In order for International Students to study degrees in The uk, they need to take and pass at approximately Band 6 the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS. A test created at Cambridge University in 1986 and backed by the British Authorities, Ielts Cambridge it covers speaking, listening, reading and writing, offered at both general and school levels, with the latter needed for university admittance in The uk and in many countries that teach basic or post-graduate courses in English. It is accepted as proof language competence by 9000 educational firms, including professional bodies. Performance is rated on a scale of 0-9, with Band 0 for those who fail to attempt the test, that is, do not generate or walk out without submitting any replies to paper; Band 4, for example, specifies a small user of English, while Band 6 achievers are classified as a competent. Band 9 qualifies them as an Expert user.

The Reading and Writing sections are difficult even for native speakers. The first requires that a student read three school texts, taken from newsletters, textbooks or magazines, selected for basic and postgraduate students. They are graded in difficulty, with the third article the hardest. The test lasts an hour. The student is required to answer 40 questions spread over all the articles.

The questions come in a number of forms: multiple choice, Yes/No/Not Given, True/False/Not Given, diagram labelling, locating information, short answer questions, and word the end and the like. The Yes/No/Not Given, which encourages the student to spot information correctly, and True/False/Not Given, which encourages students to spot the writer's views, Aare particularly easy to judge wrong as IELTS' exercises tend to deal in frequent red-herrings. Usually, the first set of questions refer to passage headings. The student has a list of headings given, that they must ascribe to the appropriate passage in the text.

When teaching IELTS Reading, a teacher must first instruct students on how to access quickly the desired information. There are several methods, beginning with extrapolating from article titles and sub-titles and noting topic sentences. After, a student should skim and scan, that is investigate material quickly and note and underline important points. The student can choose to investigate first set of questions before doing the above or refer to them afterwards. This is wise where the first questions concern list of headings. Continuous practice is important.

The student is taught to guess content from the title and subtitle and make notes. Each passage is rapidly analysed. The topic word, normally the first word of each passage, brings out the subject of the passage. The middle word is the body of the passage describing further the initial or topic word. The final word is designed with a conclusion of sorts but also leads on to the next passage. The articles are linear in nature and each question can relate in a linear way to released. Q1 is at the beginning of the article, Q13 at the end. Knowing this helps in both answering the questions, but also in comprehension.

As with Listening, the Reading test tests vocabulary, spelling and comprehension. In the questions there will be words similar to those in the text, and in that fashion vocabulary is tested. There will be red-herrings, attempts to trick the unwary student, especially in True/False/Not Given.