The Worldpath 是香港政府重點支持的網上教學機構,由美國、英國、加拿大、澳洲的雅思前考官組成,在香港多間中學及大學舉辦雅思課程,學生成績優秀,曾經接受過香港多個媒體報導。推薦他們的學生除了有清華北大的,也有香港大學及香港中文大學,更有斯坦福大学、康奈尔大学和伯克利加大的。他們堅持只用接受過嚴格雅思改卷訓練的考官教口語跟寫作,因為他們很清楚考官喜歡怎樣的口語跟寫作,可以幫學生打做一個考官會給高分的exam,但是絕對不用模板。
Essential skills for IELTS reading #2.
What is skimming? How do we scan for answers?
Skimming, or skim reading, is the skill of quickly getting the topic or the context of a reading text before we start looking for answers to the questions. The reason for doing this is the same as in the listening test (see my explanation and video above about listening for context). The reason is that each individual question will be easier and faster to understand if we know the general topic of the text. So let’s see how to do it: Here is a reading text taken from “New insight into IELTS.”
Here are some of the steps we can take in order to skim read a text to quickly get a general idea of the topic.
1. Look at the title. You might think that is all you need to do to get the topic, but quite often this is not the case. Titles are usually short and don’t give a lot of information. In the text here the title is “The undersea world of sound.” Something about under the sea and sound but not enough yet to be clear, right?
2. If there is one, read the sub-heading. This usually explains the topic further. You don’t need to understand every word, just the ones that give information about the topic. Here we see: “...the long- distance language of the ocean.” So far we have under the sea, sound, language of the ocean.
3. If there are any, look at the pictures or diagrams provided. We see whales here and it starts to get clearer. Always in IELTS you need to draw on your general knowledge of the world to help you understand. You are probably aware that whales are highly-developed mammals with very large brains and that scientists have recognized the repeated and complex sounds they make are actually a language and not just random noise. And that is the topic – the language of whales under the sea.
4. Often it is a good idea to read the first couple of sentences in the first paragraph to get an even clearer idea. However, if you read the first paragraph in this text it will not really make things clearer for you. That is why we need all the steps above to get a quick idea of the context.
Next post will talk about how to scan for the answers. Meanwhile enjoy this video of the wonderful language of whales in the ocean…
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