as you can see, the time constraints are brutal. to succeed, you must ration your time properly. the reason that time is so critical is that every question counts the same toward your final score. if you run out of time on any passage, the questions that you do not answer will hurt your score far more than earlier questions that you spent extra time on and feel certain are correct.

　　on the reading module, the test is separated into passages. the reason that time is so critical is that 1) every question counts the same toward your final score, and 2) the passages are not in order of difficulty. if you have to rush during the last passage, then you will miss out on answering easier questions correctly. it is natural to want to pause and figure out the hardest questions, but you must resist the temptation and move quickly.

　　pace yourself

　　wear a watch to the ielts test. at the beginning of the test, check the time (or start a chronometer on your watch to count the minutes), and check the time after each passage or every few questions to make sure you are “on schedule.” remember that on the listening and reading modules you have a little over half a minute for each question. if you can work quickly, you can pace yourself at half a minute per question, which makes it easy to keep track of your time. if you find that you are falling behind time during the test, you must speed up. even though a rushed answer is more likely to be incorrect, it is better to miss a couple of questions by being rushed, than to completely miss later questions by not having enough time. it is better to end with more time than you need than to run out of time.

　　if you are forced to speed up, do it efficiently. usually one or more answer choices can be eliminated without too much difficulty. above all, don’t panic. don’t speed up and just begin guessing at random choices. by pacing yourself, and continually monitoring your progress against the clock or your watch, you will always know exactly how far ahead or behind you are with your available time. if you find that you are a few minutes behind on a module, don’t skip questions without spending any time on it, just to catch back up. spend perhaps a little less than half a minute per question and after a few questions, you will have caught back up more gradually. once you catch back up, you can conhermore, don’t dwell on the problems that you were rushed on. if a problem was taking up too much time and you made a hurried guess, it must have been difficult. the difficultpt