Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

 
 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
9 
What are keywords? 
Keywords are the words which carry information such as nouns and verbs in 
sentences. In IELTS reading it is very important to be able to find and understand 
similar or synonymous words and phrases in passages. Underline the keywords in the 
questions and the passage so that you can refer to them more easily. 
While finding and looking for keywords, for example, draw a circle around Proper 
Nouns (words which start with a Capital letter) and numerical values such as dates, 
percentages and number strings. By doing this, the finding process up will speed up 
especially if you need to refer to the same part of the passage to answer another 
question relating to that part again. 
Finding: Step II (Scanning)  
When you have finished finding the main ideas in the passage, look at the questions 
quickly. You need to know how many questions and what question types there are, 
and you should approximately know what the questions are about.
When you have found the keywords in the questions, you need to find synonymous or 
similar words and phrases to answer each question by the help of your map. Read the 
sentences before and after the keywords that you have found. Then it becomes a test 
of your vocabulary knowledge: if you don't understand the words that you are reading, 
it will be difficult to get the right answer. However, remember that sometimes you 
don’t need to understand the meaning of every new word! It is often helpful to guess 
the meanings of new words by paying attention to the words that come before and 
after the keywords. 
When you look at each sentence in the passage, you need to understand only enough 
to answer the question: “Is this what I am looking for?” So, you only need to 
understand the topic of each sentence. 
Let’s say you are doing the IELTS test and you are trying to answer a question about 
‘shoes’. You look for keywords in the passage to find the information that will give you 
the answer. You look at each sentence quickly. For example, you see this sentence: 
“Like perfumes, cosmetics were originally used as an adjunct to religious ritual, 
the ceremonial aspect gradually being lost as both men and women adorned 
themselves with cosmetics.” 
You locate the subject of the sentence ‘cosmetics’ and it is enough. It is not necessary 
to read all the details. You now know that this sentence probably does not contain the 
information you need. So, you should quickly move on to the next sentence. This is 

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