hello and welcome back this lesson comes
from a request by Aditya from
Maharashtra India áliveá says he is
preparing for a competitive exam and he
has to do reading comprehension
exercises as part of the exam and he
wants to know the best way to do these
before we start if you want to request a
lesson just leave a comment in your
comment tell me your name and I will
mention you in the video okay in this
lesson I will give you some important
tips and strategies for reading
comprehension exercises I will give you
a reading plan that you can follow and
there are exercises in this lesson for
you to practice all right now my
teaching experience is mostly with exams
like the IELTS and TOEFL but the tips
that I give you in this lesson will help
you in any exam situation so the first
thing is when it comes to reading in an
exam budget your time that means you
should know how many reading passages
there are in the exam how many exercises
there are and how much time you have in
the IELTS exam for example there are 3
reading passages and you have 1 hour to
do all of them so then divide your time
amongst those passages for IELTS you
might spend roughly 20 minutes per
passage in some exams one passage might
be shorter or easier and another passage
might be longer or more difficult in
that case obviously you should plan to
spend less time on the short passage and
more time on the long passage and you
should time yourself if you are allowed
to wear a watch in your exam look at
your watch and keep track of the time if
you plan for 20 minutes per passage
stick to that plan now if you're not
allowed to wear a watch then use the
clock in your room or hall or ask the
invigilator x' how much time you have
left all right that's the first thing
budgeting your time so now the exam
starts and you have the first reading
passage in front of you what do you do
well I'll tell you what you should not
do don't start at the
and then slowly read to the finish many
students do this and the problem is that
when you get to the end you will have
forgotten a lot of the details in the
middle and when you read the questions
you will have to go back and read the
passage again to find the answers
instead here's the plan that you should
follow your first step in reading should
be to skim the passage what does that
mean well skimming is actually something
that we do with milk it's when you heat
or boil milk and the facts rises to the
top in the form of cream removing that
layer of fat is called skimming when it
comes to reading skimming means to read
the surface of the text quickly to
understand the overall message so if
there's a heading or a title to the
passage and if there are subheadings
read all of these first
they will tell you the subject of the
text then read the first sentence of
each paragraph they will give you a good
idea of the overall message let's
practice this you see two paragraphs on
the screen but only the first sentence
in each paragraph is visible stop the
video read the sentences and try to
understand the main topic in each
paragraph all right so what do you think
the topic of the whole passage might be
it could be the negative effects of
social media on children what about the
first paragraph what is it about well it
says that using social media can affect
a child's writing skills and the second
paragraph it says that some people don't
agree with this that is with the first
paragraph for two reasons scientific
reasons and practical reasons pragmatics
means practical this is what you have to
do in each paragraph read the first
sentence or at most the first two
sentences and ignore all the other
information this should only take one
minute or so for all the paragraphs
depending on the length of the passage
don't waste a lot of time on
you're only reading quickly to
understand the main ideas in the passage
we'll come back to these paragraphs in a
moment okay now you have a rough idea of
what the passage is about what do you do
next well the second step is to find the
easiest exercise this might be the first
exercise if it is great or it might be
some other exercise but find the easiest
exercise and read the questions this is
extremely important before you read the
text in detail you should always read
the questions because they will tell you
what information you need so that when
you read the passage you will be able to
pick out the answers as you're reading
the questions make sure to fully
understand what they're saying read them
carefully
also you should underline the key words
just two or three important words that
can help you to identify answers for
example let's say you have a true or
false
exercise with these two questions now
you don't know the answers because you
have not read the passage but what words
can you underline to help you find the
answers stop the video and think about
it in number one I would underline likes
and shares because these are the focus
of this question in number two I would
underline scientific studies and writing
skills so you should do this underlining
for all the questions in the exercise
after you have done that it's now time
to read the full passage as you read it
can be very useful to use your finger to
guide your eyes you should read
naturally but you should also be looking
for any of the keywords that you
underlined or any related words we call
them synonyms and if you find the
keywords or they're synonyms you should
slow down and read carefully let's
practice you see the two paragraphs
again but this time you have the full
text stop the video read the paragraphs
and try to find the answer
ok number one is false because the first
paragraph says users are encouraged to
keep their messages short and trivial
trivial means not important not
containing much value so this is the
opposite of the statement in the
exercise number two is true the second
paragraph says few studies have shown a
correlation correlation means
relationship and few studies means not
many studies note that it does not say a
few a few means some it's positive but
just few means not many it's negative
the point here is that in a long passage
reading and understanding the questions
and underlining key words in them before
reading the text will help you to find
the answers more easily you can also
underline the answers in the passage to
help you check your answers later ok I
want to give you some important advice
at this point in any passage you will
come across words that you don't
understand
take the word erosion for example maybe
you don't know the meaning what can you
do well you can try to guess its meaning
from the surrounding information this is
called context so you might guess that
it means to destroy or to reduce
something over time and this is correct
but sometimes you won't be able to guess
the meaning in that case move on never
get stuck anywhere in the passage
whether it's the meaning of a word or
maybe you're not able to find an answer
to a question do not get stuck it will
eat up your time instead if you're not
able to understand something make a mark
and move on to the next question if you
have time you can come back to it later
ok so in this way you should do all of
the questions in the first exercise and
then move on to the next exercise in the
passage this
I'm again follow the same process read
the questions understand them underline
and only after that read the passage and
find the answers the passage will be
easier to read now because you have
already read it for the first exercise
finish the passage keep your eye on the
clock or on your watch keep to your time
budget and move on to the next passage
this is the process
alright to close this lesson I want to
give you a general tip on how to improve
your reading overall there are two
important challenges to being successful
at reading they are vocabulary and
practice if you are struggling with
reading in an exam one big reason could
be that you don't have enough vocabulary
for that type of text another problem
could be that your reading skills need
to develop more the solution to both of
these is to read more and to read widely
don't just read the newspaper or the
latest romance novel you should find
various types of reading material read
novels but also read magazines
self-improvement books history books
other kinds of non-fiction books read
articles online make reading a regular
habit whenever you read keep a notebook
and pen and note down any new vocabulary
that you learn review this vocabulary
regularly and try to use it in your own
speech and writing and remember you can
get lots of tips and tricks for reading
comprehension exercises but you only get
better at reading by reading so practice
alright that brings us to the end of
this lesson I hope you found it useful
and I will see you in the next lesson