Section 1: Easiest

• General Training: This section contains shorter texts related to everyday life such as advertisements, schedules, or notices. These texts are usually easier to understand and involve questions that require you to extract specific information.
• Academic: The first section includes a longer text, typically from a book or journal, but is generally more straightforward. The topics are often based on history, science, or education but are presented in a relatively simple way.

Tips:

Focus on basic details: In Section 1, you will often need to locate specific information such as dates, names, prices, or numbers. To do this efficiently, practice scanning for details without reading the entire passage. This technique involves running your eyes over the text to find particular keywords.

Practice Exercise:

• Choose a passage from a newspaper or an advertisement.
• Create a list of 5-10 specific details to find (e.g., prices, dates, names).
• Time yourself scanning the text for these details.

Work with authentic materials: For General Training candidates, practice with real-life texts such as notices, advertisements, or travel brochures to become familiar with the types of texts you might encounter.

Work on identifying factual information: If you’re preparing for the Academic Reading test, practice extracting facts from texts by reading articles related to common IELTS topics like science or history. Pay close attention to specific information like years, statistics, or research findings.