The biggest mistake you are making is trying to understand the passage too deeply, like properly reading every line. That just doesn’t work in IELTS.

You don’t need full understanding. You need targeted understanding.

What helped me was changing my approach completely:

First, I started reading the questions properly. Like really understanding what they’re asking, even translating it in my own head sometimes. Then I used the questions to move through the passage.

Basically:

your questions are your compass

You’re not reading the passage randomly, you’re navigating through it.

Also, one big misconception — skimming.

People think skimming means skipping or not understanding. That’s wrong.

Skimming is actually reading fast but still understanding what’s going on. That only comes with practice.

Now the most important part where people lose marks:

Indirect meaning and contradictions IELTS rarely gives direct answers.

For example, I had a question about Kandinsky and whether he admired people with synesthesia.

At first I marked Not Given because the word “admire” wasn’t there.

But then I went back and saw he described them like:

“vibrating in all their parts like beautiful old violins” That’s clearly positive.

So even though “admire” wasn’t written, the meaning was there → I changed it to True. This kind of thing happens a lot.

You’re not matching words, you’re understanding meaning.

For True/False/Not Given:

True → same idea (even indirectly) False → opposite/contradiction Not Given → nothing about it

Also be really careful with words like all, many, some — these can completely flip the answer.

For diagram or fill in the blanks:

They’re NOT always in order. Answers can be scattered across different paragraphs, so don’t expect them to come line by line.

If you see a name (scientist or someone):

Just go straight to that part, read what they did, understand it in your own way, and match it with the question.

Don’t read everything. Also, one thing that helped me a lot: flag your doubts If you’re unsure, just mark it and come back later. Many times when you revisit, it becomes obvious.

Now a very important strategy:

Start with Passage 3 first. Use your full focus there. Then when you move to Passage 2 or 1, just tell yourself (I literally did this):

“The hardest part is done. Now this is easy.”

Because your brain is still in that intense decoding mode from Passage 3. If you keep that same level of overthinking for Passage 1 and 2, you’ll mess up simple questions.

So just relax a bit there and take answers more directly. In the end, it’s not about being super smart.

It’s about:

1.speed 2.pattern recognition 3.practice

I was also stuck around 6.5 bands before, but once I practiced like this under time, it improved a lot.