Fourth Strategy in Reading IELTS: Eliminate Choices and Look at the Opposites

The way to apply eliminating choice in IELTS is not so complicated. First, you need to have a look at the choices then eliminate it quickly. For example, in one of the choice, it is stated “Ary Prihayati studied there”. Make sure that you check whether Ary Prihayati is mentioned in the passage or not. If not, quickly eliminate it.

In another kind of question such as “the passage indicates all of the following EXCEPT”, you can also eliminate some choices after skimming the passage quickly then checking for the correlation between information in the passage with the answer choice. If you find the reference, you can scratch it off as a choice.

For quite similar questions such as “which answer choice does not describe?” or “all the following answer choices are identifiable characteristics, EXCEPT which?”, we can look for similar worded answer. Whenever you find two options which mean the same, they must be both incorrect. That is why we can eliminate both choices. Remember that there is always only one choice answer correct, so have two choices with the same meaning will not work for this case.

Besides, you can have ‘opposites’ as your way to get the correct answer. More than likely, these opposites will not be clearly recognized. You should be accurate in looking at the slight difference among the options. Have a look at the following example:
1. If the government feels that the increasing number of housing is not a crucial thing, many people will go on strike to sue their right.
2. If the government feels that the decreasing number of housing is not an important thing, many people will go on strike to sue their right.

From the example above, we can see that there is only slight wording difference between these two options. One of these options is correct. We should look deeply at the meaning as one different word causes a very different interpretation as well. So, one thing that should be highlighted here is to keep being accurate in analyzing the answer choice.

Reference: IELTS Secrets, copyright 2002 by MO Media