Tips and Tricks for Advanced (CAE) Reading Part 7
Unfortunately, there is no 100% foolproof trick to guarantee easy completion of CAE Reading Part 7. It requires time, thought and a lot of practice. However, there are a few techniques that you should be using to ensure quicker and more accurate answers.
Give yourself enough time to complete this task. I find it can take up to 20 minutes of your exam time.
Read through the complete text very quickly first. You should have a general idea of the topic and style of the text before starting. This shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes.
Focus on the paragraphs before the main text. As you read through them, underline reference words (e.g. this, it, they) and linking words (e.g. however, additionally). See more about understanding reference below.
After reading the paragraphs, start reading the text. Read the first paragraph and the paragraph that follows the first gap.
There are three elements to consider:
the macrostructure of the text (logical beginning, middle, end)
grammatical links between paragraphs (reference and linking words)
lexical links between paragraphs (synonyms)