IELTS READING TEST - SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS TIPS AND STRATEGY

This post will help you answer short answer questions more effectively by looking at a sample question, identifying common problems and giving you a strategy to use on exam day.

Short Answer Questions

These questions are often called ‘comprehension’ questions and they are very common in English classrooms all over the world. Most students have answered these kinds of questions before and for this reason most students tend to do quite well with them.

Despite this there are some common problems that cause students to make mistakes and throw away marks.

1. Example question

2. Skills Tested

1. Ability to skim the passage quickly and understand the overall meaning

2. Ability to scan for specific information

3. Understand the question being asked

4. Identify keywords

5. Think of possible synonyms and paraphrases of keywords

3. Common Problems

1. Synonyms and paraphrasing are the biggest problem. Students who are unaware of these tend to look for keywords in the text that directly match those in the questions. This wastes lots of time and good time management is essential in the reading test.

2. Word limit can also cause people to throw away easy marks. If you write over the stated word limit you will get the answer wrong.

3. You don’t have to read every word of the text. These questions test your ability to skim and scan for specific information. You also won’t have time to read every word.

4. Students often see a word they don’t understand in the question or text and either panic or spend too much time thinking about the meaning.

5. Some students try to write full sentences. Your answers don’t have to be grammatically correct, so stay under the word limit.

4. Tips

1. The answers appear in the same order as the text.

2. Look at and understand the questions first before you start reading the text. What is the question actually asking?

3. You will probably be given a word limit, for example ‘NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER.’ Make sure you don’t go over this limit.

4. As stated above, the answers do not need to be grammatically correct, just short answers.

5. Don’t give your opinion, just the answer in the text.

6. Keywords in the question will normally be nouns or noun phrases.

7. When you find your keywords always think synonyms and paraphrases.

5. Strategy

1. Read the instructions carefully and note the word limit.

2. Read and understand the questions. Think about the information you will need to find.

3. Underline any keywords in the questions.

4. Think about synonyms or paraphrases for these keywords.

5. Find part of the text question 1 relates to.

6. Read question again.

7. Read the section containing the answer carefully and identify answer.

Summary

Task type and format	Test takers answer questions, which usually relate to factual information about details in the text. This is most likely to be used with a text that contains a lot of factual information and detail. Test takers must write their answers in words or numbers on the answer sheet. Test takers must write their answers using words from the text. The instructions will make it clear how many words/numbers test takers should use in their answers, e.g. ‘NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage’, ‘ONE WORD ONLY’ or ‘NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS’. If test takers write more than the number of words asked for, they will lose the mark. Numbers can be written using figures or words. Contracted words are not tested. Hyphenated words count as single words. The questions are in the same order as the information in the text.
Task focus	Short answer questions assess the test takers’ ability to locate and understand precise information in the text.
No. of questions	Variable