Skimming, scanning and close reading

Learn the three reading speeds every IELTS candidate needs, with a worked example showing how to map a passage in three minutes.

An IELTS passage is about 850 words long. Read aloud at normal speed, that takes nearly six minutes, and you have only twenty minutes for the passage and thirteen or fourteen questions. Clearly you cannot read every sentence with the same attention. Skilled readers change gear. This lesson shows you the three gears and when to use each.

Gear 1: skimming – reading for the map

Skimming means moving quickly through a text to find out what it is about and how it is organised. You are not trying to understand everything. You are drawing a map so that later you know where to look.

How to skim an IELTS passage (2–3 minutes):

1. Read the title and subtitle. They often state the whole topic.
2. Read the first paragraph properly. It introduces the subject and sometimes the writer’s angle.
3. For each following paragraph, read the first sentence, glance through the middle, and read the last sentence if the paragraph is long.
4. As you go, give each paragraph a two- or three-word label in your head, or highlight a few words that capture it.

Do not stop for unknown words while skimming. Do not try to remember details. If you finish with a list like intro → early history → the key invention → problems → modern use, the skim has done its job.

Gear 2: scanning – hunting for one thing

Scanning means running your eyes over the text looking for a specific item: a name, a date, a number, a technical term. You are not reading sentences at all. It is the skill you use to find a platform number on a departures board.

Things that are easy to scan for:

• Capital letters: names of people, places, organisations (Conté, Bavaria)
• Numbers and dates: 1795, 40%, twenty metres
• Unusual or technical words that are unlikely to be paraphrased: graphite, kiln, sonar
• Words in italics or quotation marks

Things that are hard to scan for: ordinary words such as important, increase or problem, because the passage will almost certainly use a synonym. For those you need Lesson 3.

Gear 3: close reading – reading for the answer

Once skimming has told you the right paragraph and scanning has taken you to the right line, you slow right down. Close reading means reading two or three sentences word by word, paying attention to grammar, to small words such as only, most, before and unless, and to exactly who did what. This is where marks are won and lost. Almost every wrong answer in IELTS Reading comes from close reading that was not close enough.

A useful rule: skim the passage, scan for the place, read closely for the answer.

Worked example

Read the short text below as you would in the test. First skim it in about forty seconds and label each paragraph.

The return of the night train

A For most of the twentieth century, the sleeper train was the normal way to cross Europe. A passenger could board in Paris in the evening and wake up in Vienna or Rome. By the early 2000s, however, the network was in steep decline. Low-cost airlines offered the same journeys in two hours for a fraction of the price, and high-speed day trains took the business travellers who remained.

B The operators’ own accounts explain why so many routes were closed. A sleeping car carries far fewer passengers than an ordinary carriage, since each traveller occupies a bed rather than a seat. It can be used only once in twenty-four hours, and it requires staff throughout the night. In 2016 Germany’s national railway, which had been losing money on its night services for years, withdrew from the market altogether.

C What happened next surprised the industry. The Austrian state railway bought much of the German fleet and, instead of closing the routes, began to expand them. Within three years it was carrying one and a half million overnight passengers annually and reporting a small profit. Its managers attributed the success to simple measures: modernised carriages, online booking and connections timed to suit holidaymakers rather than commuters.

D Growing concern about the climate has added to the momentum. A night train produces a small fraction of the carbon emissions of a flight over the same distance, and surveys show that a significant minority of travellers are now willing to pay more and travel longer for that reason. Several governments have responded by subsidising new cross-border services.

E Obstacles remain. Rolling stock is in short supply because almost no sleeping cars were built for two decades, and a new one takes years to deliver. Operators must also pay a charge to each national network they cross, which makes long international routes particularly expensive. Enthusiasts speak of a renaissance; a more cautious description would be a recovery that has only just begun.

A possible map after skimming:

Notice that this took almost no effort: the first sentence of each paragraph announced its topic (‘What happened next surprised the industry’, ‘Obstacles remain’).

Now use the map. Suppose the questions include these:

1. In which year did the German national railway stop running night trains?
2. According to its managers, what three changes made the Austrian service successful?
3. Why are long international routes especially costly to operate?

• Question 1 contains a name and asks for a date. Scan for German / Germany: it appears in B and C. In B you find ‘In 2016 Germany’s national railway … withdrew from the market altogether.’ → 2016. Time needed: perhaps ten seconds.
• Question 2 mentions Austria and managers. Your map says C. Scan C for managers, then read closely: ‘modernised carriages, online booking and connections timed to suit holidaymakers’.
• Question 3 has no name or number, but international routes and costly suggest problems, which your map places in E. Close reading finds: ‘Operators must also pay a charge to each national network they cross, which makes long international routes particularly expensive.’ Note the paraphrase: costly = expensive.

You answered three questions and read fewer than a hundred words carefully. That is the efficiency you are aiming for.

Should you read the questions first or the passage first?

You will hear both pieces of advice. The approach that works for most candidates combines them:

1. Skim the passage (2–3 minutes).
2. Look at the first set of questions and note the task type, the word limit and the key words.
3. Find and answer those questions, using scanning and close reading.
4. Move to the next set of questions and repeat.

Reading all forty questions before reading anything else is not helpful: you cannot hold them in your memory. Equally, reading the whole passage slowly before looking at any question wastes time on sentences that are never tested.

One exception: if the first task for a passage is matching headings, do it as you skim, paragraph by paragraph, because both activities ask the same question, what is this paragraph mainly about? (see Lesson 5).

Common mistakes

• Skimming too slowly. If your skim takes six minutes, it has become ordinary reading. Force yourself: first and last sentences only.
• Scanning for a word that has been paraphrased. If you cannot find children anywhere, look for pupils, the young, under-tens.
• Stopping at the first match. A name may appear in three paragraphs. Check that the sentence you have found really answers the question.
• Answering from memory or general knowledge. Always go back to the text. The test is full of options that are true in the real world but not stated in the passage.

Practice routine

Take any passage from the practice tests on this site and do the following before you look at the questions:

1. Set a timer for three minutes and skim.
2. Cover the passage and write a label for every paragraph from memory.
3. Uncover it and check. Which paragraphs did you mislabel, and why?

Repeat with five passages. By the fifth, most learners find that their labels are accurate and that the questions suddenly feel easier, because they already know where everything is.

Key points

• Skim for the map, scan for the place, read closely for the answer.
• First and last sentences of paragraphs carry most of the organisation.
• Scan for names, numbers and unusual words; expect ordinary words to be paraphrased.
• Close reading of two or three sentences decides the mark, so slow down there.

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