IELTS Reading HACK | True False Not given | Yes No Not given

Hi guys! It's Asya and for today's video I've analyzed some of the trickiest questions in IELTS reading which are true false not given and yes no not given. I've taken the official IELTS practice tests for the last three years and I've done all the questions of these types in order to find any patterns or any tricks that will help you find answers more easily. And I have found some and that's what I'm gonna talk about in this video. I will talk you through some example questions too. So let's get started! What have I found out? Well first of all almost all tests have them unfortunately. Usually true false not given are in the first passage which is the easiest or sometimes in the second and yes no not given are usually in the third passage which is the most difficult or sometimes in the second. And the next tip is really easy but it's very powerful and I was so excited when I've discovered that. Basically you always need to use all three answers. Sometimes you have four questions in a set, sometimes five. Let's say you have four. So one is going to be true, one is false, one is not given and the last one is one of the three. However if you have five questions it's still not likely that three of them are going to be true or three of them are going to be not given. Answers are usually evenly distributed. So if the answers to the first four questions are like that what do you think the fifth answer should be? My bet is it's not given. However I also may change that in the future. So I would say don't change your answer because of this tip but use it to help yourself decide what answer you should go for or to guess the answer if you can't find it. The first thing you need to do is to locate the correct bit of the text which contains the answer. The good thing is you'll find answers in the same order as questions are asked. So what I usually do is I read the first statement then I start scanning the text until I feel that the answer is somewhere here then I slow down, re-read the statement, re-read the bit of the text, locate the answer, read the second statement, continue scanning the text and so on. It's really helpful when you know that you don't need to go backwards in the text to look for your answers. You only need to go forward. That's true in probably 95% of cases but occasionally when you have yes no not given questions in the passage three at the very end of it questions may not be in order but in most tests they are. If you want to know all question types which come in order and which don't come in order watch my video it's called IELTS Reading Hack. Other things which will help you to locate the answer are names and dates. Whenever you see a name of a theory or a name of a person or a date highlighted straight away it will help you to locate the correct bit of the text. Also look for synonyms. Once you read the statement you know that you're not gonna find exactly same words in the text. They do it on purpose. They always paraphrase. So look for this paraphrasing. For example your statement may say bilingual children and in the text you will read children who speak more than two languages or who speak two or more languages which is a definition of being bilingual. Once you've located the correct bit of the passage which contains the answer how do you decide which answer you should go for? Let's have a look at true false not given questions first. What I want to say is in this type of question the answer is usually located in a single sentence. I'm going to show you an example. I'm not going to read it. Please pause the video read the sentence from the passage read the statement and decide if it's true false not given and then resume the video. Okay ready? Here is what I would do. First of all I read the statement. In 1987. Okay the date. Highlight. H.M. Ashki. Name. Highlight. Had the fastest butter producing machine. Okay that's what we are looking for. The fastest butter producing machine that existed at the time. That's important that it existed at that time. There may be another fastest butter producing machine which existed later. In IELTS often the devil is in detail. You really have to check everything. Pay attention to words like at that time. Usually. Mostly. Hardly. They will affect if the answer is true not given. False not given. So pay Okay you've analyzed the statement. Now we start reading the text. What they usually do is they give you too much information. Sentences are long. Words are complex. They're trying to confuse you. Your goal is to stay focused and to simply look for the answer without trying to understand everything that's going on because it may not be possible unless your English is really advanced. So we're looking for relevant bits and irrelevant bits. From 1987 onwards. Okay. The date matches. Glass making. That's what we're looking for. Developed from traditional mouth blowing to semi-automatic process. Do we care about it? No. Just cross it out. After factory owner H.M. Ashkey introduced a machine that's great capable of producing 200 bottles per hour somewhere. Okay we don't care about how many bottles and where he produced them. More than three times quicker than any previous production method. Okay that means that it was the fastest bottle producing machine at the time and so the statement is true. Let's have a look at the next example. Again please pause the video and decide if the statement is true, false, not given and then resume it. Ready? Okay. The statement is it is more expensive to produce recycled glass than to manufacture new glass. Okay so it's saying that recycled glass is more expensive than new glass. Let's have a look at the text. As less energy is needed to melt recycled glass than to melt down raw materials. So raw materials are needed to produce new glass. Right? And we know that less energy is needed to melt recycled glass. This also saves fuel and production costs. Saves costs means the costs are lower so it's cheaper to produce recycled glass but the statement says it's more expensive. There is a direct contradiction and the answer is false. Let me show you one more example and then we talk about yes no not given questions. Ready? Please pause the video and decide if the statement is true, false or not given. Let's have a look at the statement together. Nowadays. Okay that means at the present moment. That's important. Most glass, not just glass, not all glass but most glass, more than 50 percent. Okay that's important. Is produced by large international manufacturers. So manufacturers should be large and international. Let's have a look at the text. Modern glass plants. If they're modern it means it's happening at the present moment or nowadays. Right? So that's correct. Glass plants, yes that's what we need, are capable of making millions of glass containers a day in many different colors and then they talk about colors. We don't care about colors at all so just cross it out. So what we know is glass plants or glass manufacturers right are capable of making a lot of glass but do they produce most glass? We don't know. Are they international? We have no idea. We haven't read anything about that at all. It means the answer is not given. A general tip is if you can't find an answer to a certain question mark it not given. Usually you can't find it because it's not given. Don't waste too much time on any single question just mark it not given and move on. Now let's have a look at yes no not given questions. Those are usually given in the third passage where the text is the most difficult and it will be harder to find answers. In true false not given questions we deal with facts. We need to say if the statement is true or it's false. In yes no not given questions we deal with opinions of the writer and we need to say if the statement matches claims of the writer or his opinion yes it matches or no it doesn't match or not given the information is not provided we simply can't say if it's yes or if it's no. There is another difference. In true false not given questions the answer is usually in a single sentence. Here you may have to read several sentences usually two sentences in order to find your answer. Be prepared for that and let me show you the first example. Now we have the first example. Please pause the video and decide if the answer is yes no or not given. Ready? Let's have a look at the statement. Attitudes towards bilingualism not facts but attitudes or opinions have changed okay in recent years not some long time ago but in recent years. Okay let's have a look at the text. We see in the past bilingual children were considered to be at a disadvantage so the attitude was bad. Over the past few decades however technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at we're not interested in that at how bilingualism interacts with and so on or we are really not interested in what researchers looked at right that's not what the question is about so cross it out okay identifying several clear benefits so what we have is in the past disadvantage over the past few decades clear benefits so is it fair to say attitudes have changed in recent years yes so the answer is yes in this type of question it's very likely that you're not gonna know all the words sentences alone try to analyze the sentence structure to understand what this bit of text is talking about and then determine if it's relevant or it's irrelevant and you don't care about it quite often the answer depends on simple words which you know and as long as you can stay focused and you simply understand how different words are related to each other you can still find the answer even if you can't understand everything the next example is ready please pause the video now ready let's have a look at the statement bilingual people consistently consistently means always regularly name images faster okay and we read the text and we know that knowing more than one language it means being bilingual can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly okay so there is a direct contradiction the statement says bilingual people name pictures faster and the text says bilingual people name pictures more slowly so the answer is no what i want to say is yes no not given and true false not given questions are quite similar pay attention to what type of question you're answering because if you mark it as false instead of no it will be an incorrect answer ready for one more question i'm going to give you some extra tips okay pause the video now if we have a look at the statement bilingual people are better okay they're better at guessing correctly what words are that's what we're looking for and we read this long bit of text it's almost a paragraph all we know is that bilingual people guess words in several languages but we don't know if they are better or if they're worse but we know that the correct bit of the text because it's about guessing words so the answer is not given and it often happens to me that i keep on looking for the answer and i can't find it and that's because it's not given so don't waste too much time if you can't find an answer probably it's not given and now the tip is when you're answering questions don't rely on your common knowledge use only information you can read sometimes it's really hard to decide between true not given or no not given you shouldn't really hesitate between true and false or yes and no if you ever do try re-reading it you've probably missed something but when you're hesitating between yes not given for example then it's more difficult and i can't tell you how to answer it because it really depends on the question but from analyzing my answers i've noticed that i usually get into trouble if i start overthinking go for the first answer once you've found it just go for it and once you start thinking oh and if i look deeper maybe there is a hidden meaning here and if i look from that angle that's really too much just go for the first most obvious answer i think you had enough examples for today how many questions could you answer correctly tell me in comments also tell me what types of reading questions do you find most difficult and i try to make videos about them thank you for watching me today don't forget to watch the video about questions which come in order and questions which don't come in order and good luck with your preparation and exam