Use the IELTS reading journal to improve your reading skills

Many of my students struggle to improve their reading skills for IELTS. So, I have designed this reading journal to help you with a reading plan. Feel free to contact me for reading classes!

How to use the Reading Journal:

• Pick a genre for each week (e.g. newspaper article).
• Sources for genres will include news websites such as the Huffington Post or Aljazeera; review websites like Airbnb; extracts from literature; academic articles from CAE and IELTS; letters; technical or popular blogs; biographical information from online media.
• For each reading, read the text without looking up the vocabulary.
• Next, write a summary for the text, this should include all the main ideas from the text and an answer to a more reflective/critical question.
• Following this, make a list of useful vocabulary (collocations, expressions) related to your CAE/IELTS topic.

An alternative to the vocabulary notebook would be to look up the use of a grammar point (i.e. passives, conditionals, noun phrases).

Why the Reading Journal Will Help Your Language Learning:

• Improving reading skills takes time and requires regular practice. It isn’t something that we can improve overnight. Regular reading is an important part of developing skills in a foreign language.
• This will improve your reading speed and ability to skim texts.
• You can build your knowledge of exam topics: information & opinion.
• You can build up a vocabulary repertoire for each topic.
• By writing a summary, you practice writing on a number of topics.