KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ

IELTS READING AND SOME TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE

IELTS READING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS
Dinh Thi Bac Binha
Dinh Thi Kieu Trinhb

Banking Academy
a

b
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
T he 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
Received: 5/5/2019 recognized to be capable enough to take a course in English is
Reviewed: 15/5/2019 somehow limited, especially for those who are not major in
Revised: 27/5/2019 English at their universities.
Accepted: 10/6/2019 IELTS Reading is considered as a discerning skill and it is of the
Released: 21/6/2019 equal importance to listening, speaking and writing in obtaining
the objectives of IELTS of band 6 or 6.5. Being teachers of English
DOI: at a training institution, the authors recognize that students can
https://doi.org/10.25073/0866-773X/308 make time-saving improvements in their reading command under
their teachers’ insightful guidance.
Keywords: IELTS reading; Skimming; Scanning; Academic.

1. Introduction 2. General perceptions of reading

The burgeoning number of students entering 2.1. What is reading?
overseas universities and the international labor Reading can be regarded as an activity of
market has prompted a necessity to establish a intensive interaction between readers and the
standardized language test for the evaluation of passage which leads to reading fluency. Reading
leaners’ language proficiency. As a result, one of requires a great deal of efforts from readers to
the most extensively employed tests serving this decipher the true meaning by using a variety of
purpose is the International English Language linguistic and expertise knowledge. Moreover,
Testing System (IELTS). IELTS has become a the complexity of reading has triggered many
worldwide trusted mechanism to assess learners’ researchers’ endeavor to perceive and work out the
ability, thus having been integrated in the curriculum smooth reading process by scrutinizing the process
of many education systems. The test covers four of element skills (Grabe, 1991). Consequently,
skills including Reading, Listening, Writing, and researchers have pinpointed the componential skills
Speaking. Each skill demands distinctive teaching as followed:
methods to stimulate the motivation in students.
1. Automatic recognition skills
There has been numerous research into the strategies
for imparting the modules regarding Listening, 2. Vocabulary and structural knowledge
Writing, and Speaking whereas the field of Reading 3. Formal discourse structure knowledge
has not received much attention. Reading has never 4. Content/world background knowledge
been considered as an interesting task, especially
when it comes to reading tasks of more than 2000 5. Synthesis and evaluation skills/strategies
words with intensive acquisition. Furthermore, 6. Metacognitive knowledge and skills
the constant exposure to academic language monitoring
together with extensive background knowledge has Studies carried out over the last thirty years has
debilitated any attempt to conquer the lengthy and changed our assumption of reading as a process of
nerve-wracking IELTS reading passages. Hence, decoding. As Carrell and Eisterhold considered
they have posed a real challenge to instructors reading as a “guessing game’ in which the ‘readers
in the long-term for the maximum effectiveness reconstruct, as best as he can, a message which
of transferring the skills to learners of different has been encoded by a writer (1983, p. 554)
levels. This study works on the effort to identify the As Grabe view reading as an “active process of
applicable reading teaching techniques to IELTS comprehending [where] students need to be taught
Reading exam for leaners on the preparation of the strategies to read more efficiently (e. g., guess from
test. context, define expectations, make inferences about

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the text, skim ahead to fill in the context and so When the reader looks at the content page of
on)”. (1991, p. 377) the book, or at the chapter headings, sub headlines,
Paran believed that reading is an “activity etc. This is sometimes called previewing. Another
involving constant guesses that are later rejected or example is when the reader glances quickly through
confirmed’. That is, a reader does not read all the a newspaper to see what the main items of the day.
sentences in the same way but relies on a number of This will often mean just glancing at the headlines
words – or ‘cues’ – to guess the coming sentences” If the purpose of the reader is to find out which
(1996, p.25). Zhang (1993) believes that Afflarbach chapter of a book is about geography or which
compares reading process to hypothesis testing advertisements in the newspaper show information
(or draft-and-revision) where the reader arrives at about housing, people need scanning for relevant
the main idea after revising the initial hypothesis, details. It is the case when readers go through a text
provided that the reader holds relevant background vary quickly in order to find a particular point of
knowledge. information. In fact, this kind f reading is selected
2.2. Classification of reading as people are looking at indices, dictionaries,
maps, labels, reference materials, advertisement,
* Classification of reading according to the
etc (Hafiz, 1989). To this kind of reading, readers
reading manner
are required a very deep understanding of the
The word reading has a number of common blackmarks on the paper with short texts. They must
interpretations. It may mean reading aloud, a very achieve full understanding of the logical argument,
complex skill, which involves understanding the the rhetorical arrangement or patterns of the text,
black marks first and then the production of the its symbolic, emotional and social over stones, of
right noise or reading may mean silent reading and the attitudes and purposes of the author and of the
this is the interpretation (Moorman et al, 1994). linguistic means that they employ to achieve their
* Classification of reading according to the ends (Haller, 2000). Through intensive reading,
reading purposes readers must arrive at a profound and a really
To the extent of purposes, reading can be detailed understanding, not only of what it means
classified into extensive reading and intensive but also of how the meaning is produced. The
reading. question ‘how’ here is as important as the question
‘what’.
2.2.1. Intensive reading
3. Reading in IELTS
As reading intensively, readers have in their
mind the purpose of achieving full understanding 3.1. Purpose of the reading test
of the logical argument, the rhetorical arrangement The IELTS Reading test is designed to assess
or patterns of the text, its symbolic, emotional and reading command of candidates with a variety
social ever stones, of the attitudes and purposes of skills. In particular, it is to check how well the
of the author and of the linguistic means that they readers read to get the general sense of a passage,
employ to achieve their ends. This type of reading how well they get the main ideas, the detail, how
means ‘reading short texts to extract specific well they understand inferences and underlined
information, this is an accuracy activity involving meaning, how well they recognize a writer’s
reading for details’ (Grellet, F., 1990:2) opinions, attitudes and purpose, how well they can
The objective of intensive reading is follow the development of an argument.
understanding a text in detail. 3.2. IELTS reading overview
2.2.2. Extensive reading There are three passages in the IELTS reading
This is the case in the context that readers test totaling approximately 2,500 words taken from
have general understanding of the text without books, journals, magazines and newspapers. These
necessarily understanding every word (Hedge, passages are written for a non-specialist audience
2003). The object of this kind of reading is to cover and are on academic topics of general interest
the greatest possible amount of text in the shortest and involving a wide range of academic subjects:
possible time. Skimming and scanning are of this astronomy, cultivation, history, etc... (Gabb, 2000).
type. They range from the descriptive and factual to
the discursive and analytical. Each text might be
For skimming, readers go through a passage accompanied by diagrams, graphs or illustrations,
quickly, jumping over parts of it in order to get and candidates are expected to show that they
the general idea of what is about. People read understand these too.
skimmingly to get the gist of the text but not to
find the answer to particular questions. According There are 10 to 15 questions following each
to Wood, J. (1990: 92) in “Teaching English as an reading passage. The questions are of a variety
International Language’ skimming occurs in the types: multiple choice, matching, true/ false/ not
followings: given, sentence completion or summary tasks.

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A reading test comprises of three sections: linguistic knowledge to facilitate reading command
Section 1 contains two or three short factual as well as schematic knowledge (Abraham, 2002).
texts, one of which may be made up of 6 - 8 short Furthermore, teachers are advised to equip their
texts related by topic, e.g. hotel advertisements. The students with ability to adopt adequate reading style
topics are relevant to everyday life in an English- for different purpose and develop their awareness of
speaking country. the structure of any reading passages
Section 2 contains two short factual texts *Teachers should teach anything important
focusing on work-related issues, e.g. applying before their students see the reading passages
for a job, company policies, pay and conditions, This is the pre- reading stage in any reading
workplace facilities, staff development and training. class. This stage set orientation, motivation and
Section 3 contains one longer, more complex choice of reading strategies for students to cope
text on a topic of general interest. with upcoming reading passage. In this stage,
teachers are assumed to provide their students with
3.3. Reading competence requirements
vocabularies, active background knowledge and
Each IELTS reading lasts 60 minutes. Candidate some reading skills (Hammer, 1992).
are supposed to be able to skim – to read around
*Teachers should use analogies conduct
170 words a minute and do not spend as long as 15
skimming and scanning
minutes in total reading three passages.
Normally, this is advised in the while –
To be able to deal with the requirements in
reading stage which aims at developing students’
IELTS reading, students must have ability to:
competence in comprehending a written passage
*Skim-read quickly. Candidates are supposed with both linguistic and schematic knowledge
to identify the main idea of each reading passage (Abott et al, 1990). Students may have some
in general and of each paragraph in particular. To obstacles in recognize the difference between these
fulfil this, it is advised that students do not read two reading strategies and teachers are suggested
supporting sentences and ignore unknown words or not to teacher them together
phrases (Drucker, 2003).
*Before skimming, teachers should use flash-
*Identify key words.  With this, students scan reading and predicting
the reading texts and the questions to spot the names
Prior to skimming, Flash-reading is advised
of people, names of places, and dates that are in the
to use . This involves trying to get as much
reading passage.
information as possible from a text in a very short
*Identify paraphrase. Students should be able time (Anthony & Richards, 1980). The major goals
to identify the similarity in the meaning of the of flash-reading are to predict the topic by looking
questions and that expressed in the reading passage at titles, subtitles and headings, and to work out the
(Grelette, 1990). thesis statement. Then, when the students read the
*Manage time.  The reading test are made up passage again, they would identify the topic after 3
of 40 questions of which, some are easy, others -5 minutes skimming the passage and confirm their
are of medium difficulty and the rest are extremely pre- assumption.
difficult. In order to score the best, student should *Checking questions should be asked after
concentrate on the easiest questions that they can skimming
answer before spend the remaining time for more
This is the job of the teacher to give their
difficult ones.
students questions for those the answers can be
*Expand vocabulary. For IELTS readings are produced simply and that generate the specialist
for academic purposes. There is a requirement for a background knowledge in the reading passages.
good command of words, expressions and phrases These questions are to force students to read the
(Brown, 1994). Students are advised to enrich their whole reading passage again (Carrell et al, 1989).
academic vocabulary as much as possible.
*Teachers should ask their students to do
4. Some implications to enable students to summarizing in pairs
acquire IELTS high score
Students are asked to spend about 2 – 3 minutes
Most researches on reading now focus on the summarizing the text with a partner without looking
effective reading strategies that increase students’ at the reading passage. This activity is considered
comprehension. as a good way to see if students have picked up the
It is essential for teachers of reading classes to main ideas in the reading text.
recognize the learning objectives for their students *Paraphrasing techniques should be
who are supposed to have capacity to read a variety demonstrated from the questions
of reading texts in English about various subjects.
Reading classes are to give students
At the same time, reading class is to build a
opportunities to practise some skills whereas, in test

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situations, students are supposed to be countable on Students are advised to practice what they have
their existing competence and familiar strategies. learnt in reading class because reading requires a
Teachers, therefore, are advised to introduce new corporation of reading skills, linguistic competence
techniques and get their students masters them and adequate reading strategies. This can only be
through exercises and questions. Teachers then obtained through a lot of practice.
should demonstrate some paraphrasing techniques Below are examples of task – based reading:
with the first question as an example, and then get
- identify the topic sentence
students to practice the remaining questions by
them selves or with a partner. - identify academic words and technical words
in the reading passage
*Students should practise guessing unknown
words - identify pronouns with the nouns
Unfamiliar words is always an obstacle for - find the writer’s argument and do some writing
every reader. Students, therefore, should practice to respond
guessing unknown words when learning reading. - find names of people with their opinion or idea
Teachers are advised not to give definitions of the and paraphrase it
words straight away but try to demonstrate the 4. Conclusion
contextual clues. In IELTS reading, unfamiliar word
are often technical terms and students can find a The number of people wishing to study overseas
clear definition of the word in the passages. In other or to take a course offered in English is increasing
context, logical connectives, parallel expressions and the International English Language Testing
and collocating words can also provide enough System (IELTS) is popular as these people have
clues to work out the meaning of an unknown word. to sit for this test to assess if their English is good
enough to enroll such courses. In this paper, the
*Teachers should set their students realistic authors look into reading skill to the extent of IELTS
goals reading description, reading skill requirements and
It is certainly quite infeasible to set a goal then give some suggestions for teachers to perform
that students get 40 correct answers. To achieve well in reading class in order to enable their students
27 correct answer should require adequate time to get the highest possible score in the test.
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

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References
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Anthory, E.M. & Richards, J.C. (1980). Reading, 6, 2004 from www.questia.com
Insights & Approaches. R.E.L.C.. Gabb, Sally. (2000). From talk to print:
Brown, H. D. (1994). Teaching by Principles. Preparing students to read with ease. Field
Prentice Hall. Notes, 10(2); Retrieved on Nov 1, 2004 from
http://www.sabes.org/resources/ fieldnotes/
Grelette, F. (1990). Developing Reading Skills.
vol10/fn102.pdf
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Hammer, J. (1992). The Practice of English
in second language reading research. TESOL
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Quarterly. 25 (3): 375-406.
Abraham, Paul. (2002).TT Skilled Reading:
Hafiz, F. M. & Tudor, Ian. (1989). “Extensive
Top-down, bottom-up. Field Notes, 10(2);
reading and the development of language
Retrieved on Nov 1, 2004 from http://www.
skills.” ELT Journal, 43(1): 4-13.
sabes.org/ resources/ fieldnotes/vol10/fn102.
pdf Haller, Lee. (2000). Modeling class activities
for low-level literacy learners.” Field Notes
Carrell , Patricia L., Pharis, B. G., & Liberto,
(formerly Bright Ideas), 10 (2); Fall 2000.
J. C. (1989). Metacognitive strategy training
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647-678.

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 Tóm tắt: Hệ thống kiểm tra tiếng Anh quốc tế (IELTS) được
a
Email: [email protected] công nhận là một công cụ để đánh giá liệu một người có thể học
b
Email: [email protected] 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
Ngày nhận bài: 5/5/2019 được công nhận đủ khả năng tham gia một khóa học bằng tiếng
Ngày phản biện: 15/5/2019 Anh còn nhiều hạn chế, đặc biệt là đối với những sinh viên không
Ngày tác giả sửa: 27/5/2019 theo học chuyên ngành tiếng Anh tại các trường đại học.
Ngày duyệt đăng: 10/6/2019 Kỹ năng Đọc IELTS được coi là một kỹ năng khó và có tầm
Ngày phát hành: 21/6/2019 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
DOI: viên dạy tiếng Anh tại một cơ sở đào tạo, các tác giả nhận ra rằng
https://doi.org/10.25073/0866-773X/308 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.

102 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC MINORITIES RESEARCH