Tutorial, Tips & Tricks for MCQ types of IELTS Reading questions

Multiple Choice Questions 

As the name clearly shows, you have to figure out which of the 3 or 4 options is the best. Unless it is clearly stated in the instructions that ‘choose 2 or 3 options as your answer’ always only one option is correct. 

The purpose of this type of question is to assess how good the aspirant is at skimming and scanning. During the 60 minutes of the Reading test, you will definitely not have enough time to read every passage thoroughly. Consequently, getting a high score in this section is the result of being skillful at skimming and scanning. 

Click here for the Skimming & Scanning tutorial

 Steps to help you succeed 

1. Read the multiple-choice questions carefully and underline the key words. These keywords are in most cases names, dates, and numbers, but there could be other types of keywords. 

2. Read the text quickly and underline the keywords. While reading for the first time, only focus on the topic sentence of each paragraph and skim the rest of it to save some time. 

3. When you find the answer in the text, read that particular sentence very carefully and choose the correct answer.   

4. Remember that only because a few of the words from the text are found in one choice, it does not mean that that choice is the correct one. 

5. If at the end of the exam, you have some extra time to check this section, the best way is to make sure all other choices are fully wrong!