In my last session I spoke about skimming and scanning - methods which will help you in answering some of the TYPES OF QUESTIONS indicated below:
Do not be afraid to underline words in the question and in the passage which you think are important, ie: key words. Key words in the question should be scanned for and underlined in the passage to help you focus on that area. Perhaps you could write the question number in the margin (of the question booklet) adjacent to the area where you found the answer to the question. This will help you, if and when you will revise your answers, at the end of the test.
Skimming and scanning methods will help you to answer "YES/NO/NOT GIVEN" questions too. Scan for words/phrases or synonyms of the question in the paragraph/passage. Once you have found them...read very carefully. More often these will be written in a different style all together. Should the writer's views match with those given in the passage, the answer is YES. If it does not and a contradictory information is given, the answer is NO. Should nothing be mentioned about it, then it is NOT GIVEN. However, these are not that easy to identify, especially the NO and NOT GIVEN. Sometimes the opinion borders on NO & NOT GIVEN. Take a choice and go for NOT GIVEN.
Basically in Academic reading you may encounter the following types of questions
Multiple choice questions
Short answer questions
Summary completion (mostly with given words)
Finding answers from a diagram, process chart, flow chart etc.
Matching a headings from a list of given headings
Matching a writers' views and claims
Identification of information in the text: yes/no/not given questions
Summary completion too is not all that easy, especially when word choice is not available. However, you will need the technique of FOCUSSED SKIMMING to do summary completion jobs. As I said before skimming is a quick reading without wasting time on particulars.
Another type of skimming is to read the first two sentences of a paragraph, the middle one and the last sentence. This will give you a general idea of the contents. You must understand that all paragraphs start with what is called a "TOPIC SENTENCE". This is the sentence that will give you an idea of what you are going to see in that particular paragraph. For eg, I refer to a passage from Insight Into IELTS:
"IN MOST AREAS OF THE WORLD, CERTANLY IN EUROPE BOTH THE PHYSICAL LANDSCAPE AND THE MAPS OF IT ARE RELATIVELY STABLE. MAP REVISION IS USUALLY CONCERNED WITH MAN-MADE FEATURES..."
These are the first two sentences of a paragraph; what do we see? The topic is all about landscapes and maps / map revision. This is the tactic you should employ in identifying the subject matter and onward to the appropriate topic
The following websites are useful and they have multiple module guidance and some English language tutoring:
http://ieltshelpnow.com/
http://www.51ielts.com
http://download.35mb.com/ielts (I have not tried out this site)
http://www.aapress.com.au/ielts/english/dload.html
http://www.cross-link.com/ielts-tutor.html
http://international.holmesglen.vic.edu.au/IELTS01.htm
(a good site for all the four modules)
http://www.uefap.co.uk/ (plenty of guidance)
