Cambridge IELTS Book-1 Reading Synonyms & Paraphrasing

How to use synonyms effectively in IELTS reading?

First of all, when you read the questions, you should underline “keywords” or “content words.” These are words that give clues to an answer. They might involve names, numbers, or big ideas.

Here are some more TRUE/FALSE questions from that passage on sailing:

• People figured out how to make boats only in specific places.

• Boats have had little impact on the human world.

• Humans no longer have an interest in new developments at sea.

In these sentences, I have underlined the keywords. As you can see, there are arguably many words. Some are easy, so for example I will only underline the first “people” because most of you know that it means “humans” already. Now we can look to the following paragraph, where the answers to these three questions are found:

• Around the globe, sailing evolved on the seas and on lakes, on rivers and swamps. Humans from all regions quickly learned how to create objects that were waterproof and could stay afloat, could hold people and even cargo, and then learned to navigate them in extraordinarily clever ways. This astounding series of discoveries has shaped our world immensely, and new innovations continue to emerge as we put our minds to mastering the aquatic world.

We can begin to match up the keywords in the questions with phrases from the passage:

People	Humans
Figured out	Learned how to
Make boats	Create objects that were waterproof and could stay afloat
Specific places	From all regions*
Little impact	Shaped our world immensely*
Human world	Our world
No longer	Continue to*
An interest	Put our minds to
New developments	New innovations
Sea	Aquatic world

*Note that some of these are essentially antonyms, which means the opposite of synonym. However, these function in the same way. When you see “little impact” you can find “shaped our world immensely” and know that it is the exact opposite meaning, thereby finding that the answer is FALSE instead of TRUE. Likewise, if someone “no longer” does something, then they do not “continue to” do it.

Doing this is useful for scanning and close reading. These are two skills that can help you locate the correct answer within the reading passage, without wasting time studying every single word.