Reading
Two different skills, both needed, and the reason most candidates run out of time. With a practice exercise and answers.
Skimming and scanning in IELTS reading are two separate skills that candidates often treat as one. Skimming means reading quickly to get the general idea. Scanning means searching for one specific piece of information and ignoring everything else.
You need both, at different moments, and the commonest reason candidates do not finish the reading test in sixty minutes is that they do neither. They read the passage carefully from beginning to end, which is the one approach the test does not allow time for.
The difference
Using the wrong one at the wrong moment wastes as much time as reading everything.
Moving quickly over the whole text to find out what it is about and how it is organised. Your eyes travel across every paragraph but you are not reading every word. Takes two or three minutes for a full passage.
Searching for one thing: a name, a date, a number, a specific term. You ignore everything that is not it. Your eyes move down the page rather than across the lines.
You skim once, at the beginning, before you read the questions. You are building a map of the passage so that you know roughly where each part is.
For every question that contains something findable, such as a name, a year, a figure or an unusual word. Scanning takes you to the right paragraph in seconds.
Only after skimming and scanning have taken you to the right two or three sentences. Then read those slowly and carefully.
Reading the passage carefully from start to finish before looking at the questions. There is not enough time, and you will have forgotten most of it by the time you need it.
Method
A sequence that fits inside twenty minutes per passage.
Two minutes. Read the title, the first sentence of each paragraph and the last sentence of the passage. Do not stop for words you do not know.
Now that you have a map, the questions will tell you what to look for and roughly where it will be.
In each question, mark the word most likely to appear in the text unchanged: a proper noun, a number, a date, a technical term.
Move your eyes down the page looking only for that one thing. Do not read the sentences you pass.
When you find it, read the sentence before, the sentence itself and the sentence after. The answer is almost always in those three.
If ninety seconds have gone on one question, put an answer and go. A question you leave blank is worth the same as one you get wrong, and you can come back.
Practice
Do not read the passage carefully. Scan it for each answer and see how fast you can go.
The Auckland Harbour Bridge opened in May 1959, connecting the city centre to the North Shore for the first time by road. The original structure carried four lanes and was designed by the British firm Freeman Fox and Partners, who had also worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge three decades earlier.
Demand was badly underestimated. Traffic in the first year exceeded the forecast for 1970, and by the early 1960s the bridge was already congested at peak times. Two additional lanes were added on each side between 1968 and 1969, manufactured in Japan and lifted into place in sections. Aucklanders promptly nicknamed the additions the Nippon clip-ons.
The bridge now carries around 170,000 vehicles a day. Proposals for a second crossing have been made repeatedly since the 1980s, and a walking and cycling path has been proposed and abandoned more than once, most recently in 2021.
1In which year did the bridge open?
1959. Scanning for a four-digit number takes you straight to the first sentence. There is no need to read anything else in that paragraph.
2How many lanes did the original bridge carry?
Four. The word lanes appears twice in the passage, so scan for it and check which sentence refers to the original structure.
3Where were the additional lanes made?
Japan. A country name is a proper noun, which makes it one of the fastest things to scan for. Britain and Sydney appear too, which is why you check the sentence rather than the word.
4How many vehicles use the bridge each day?
170,000. Numbers with commas stand out on the page. Note that the question asks per day, and the passage says a day, so the match is exact.
5When was a walking and cycling path most recently abandoned?
2021. The final sentence. Scanning from the bottom upwards is often faster when a question refers to something recent.
Most candidates know they should skim and scan, and carry on reading carefully anyway, because the habit only changes with practice under time pressure.
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Scanning five facts from a short passage is the easy version. Doing it across three long passages in sixty minutes, while answering three different question types, is the real test.
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Skimming means reading quickly over a whole text to get the general idea and see how it is organised. Scanning means searching for one specific piece of information and ignoring everything else.
Skim it, once, for about two minutes. Do not read it carefully. Reading the whole passage properly before you see the questions is the commonest reason candidates run out of time.
About twenty minutes each, for three passages in sixty minutes. There is no extra time at the end of the reading test to copy answers, so write them in the right place as you go.
Speed in IELTS comes from reading less, not from reading faster. Skimming and scanning let you skip most of the passage and read carefully only the two or three sentences that contain the answer.
Usually not. You are not required to understand every word, and stopping at unknown vocabulary is one of the main things that slows candidates down.
Full membership
Timing yourself shows you whether you finished. It does not show you where the time went, or what band your reading is at.
IELTStestONLINE assesses your writing and speaking against the four IELTS criteria, instantly and as often as you like, using a system built by a former IELTS examiner and examiner trainer. It keeps every score in one place with an estimated band, and it carries no advertising.
See what membership includes