It is often a big hurdle faced by many IELTS students to struggle for completing the IELTS reading exam in 1 hour and finishing it in less than 1 hour is unimaginable for them. However, if proper strategy is implemented, it is definitely possible to complete the 3 IELTS reading comprehension passages in less than 60 minutes. Let us know the right strategies for the same.

Solve Questions While Reading Passages

If you had been running out of time while solving IELTS reading passages, one of the best strategies, which absolutely works as the most practical solution, is that you should solve your questions while you are reading the passage for the first time.

Usually, students are advised the protocol of first reading the passage and then solving questions. Instead of this, it would be better to read the question first and then start reading the passage. Once you find answer of first question, read the second question and then again start reading the passage from when you had left. By following this strategy, you would never complain about not completing the reading passages on time. Rather you would find some time left to review your answers as well.

Transfer Answers Simultaneously

Another important tip that you should keep in mind is that you must transfer your answers simultaneously since you do not get extra time for this in IELTS reading. For this strategy, you can do one thing. First, solve one passage and mark the answers on the question paper. Once you are done with solving that passage, immediately transfer those marked answers on the answer sheet.

This would also give you confidence on completing a passage and to avoid last minute rush of writing down answers in the answer sheet. Apart from this, you can also save time by marking the words in the passages instead of writing them on the question paper and then transfer to answer sheet from the passage itself.

Divide Your Time Effectively

Remember that you have only 60 minutes to solve 40 questions which are divided into 3 passages. Last passage is definitely going to be difficult and hence, you may devote some more time there. Implementing the effective time strategies would help you a lot in IELTS reading test. You should try to solve your first passage in less than 20 minutes. Similarly, you should also do second passage in less than 20 minutes so that you have some more minutes to solve third passage.

Do Not Spend More Time on a Single Question

While solving IELTS reading passages by following the above strategies, you also need to make sure that you are not devoting extra time on a single question. It is, for sure, going to be the case that a few questions are very difficult and to solve them, you may need peace of mind. Instead of spending more and more time on such difficult questions, if you move on and solve the other simple questions, you would save time and gain confidence as well. Later on, you can solve the pending questions or simply guess them but do make sure that those difficult questions are marked well otherwise you may forget to solve them.