you time so just
do it. Why wouldn't you? God! Underlining is also important for the same reason in Part 7 of the B2
first reading and use of English paper and part 8 of the C1 Advanced reading and use of English
paper. In this exercise you're given four short texts or one text split into four sections and
you have 10 questions which ask you to identify where certain pieces of information are located.
If you do not underline in this section then seriously you have no way of checking your answers
and it could be that when you read another section of the text you find a better answer to the answer
you gave before. But if you've got no way of checking it or you have to waste time re-reading
another section then God! I mean that's really annoying and all of that could have been solved
by a simple underline! So yes part seven of the B2 first reading and Use of English paper and part
eight of the C1 Advanced reading news of English paper really does require underlining! Okay? Okay.
But remember! Underlining isn't just good for checking your answers it can also be crucial for
choosing the correct answer. This is especially the case for part six of the B2 first Use of
English paper and part seven of the C1 Advanced reading and use of English paper. In this section
you will need to put a paragraph or a sentence into the correct space in a text and identifying
pronouns is essential in order to do this correctly. So while you're reading the text and
while you're reading the missing paragraphs and the missing sentences you should be underlining
every single pronoun that you see. That way every time you place a sentence or a paragraph into the
text you can ask yourself if these pronouns have fulfillment in the text. Underlining in this
section then makes it impossible for you to not notice certain things and these are things that
you really need to notice to do the exercise correctly so please underline. Okay? Good.
Candidates will often read entire texts before they try to answer the
questions and this sounds good but actually no, no. Don't do that. No.
Okay sometimes it is important to do that. If you're doing part six or part 7 of the C1
Advanced reading and use of English paper then yes please do make sure you read the texts in
their entirety before trying to answer any of the questions. However for other sections it's really
not necessary and if you're doing it then you could be wasting your time. Take part five for
example. All the questions are in the order that the answers appear in the text, right,
so you don't need to read the end to have the answer for question one. Instead it makes more
sense to read question one and then read the introduction to the text to try and find the
answer to question one and then read question two and then look for the answer after where you found
the answer for question one. Right? That'll save you a lot of time. Personally I would
take a similar approach to part 7 of the B2 first reading and use of English paper and part eight
of the C1 Advanced reading and use of English paper. There is absolutely no need to read all
of the texts before you try answering any of the questions. Instead it makes more sense to scan all
of the questions and then read one of the texts and see how many questions you can answer while
underlining! Remember to underline! So don't give yourself extra work. Don't read all of the text in
detail when you don't need to! Focus on answering the questions! If you don't, this could happen...
Look, use of English is important, all right? But if you don't know an answer
move on! God! For the B2 first reading and use of English paper you have one hour and 15 minutes to
complete four use of English sections and three reading sections. Please do not spend more than
half an hour on the use of English okay? Yes! Yes! This is even more important for the C1 Advanced
exam you have one hour and 30 minutes to complete full use of English sections and four reading
sections. Good God! That is a lot of sections! So you should be dedicating 30 minutes to the use of
English and a full hour to the reading. Again if you haven't finished the use of English section
after 30 minutes then just move ahead because you really do need 15 minutes for each reading
section. I promise you. Have we got it? Do we understand? I think we do. So let's go ahead!
What do I mean when I say wrong reading? Wrong reading is trying to understand every single
word that you read. Wrong reading is focusing on the words that you don't understand rather than
the words that you do understand. Look, I hate to tell you this but there will definitely be words
in this exam that you don't understand and I know that's really scary but nothing you can do about
it so... But don't worry. Learning to infer the meaning of new words from Context is a valuable
skill and one that you will get better at with practice. And I'm sure you do this in your native
language anyway. When you're reading something in your mother tongue and you don't understand
a word do you stop everything that you're doing to get a dictionary to try and understand it? No!
You probably don't! Instead if you understand the general point that the author is trying to
make you just go ahead, right? Now, of course, this does not mean that you should never Focus
on new vocabulary. It is focusing and giving attention to new words that helps you retain them
but the exam is not the place to do that! So if you come across a new word whilst you're reading,
try and understand the general sense first, generate a prediction of what
that word could mean, and then after you've understood the general sense
look in a dictionary. But do it after you've understood the general sense of
the text! Not before because you need to practice your inferencing skills! Yeah....
Now this might come as a surprise but if you want to get good at reading
you're gonna have to do some bloody reading! All right!? And I know that seems like a stupid
thing to say but honestly a lot of people don't realize this. Many students will just study loads
of grammar and try and study loads of isolated pieces of vocabulary and then just assume that
somehow this is going to improve their reading. And it may do indirectly but... right... Imagine
you're a football player and you need to get really good at playing football. Well, you can do
lots of sit-ups push-ups and squats and I'm sure it's going to help in some way but you also are
gonna need to play some football! Right? Learning grammar and vocabulary is similar to the push-ups,
the sit-ups and the squats. Like, it's not useless but if you want to get good at writing, speaking,
reading and listening then you're gonna have to do some writing, reading, speaking and listening.
Sorry. It's just the way it is. All right? So yeah, Don't assume that your reading is going
to be fantastic just because you know every use of the future perfect continuous and you've learned
all the phrasal verbs with carry that you can find here... And there we have it! Those were the five
most common mistakes that students make when taking the B2 first and the C1 Advanced reading
paper. If you liked the video don't forget to SMASH that like button, subscribe if you
haven't already, leave a comment down below! My name is Toby and this was SMASH English...