The IELTS (’International English Language Testing System) is an English language proficiency test and is of an international standard.  Students who seek enrollment in institutions based in Australia, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa need to take this exam. One million students take the IELTS every year and as such the competition is very high among the students to score maximum points.

The entire exam consists of four modules- listening, reading, writing and speaking. The average of all the bands scored in these modules is considered to evaluate the overall performance in what is known as an Overall band score. It has a scale from 0-9 with 9 being the highest attainable band. The reading module is the second test to be taken during the course of the exam.

The questions that can appear in the reading section include multiple choice questions, short-answer questions, sentence completion, summary flow chart/ diagram completion, scanning and identifying the location of the given information, matching lists/phrases, selecting true/false options, choosing headings for given paragraphs and labeling diagrams that has numbered parts.

Reading questions can be confusing at times and as such adequate practice is required. Focus on IELTS and Cambridge IELTS are two of the books that offer a vast variety when it comes to practicing. Reading the dictionary or Barron’s for at least 1 hour every day is recommended to improve our word usage. Our vocabulary has to be really good to understand the questions and paragraphs given and as such reading journals, advertisements, booklets, official documents, books and magazines on a daily basis is highly recommended in order to get a good grasp of the subject.

The IELTS organization offers The IELTS Official Practice Materials 2007 which includes sample questions and also a CD. Several reading questions are available on the official website of IELTS itself.  There are several websites which offer extensive material to ace the reading section. In addition to this, the IELTS organization conducts workshops to help students tackle the reading section better. Thus, by preparing from the mentioned books and with the help of the mentioned websites, we can be sure to ace the exam and get a minimum of 7.0 in the reading module.