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SKIMMING
Transcript

This lesson focuses on the skill of skimming. Skimming is a great strategy for your
IELTS reading section, especially questions that focus on finding main idea. So let's look at how we can
use skimming to help us answer those questions. Okay, first of all, what is skimming? Well skimming is
not about reading really, really fast.

If you read each sentence really quickly, you probably wouldn't get very useful information. Skimming is
a strategic way to find main ideas. What you're trying to do is find the main idea without reading every
single sentence. Okay, so how do we do that?

There are two methods I'm going to describe. Method one is to just look at words but ignore
sentences. All right, so you'll moved from from the top to the bottom of the passage just trying to find
words that seem important, or, that are repeated over and over. As an example, here's our paragraph
about clones. All right, if I'm skimming this paragraph, I'm drawn to these words that I'm underlining.

We see clone three times at the top. Genetically, we see procreation, reproduce. We see, let's see. We
see clones again, more procreation, more genetic. Okay, if I'm skimming this passage and just looking at
words, I could probably make a very good guess about the main idea.

That it involves the topic of cloning and how clones reproduce. Just based on all of these words that I
know that are jumping off the page to me, because they're repeated or they seem important. So that's
method one, just looking for words. Method two is a little different and it's a strategy I highly
recommend which is to look at first and last sentences of a paragraph to try to find the main idea.

This works because as I'm sure you know, in most paragraphs, the detail or example information is in the
center, is in the middle of the paragraph. The main ideas are at the beginning or the end. So if we look at
the first few sentences at the top of a paragraph. In the first, or excuse me, the last sentences of the
paragraph, you can almost always get a good sense of what the main idea of that paragraph is.

All right, so we won't look at this in detail now because in a minute I'm going to give you a chance to use
this paragraph for an example question. But if I'm skimming and reading the first few sentences, I'm
gonna try to read these first few at the top and the first few at the bottom to try to get the main idea. All
right, we'll do that in a minute. So to recap, method one, look for words and ignore sentences.

Method two, look at first and last sentences to try to get the right information, to get the main idea. You
definitely don't want to just read everything really, really fast. Okay, so let's look a sample
question. Let's look at a matching heading question as a way to practice doing some skimming to
answer.
All right, so we're going to use our clone paragraph that we have been looking at in just a minute. Below,
you see from a to e, we have sample headings. One of these headings is the best heading for our
paragraph that we've been looking at in this lesson so far. What I want you to do now, please stop the
video, take a few seconds to read these headings, and in a minute, you will skim through the passage to
try to find which heading is best for our paragraph.

Okay, so please stop the video now. Okay, so you've read each one of these a to e. Now let's go to our
passage. Okay, I want you to stop the video one more time, and just read the first sentences here, and
the last sentences here, and try to figure out which heading would have been the best one.

Stop your video now Okay, so you read those headings. Excuse me, so you read these sentences,
and now you're thinking about which heading will fit best. When I skim this passage, I notice, at the
top, that we find at the very beginning here a definition of clone, okay? So we have a clone definition.

Okay, and at the bottom, we find out that the name for the kind of reproduction clones do is called
vegetative reproduction. Okay, so here, the topic is clones and how they reproduce using vegetative
reproduction. So if we're going back to our sample question, all right. So which one best serves as a
heading for this paragraph?

Well the main ideas as we know, hopefully you were going to choose c, what is vegetative
reproduction? All right, because that's was the paragraph is about. It's describing how clones use
vegetative reproduction, okay? All right, let's look at another paragraph in the same essay. We have
paragraph two.

Go ahead now, pause your video one more time and read the first sentence and, maybe the last
sentence of this paragraph two to skim and see if you can figure out the main idea. Go ahead and pause
your video now. Okay, just like in the first paragraph, when I read this first sentence, once again, this
gives me a really good idea about what this paragraph is really about.

We see clonal colony and basically a definition of what a clonal colony is. And if we look back at our
answer choices, that was one of our headings to choose from. A says okay, what is a clonal colony? That
would be a good heading for this second paragraph, right? And as we saw in the first sentence there, the
main idea is indicated in those first lines really of that paragraph.

Okay, anyway, this is just supposed to service a good example for you of how to use skimming to more
quickly answer question related to main ideas. The concept is to save time and to really target in a
strategic way the information you need to answer these main idea questions. You can either just look
for words in the paragraph to see if you can figure it out that way, or a really good method, especially
for these matching heading questions is to look at first and last sentences to go find your main idea
information there.
The SUN Method
Transcript

The IELTS reading paper is probably different from other reading exams you've taken before. It certainly
requires some special skills and strategies in order to do well. So that's what we're going to look at this
lesson. We're going to present what's called the SUN Method. And this is an approach to answering
IELTS reading questions that should help you in order to control the amount of time that you spend on
each reading passage.

And to answer each question type effectively. So let's take a look at this method and how it can help you
on the reading paper. First, I wanna start by discussing just very quickly the standard approach to taking
a reading exam. This is something that you've probably done before in your English classes. So the
standard approach is to carefully read a passage from beginning to end and then answer comprehension
questions about the passage.

This makes a lot of sense. Your teachers want to have you read a passage and then test what you
were able to figure out, and what you knew after reading it one time. Unfortunately, this approach, if
you take this approach on the IELTS exam, it will be very difficult for you. And the reason is that the time
is too limited to carefully read a passage and then answer all the questions on the IELTS exam.

You only have 60 minutes and you have several passages to read. And time is simply too limited for most
people to finish all the questions in a short one hour period. Secondly, IELTS questions are difficult to
answer using the standard approach. They ask you many detailed questions or other types of main idea
questions that are tough to answer if you've only read the passage one time.

So you need a different way of approaching the passages and the questions, and that's what we're going
to look at in this lesson. We need to find a good solution for approaching each of these questions and
passages. So what is it? Well, as we've already said several times, it is definitely not to read the entire
passage carefully from beginning to end.

For IELTS reading questions, you should instead strategically search for answers to questions in the
passage instead of reading each passage carefully. This means that really, what you're going to do is
begin with the questions. You start with the questions you need to answer, and you go search for the
answers in the passage. That's the approach that works best on the IELTS exam.
Now, you need a strategy for this. You need a general approach, and so that's what we're looking at
here. The general approach to answering questions in this way, we're going to call the SUN
Method. SUN stands for skimming and scanning, underlining, and note taking. Okay, as you can see, that
spells SUN here.

All right, so let's start with skimming and scanning. Now, if you're not familiar with skimming and
scanning, or if you haven't seen it yet, there is a whole lesson on skimming and scanning in the intro to
IELTS skills section of your lessons. So go there if you need to learn more about skimming, okay? Here,
we're going to just talk about how to use it with these reading questions in the SUN Method.

Okay, so when you come to a new passage, the first thing you should do is take a few seconds to look at
the question types you're going to answer. We are going to cover all the different question types in
your reading lessons. So by the time you take the exam, you should be able to quickly identify what
question type you'll need to answer. Then you want to go and skim the passage.

So after you've looked at what question type you're going to answer, then turn to your passage. And if
you were taking the general training IELTS exam, expect to spend about 30 seconds to 2 minutes
skimming the shorter passages that come at the beginning of the general training reading paper. At the
end of the general training reading paper, you're going to have a longer passage.

And all of the academic reading passages are long as well. So for those, you should spend two to four
minutes skimming the passage. You're doing this instead of reading it carefully from beginning to
end. Reading carefully from beginning to end might take you 10 minutes or 12 minutes. So skimming is
going to save you time. And if you do it strategically, you're going to get the information you need to
approach the questions.

Your goal in skimming the passage is basically to get the gist of the article. And in addition to the
gist, getting a sense of the organization of the passage as well. So you want to get some information as
you're searching through the passage about what each paragraph is about. Again, go to our skimming
lesson, skimming and scanning in the IELTS skills section of your lessons, and get some tips on how to
use skimming to find these pieces of information.

Okay, so skimming is the first part of SUN. And it is the foundation for the skill. So what we're gonna
describe next, the underlining and note taking, is all part of this process of skimming. You're going to
underline and take notes as you skim the passage and the questions, in order to figure out how to
answer the questions the best way possible.

So let's do that, let's go to underlining next. So after you've skimmed the passage, okay, then you go to
the directions and the questions. If it helps you, go ahead and underline the answer sheet format
that you're supposed to use to answer the questions. So if they're short answer, or are you supposed to
answer with letters or numbers or numerals.

Make sure you note the number and word counts here. And if it helps you, go ahead and underline
them, so you can go and remember that, or be reminded of that information quickly later on. Okay, but
more importantly than this, then you want to go and underline any key words that are found in the
directions. The directions for different types of questions will generally stay the same.

And so through our lessons and then through the practice questions you do, you will become pretty
familiar with what the directions say. But every set of directions will ask you to look for something a
little bit different. There will be a focus to the directions that is directing you to certain kinds of
information in the passage.

For example, let's imagine we have a matching question, and in the directions it tells us match each item
with the person who invented it. You would want to underline person who invented, because that is the
information you are supposed to search for in the passage. Okay, you are going to search for people
who invented things. So your answer is going to be a person, and that person is going to be an inventor.

And that's the key information that you will need to search for in the passage to answer each question in
this series of questions. All right, your underlining allows you to remember that and stay focused on that
task alone. Then you want to go to questions and do a very similar thing. So this information is often in
the directions.

In the questions, then, you want to go and underline key words from the questions. Remember that
correct answers are almost always paraphrases in the passage. So by underlining key words, and I'm
talking about just taking a few seconds to go though the questions you're answering. And make
underlines of the key words you're searching for.

This will help you to look for paraphrases in the passage to help you answer the question. Okay, so, so
far we've skimmed the whole passage and now we've looked quickly through the directions and the
questions, to underline keywords and the main purpose of the question that we're trying to answer.
What we're supposed to be looking for as we go back to the passage and search for answers.

A second step, then, is to use notes, to do something very similar to what you just did with
underlining. But this time your notes are going to be related to the passage. Not really the questions,
but the passage itself. All right, so as you're scanning and as you're finding information to answer your
questions, you want to help yourself by writing one or two word notes in the margins of
a reading passage.

Okay, so if the lines of our reading passage are here, the margins are the space on either side where you
can write some notes to yourself. You don't want to write long notes. One or two words is fine. But
there are some reminders and some notes that will help you to answer questions if you put them in the
margins of your reading passage.

So your notes should target the type of information being tested in the question. Some question types
are only about main ideas, and again, we're going to learn about those question types in your lessons.
But if you're looking for main ideas, then you should definitely label each paragraph with the main idea
of that paragraph. One or two words to help you remember what that paragraph is about.
Are you looking at a flow chart? So a flow chart shows you a process from beginning to end. Okay, so if
you're looking at a chart that relates to the reading. Probably the different paragraphs of the reading, or
maybe one paragraph, will be about that process, and it will give you steps in the process. So you
should, in your reading passage and alongside the margins, label the steps as you find them in the
passage.

You know by looking at the questions that you're supposed to find this information. So you label it to let
you know where to look as you're answering questions. You can write step one, step two, or whatever
makes sense for that particular chart you're looking at. There are some question types where the
answers come in order. So you find the answer to number one before you find the answer to number
two in the passage.

On these kinds of questions, write a note. If you find an answer that you are very confident is
correct, then that spot in the reading passage where you found that answer is a good place to label and
identify answer for number ten. Because the answers for numbers seven, eight, and nine are going to
come before that in the passage.

It gives you a sign and a reminder as you're answering other questions to let you know where to look in
the passage to find those answers. Okay, so this is the SUN method in general. It involves, instead
of reading a whole passage from beginning to end, it involves skimming it and scanning it first. You skim
at the beginning in order to get the main idea and the gist of of the article.

Then you go to the directions and the questions. And you underline key information, trying to find out
what is it that I'm supposed to go look for in the passage. As you do this, you can also underline ideas in
the passage itself. But it's really helpful to take notes. As you're skimming, as you're looking through the
passage, you take notes on the different parts of the passage related to what information you need to
find for each question type.

If you're trying to find steps in a process, then you label the different steps that you find in the passage
along the margins. If you're supposed to find different people and what they did, then label each
paragraph related to what it's about and which person it discusses. Okay, your notes, your underlining,
and your ability to skim and scan to gather information about the article is a key strategy
for approaching IELTS reading questions where you just don't have time to read the whole thing
carefully from beginning to end.

You need an approach like the SUN method in order to save yourself time and search for only that
information you need to find for each question type.
LISTENING (THE APT METHOD)
Transcript

The best approach to IELTS listening passages is to answer questions while you're listening to the
speaker. If you'd waited to answer your questions until after you listened to the whole passage, you
would really have a tough time remembering all the details you're supposed to find as you listen. So you
need to have a strategy to answering questions as you listen to the speaker.

That's what we're looking at in this lesson. The APT method is a strategy for answering listening
questions as you listen to a passage. Let's take a look at how this works for the IELTS listening
paper. Okay, so the first skill is analysis. You're going to analyze each question before you listen to it.

The second skill is prediction. You're going to try to figure out what kind of answer you'll be expected to
provide. These first two skills are really things that you do before you listen to the passage, these are
pre-listening strategies. The last skill then, skill number three, is tracking and that's something that you
do as you're listening to the speaker.

Okay, so let's take a close look at each one of these skills and how you can use them on your IELTS
exam. First, analyzing. So the first thing you need to analyze are the directions, okay? Your directions will
tell you how many words and numbers are allowed for short answer questions?

Other questions will give you other types of answers, letters, numbers, numerals. It's important to take a
note of this and really focus on this. Because later, after you finished listening to all four listening
passages for the listening paper, you will have 10 minutes to put your answer on the answer sheet. And
it's very important that you answer each question with the right format.

So focus on it, make sure you notice it when you get to a new set of questions. Okay, then look at the
questions themselves. What kinds of questions are you going to face? Are they going to be short
answer? Are they going to be matching questions? What kind of question?

In our lessons for the listening section, we will cover each type of listening question you might face. So
you should be able to quickly identify what type it is when you get to your IELTS exam. But you can tell
more just from taking a quick look at the questions. You can often, for example, find information out
about who will be speaking or what topic they will be discussing.

You can also get information sometimes about how the passage will be organized. Okay,
organization. For example, some listening passages present a map. And you need to label the map based
on directions that somebody gives you in the passage. You can often tell just by looking at the map how
the information will be organized.
Because different landmarks will be labeled in particular ways, right? Questions 1, 2, 3, and 4 will appear
on the map. And you know that questions in the listening paper always come in order. So just very
quickly by looking at the map and looking how the questions are organized on the map, you can guess
the structure of the passage you're about to hear.

All of this, that you're doing to analyze the questions should be really quick, a few seconds. Remember,
you don't have minutes in between each passage. You just have a few seconds to quickly analyze the
passages. The more you practice, the better you'll get at quickly identifying what you're going to need to
listen for.

So let's practice this a little bit, analyzing this sample question. For right now, what I would like you to do
is pause your video and look at this question and analyze it. Can you figure out anything about what the
passage will be about? Or how it might be organized based on just looking quickly at the questions. Also,
notice the directions.

How will you need to answer this question? Go ahead and pause your video, and take as long as you
need to analyze this sample question. Okay, so you've taken a look at the question. What did you
notice? Well very quickly you'll notice some basic things.

You're going to be answering four questions, okay? And each of those four questions are short answer
you have to give you answer in no more than three words and/or a number. Okay so, we know that this
answer should be no more than three words and a number. Okay, now below, we have the two basic
questions we're supposed to listen for. All right, you probably noticed that we are at a conference.

All right, and we're expecting to hear something from a speaker at the conference. And he's explaining,
in some way, why he's going to be late. Okay, so we know at the beginning of this passage a
speaker's going to be expressing some reasons for why he's late. Later then they're going to be
discussing the dining options to attendees.

Well attendees are people who might be at a conference. So we're still on the subject of conferences
and they're discussing where to eat. All right, now you might be able to predict just from what we see in
this question. That we are either going to listen to someone speaking to a crowd, or somebody speaking
to another person.

Explaining why he or she was late and discussing where they can find a good meal somewhere around
this conference. All right, we don't know exactly that this is true, but this information helps us a
lot. Because as we listen to the passage we know there may be two basic parts to it, one, about this
discussion about lateness and, two, about dining options.

And we know that the answers come in order, we can expect to look for that information at the
beginning and end of the passage. All right, just taking a quick look, we've already gathered quite a bit of
information by analyzing these questions. Now we're ready to listen and see if we can fill in those gaps.
All right, a second step though, something that will make you even sharper in your ability to get the
correct answers is to make predictions.

So this is closely related to your analysis, and again, this is something you do before you listen to a
passage. You're going to try to predict what kind of information will they ask me to provide? Okay, so by
looking at the questions, okay, looking at the answers in the questions, you're trying to figure out things
like this.

Is my answer going to be a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, many times the questions give you
grammatical clues. So you know what kind of word you're listening for. You may be asked very clearly to
listen for numbers, for money, dates, time, etc. Okay, that's going to help you. It's going to make you
listen in a much more focused way.

As you go through the passage if you know ahead of time that you will have to find numbers of some
kind. Are they going to describe a location, are they giving directions, are these people's names or
proper nouns you'll need to listen for? So many different categories and you can often figure out what it
is just by looking at the questions and the answers.

You may need to categorize something. Can you figure out the categories? All of this kind of thing is so
useful for you before you listen to a passage. Secondly then, if you have time, underline some of the key
words in the questions to help you remember what you're supposed to listen for. The last thing then,
the third thing, write a quick note on your question sheet so you remember what to listen for.

If it's helpful to you write a note say, okay, I'm listening for a type of restaurant or a person's name. You
can scribble a note to yourself on your answer sheet to remind yourself if you have time. Just like your
analysis, all of this needs to be quick, and both your analysis and your predictions work together.

It's not like you do analysis first and then make predictions. Both of these happen at the same
time. You're analyzing and predicting what to expect when you listen to the passage. Okay, so back to
our sample question. We could use some of our strategies here, let's try to figure out. So what are we
supposed to listen for in this first part?

Okay, what two reasons does the speaker provide for being late to the conference? Okay, reasons for
being late, that's what we're supposed to supply here. A reason could be a sentence, it could be a noun.
Okay, we don't know exactly what form the reason will come in. We do know we will have to write that
reason in three words or less. So we'll have to listen.

Maybe a good answer will be traffic accident or an appointment that ran late. Okay, we don't know but
we'll have to listen for these reasons. Down below, dining options. Okay, so we're expecting to find
places to get food, all right? Probably nouns that we're looking for. And we've underlined it here so we
remember as we listen to listen for dining options in the second part of the passage.

Finally then, as you're listening. So you've already made your predictions and done your analysis. As
you're listening, you want to track answers. So you've already done so much work looking at the
questions, now you put it to use as you listen to the speaker. Just remember, answers come in order in
IELTS listening passages.

So answer number one will be presented first in the listening passage. And then you'll get the answer to
two, three, and four in order as the speaker is speaking. Okay, this helps you to track answers as they
come. As you listen use your analysis and predictions to follow along in the passage.

Answers can be spread out far from one another or very close, right? And three answers could come in a
very short amount of time, or they could be spread out very far from each other in the passage. You
have to be ready for that kind of thing. But as you listen, you want to mark answers on your question
sheet, so you're making guesses on your question sheet.

Later after all of the listening passages are complete, you will have that 10 minutes at the end to write
your answers on the answer sheet. Don't do that now, just mark answers on your question sheet as you
think you've heard them. When you believe you've heard an answer in the passage, then your attention
should move to the next question.

This is the essence of tracking. You're trying to figure out, have I answered question number two and if
so, should I move to question number three. And when you decide that, your focus changes away from
question two. But, you need to listen closely and sometimes speakers, you will think you'll have the
answer to question number two.

But then the speaker will change his or her mind about question number two. So you may need to
change something that you already thought was settled. Just make sure to keep your attention on the
question you're answering and the next question. So that you know okay, if you missed any answer let's
say to number two. You know that, because you know what to expect for the next question, question
number 3, okay?

So that's the last tip. Keep an eye on your current question, and the next question. If you missed one, if
you didn't hear an answer, you don't wanna lose more points because you're focusing on that
question. And worrying about that question you missed. You need to try to make certain that you are
following along with the speaker as they are speaking.

Okay, so to recap, our first two skills are to analyze and predict. These two skills happen before you
listen to a passage, you're trying to just notice as much as you can about the organization, the
directions, what information you'll need to provide for an answer in your question. And then prediction
is taking a look really closely at the questions themselves, underlining words that will help you figure out
what kind of answer you'll need to provide.

Tracking happens as you listen, so you're just trying to follow each question as you go. You remember,
IELTS listening passage questions come in order. So once you've answered number two successfully, you
should be pretty certain that you're ready to move on to three and your attention should shift. It also
matters then of course if you miss a question, if you think you didn't get an answer, don't lose points
and get frustrated.
Track the answers, figure out where you are in the passage and go to that question. That will make sure
that you don't lose easy points because you just got frustrated and you got lost as the speaker was
speaking. Okay, so this is the APT method as you do practice questions try it, see if you can master these
skills.

The listening test is very difficult, but if you have an approach and a strategy, you could do very very well