80 Days to Conquer IELTS Listening (Revised Edition) with

Author: Jiang Tao, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Many people ask me where my secret to reading lies, and countless letters inquire about passing the IELTS reading section. My usual response has been to evade these questions. As a result, some have questioned my abilities, while others, after failing to find answers, have tactfully written to ask if I'm just famous for nothing. I replied that I was. Because I truly don’t know how to make these high school-level students suddenly understand and achieve an IELTS score of 7 after listening to me.
Do IELTS reading have reading techniques? The answer is yes, but the key lies in the fact that for any English exam, your true level of proficiency is what matters most. So-called techniques and problem-solving strategies are merely weapons. If your native skills are strong and well-developed, you can wield these weapons with great power. But if your skills are weak like a reed, even the most legendary sword, like the mythical Dragon-Slaying Sword, would be useless.
Who doesn’t remember studying Chinese and finding the main idea of paragraphs in high school? Yet everyone dreams of achieving the ability to read at lightning speed, as if they could strike an enemy from a thousand miles away in a single night. It’s laughable, pitiful, yet true. The guiding philosophy of this reading workbook is to first build strength and then discuss techniques. Otherwise, it’s all talk!
As for the authority of the reading materials, you can rest assured—they are mostly sourced from major English and American media outlets. The questions are carefully selected and refined based on past IELTS exam topics. I don’t advocate for blindly memorizing the "test tips" floating around online. For reading, without the original text as a reference, those tips are useless. Knowing the background and questions but being unable to understand the original text still leaves you clueless.
The 60-day technique training that follows is entirely built upon the solid foundation laid in the first 60 days. When it comes to summarizing techniques, we dare to say ours are currently the most comprehensive and convincing. Moreover, when arranging the questions, we fully considered the learners' comprehension abilities, adopting a step-by-step approach that combines theory with practice, making it easier to absorb and digest.
The process of writing this book was a happy one. I never stopped enjoying the joy of creation while working on it, but this sense of achievement came at the cost of destroying my own biological clock and body. My esteemed father, who would wake up early to fry eggs for me, and my mother, who lives far away yet occasionally sends me vitamins, if heaven grants me another chance to start over, I would still desperately hope to be their child and say four words: "I love you," plus a time limit—forever!
One day, when I become famous, please don’t be surprised. The reason is simple: I’m just a little more honest, a little more diligent, and a little more caring than most people.