Synonyms

We use the synonyms to understand the meaning of the unknown words in a paragraph. is just to search in your own vocabulary.

there is a list of synonyms: list

there are some exersices to help you remeber some synonyms:  synonyms

Main Idea

The main idea of a paragraph tells us what the paragraph is mostly about.

Sometimes the title or subtitle tells the main idea,Other times, the first or last sentence in the passage reveals the main thought

Examples: examples of a main idea

Easy exercises: main idea

More difficult:exercises

Brainstorm Diagram

The brainstorm diagram is used to simplify the ideas when you want to make a summary or a synopsis of your reading or a topin in general. It helps you to organizate and relate all the information for making easier the understanding.

The method to do it is very simple; you must to put the tittle or the main topic on the center of the diagam, after that put the secondary ideas in the way that you want. It's important to know that in the brainstorm diagram you have to put only the most important and relative information because you can't expand too much the ideas on it.

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Unknown Vocabulary

When we read, sometimes we don't recognize or undesrtand some words, and obviously the idea is don't use the dictionary; for that reason there are some strategies to answer this problem. The strategies are:

- Strategie 1: Ignore the unknown vocabulary items.
Here you have to skip over the unknown vocabulary and keep on reading. often you don't need to know all the words or phrases in order to understand the text.

- Strategie 2: Use your knowledge to infer the meaning of an unknown word.
In this case you have to make an inference to know the meaning of the word just using your knowledge; for example if it's a noun or a verb or simply your knowledge about the topic for undestanding the ideas in the sentences near to the unknown word.

- Strategie 3: Use associations to infer the meaning of an unknown word.
This strategie is very easy, you must to make associations between concepts, such us similarities, differences or cause-effect relationships. Use your understanding of other parts of the text to infer the meaning of unknown words.

- Strategie 4: Look for a definition in the sentence.
Sometimes the writers provide the meaning of the unknown word inmediately following the sentece. So you have to read a little more for understanding the meaning; but is important to know that they give the meaning almost always in a technical vocabulary.

IELTS Exam Tips

The reading test of the IELTS is considered one of the most difficult because there are 40 questions developed in 3 long sections and also because you have an exact time to do it.

One of the principal recomendations is to practice for improving your reading skills and speed.
The development of the test depends of your skills in Scanning and Skimming.

- Scanning is what one does; You scan the passage to quickly find the information mentioned in the question. Once you find it, you get the answer from the passage and write it against the question.
- Skimming refers to reading a paragraph quickly to get an idea of what it is about, without trying to understand its details.

Knowing this, another recommendation is answer the questions one by one with the help of the underlined parts of the text. Having read the text once, you will find it easy to find specific information by scanning.
Also is important that you read the instructions for each question very carefully. If the question specifies that you must not use more than three words in your answer, stick to three words.

Finally, as the last recommendation, don't get stuck on any one question. If you can't get the answer, move on. You can always come back later.

here you can practice the IELTS exam.IELTS

Connectors

The connectors and synonyms are used in a reading basically to express Continuing Ideas. The idea in this strategie is to identify them.
The principal connectors that are used by the writers are:
- This
- These
- The
They use these words for replace the things that they already had mentioned inmediately in the back sentence.

For example:
- The goverment has developed a plan to reduce unemployment in our part of the country. The plan is being welcomed by most people in this part of the country.

In this sentence, The plan replace the before idea!

But in some cases the writer doesn't use the same word (like in the previous sentence), they could use a synonym for expressing the same idea.

For example:
- The condition of the patient has improved greatly in the last twenty four hours. if this progress continues, the patient will soon be able to leave the hospital.

In this sentence, this progress is used as a synonym simply for continuing with the context and don't lose the meaning of the phrase.