Yes, skimming and scanning are two very important reading SUB-SKILLS.

We do both in our everyday lives as well, in our L1 too.

But there’s MUCH MORE to teaching reading well to learners preparing for the IELTS exam.

Which of the following are some of the other important reading sub-skills they’ll need to rely on in the exam?

1) recognizing that a particular meaning may be expressed in DIFFERENT grammatical FORM

2) knowing when to use BOTTOM-UP and TOP-DOWN processing to tackle a text

3) recognizing WORD CLASS (i.e. parts of speech)

4) recognizing anaphoric signaling –i.e. PRECEDING words or phrases

5) recognize the communicative PURPOSE of written texts, based on form and other genre features

[Answer key: ALL of them! ;)]

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Hi. I’m Fatime. I’m an IELTS Teacher Trainer, helping CELTA-qualified English language teachers become better at teaching SKILLS, as opposed to just testing them. 

Check out my courses here:

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