ISLPR Language Services Blog

Over the next month we will go over some tips to help you mentally prepare yourself for an ISLPR test and strategies to help you perform well during an exam.

To make things easy, we’ll break the test down into 4 parts and provide strategies to improve each of your macro-skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Today, we’re looking at:

The Reading Test.

Part 2: during the test

1. Make sure you understand the task that the tester has given you; this will indicate which approach to reading you should use.
   • With any text, you may be given different kinds of tasks; for example, you may be asked to read a whole text extensively and then a key section of it intensively.
2. You can ask how long you make take to read a text silently before talking about but, normally, the tester will give you only an approximate time only because individual reading speeds vary greatly or the tester might say “tell me when you are ready to talk about the text”.
   • The tester is interested in whether your reading speed is appropriate for the task and that you use – and do not overuse – appropriate strategies. (Remember what we wrote about in our previous blog on reading strategies).
3. Use graphic features (e.g. photos, headlines, print size) to help you understand the ideas of the text.
4. Use any introductory paragraph or title to help you to understand the main idea of a text and also any topic sentences to help you to understand the main idea of paragraphs.
5. The tester may ask you to make inferences or draw implications.
6. You do not always have to maintain eye contact with the tester in this part of the test. It is generally fine to look back at a text when you are talking about it – it’s a reading test, not a memory test!.
7. If the tester asks what a text– or a section of it- is about, you need to express the menaing in your own words. If you simply repeat the original words, you will not have proven that you understood it. The best principle is always: read, understand and answer from your understanding. You have the test in front of you to jog your memory.
8. When the tester asks a question about the text, answer as directly as you can. For example, if the testers asks you the main point of a particular paragraph, there is no need to start with “In my opinion the main point of the third paragraph is……………”

Let us know if these tips were helpful in the comments section below! If you have any questions relating to the reading section of the test, comment below and we’ll reply back to you ASAP.

To know more and to experience the reading tasks, book a reading tutorial with one of our accredited ISLPR® tutors!

A©  ISLPR Language Services Pty Ltd, October, 2019