Useful sites for IELTS reading practice

The idea here is that reading may be good for you, but focussed reading is much better for you. This means that you don’t just read, but you focus your reading on the types of stories and language you will get in the exam. To help you do that, I have given you links to magazines and newspaper sites that report the type of  texts you get in the test. To help you further, I have organised these into the main topics you will find in the exam so that you can focus your reading even more. I also suggest some reading exercises to help improve your skills. The topics are:
  1. news
  2. business and finance
  3. health
  4. education
  5. science and technology
  6. culture
  7. travel
  8. the environment

Note on RSS feeds

You will find that most of these links are to RSS feeds. These give you the latest news as it happens. I have decided to do this so that you can if you wish subscribe directly to these feeds yourself.

World and UK news

Business and finance

Travel and transport

The environment

Some possible exercises

I would suggest that the best thing you can do is simply read as much as possible. The people with the best reading skills are almost always the people who read the most. There are times, however, when you want to focus your reading more by doing an exercise, here are some possibilities.

Summarise the paragraphs

See if you decide what each paragraph in the article is about. How would you summarise it? This is excellent practice for the paragraph matching exercise in the exam.

Read then write a summary

The idea behind this exercise (and the next one) is that you can use reading to improve your vocab. You will learn a little by just reading, but you will learn more quickly if you read and then write a short summary. That way you will begin to use some of the words you have read for yourself. And each time you use a word, you learn it a little better.

Read then speak – choose 5 words

Another possibility is to use your reading to help improve your vocabulary. Find 5/6 words/phrases in the article that you want to “learn” better. Write them down as you are reading the text. Then when you have finished reading the text, try to summarise what you have read by retelling the story using the words you have written down. If you cannot remember how to use the words, look back at the article and then try again.

Read the same story twice – spot the differences

You will sometimes find that the same story is reported by two different newspapers/magazines. If you do, one exercise you can do is read the same story twice and look for any differences between how the story is repeated. This is excellent close reading practice.

Read the headline – predict the words

This is another useful IELTS type exercise. You look at the title/headline and then predict 4/5 words you expect to find in the story. Your reading task is simply to find those words in the text. If you can’t find those words, can you find words that are similar in meaning?  This exercise is very similar to scanning in IELTS and it can help you find synonyms – an excellent skill.

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