IELTS Reading: Name Matching Questions Tips and Strategies

Navigating the IELTS Reading section can be a difficult task, especially with the 'Name Matching' type questions. This guide aims to help IELTS candidates, mainly those at a low-intermediate level of English, with the useful strategies and knowledge to handle these questions confidently.

Understanding Name Matching in IELTS Reading

Name Matching questions in the IELTS Reading test ask candidates to match names, often of researchers or experts, with specific statements, findings, theories, years, or places mentioned in the text. These questions test your ability to search for information, understand different wording, and guess meanings from the context.

Essential Skills for Success

To do well in Name Matching questions, you need to develop:

1. Scanning for Names: Quickly find and locate names within the text.
2. Recognizing Synonyms and Different Wordings: Understand how statements in the questions might use different words to explain the same idea shown in the text.
3. Contextual Guessing: Use the surrounding text to guess the meaning and correctly match names to statements.
4. Identifying Key Parts: Look for opinions, theories, and research findings that are usually linked to specific names.

The Task at Hand

You are usually given a list of names and a series of statements. Your task is to match each name to the correct statement based on the information provided in the text. This requires careful reading and understanding of both the text and the statements.

Key Tips for Effective Matching

• Order Changes: The order of names and statements in the questions may not match their order in the text.
• Different Wordings in Statements: The statements often use different words to explain the information from the text.
• Name Variations: Names in the text might appear in different forms (e.g., initials, first name, or last name).
• Color Coding: Use different colored pens to underline or highlight names in the text for easier reference.
• Time Management: If you’re stuck on a statement, move on and return to it later to avoid wasting time.

Proven Strategy for Name Matching

1. Understand Each Statement: Get the general meaning behind each statement before looking at the text.
2. Pre-scan for Names: Quickly scan through the text to underline or highlight all the names.
3. Start with Unique Names: Match names that appear only once first, as they are easier to work with.
4. Contextual Reading: Read around the names to find linked opinions, findings, or theories.
5. Synonym Awareness: Be aware of synonyms in the statements while reading the text.
6. Confident Matching: Match each statement to names based on the information in the text.
7. Repeat the Process: Go through this process for each name and statement until all matches are done.

Exercise with Step-by-Step Analysis:

Try the exercise below using this method.

The Method:

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1. Reading Around Each Name in the Text:
   • Focus on parts where the names appear.
   • Pay attention to what is being said about or by these people.
2. Finding Key Words and Synonyms:
   • Look for key terms or phrases in the statements that could be reworded in the text.
   • Understand the context of these terms to match them accurately.
3. Matching Text Information with the Statements:
   • Compare the information near each name in the text with the given statements.
   • Make sure the information matches accurately with the statements.
4. Checking the Right Match Through Analysis:
   • Cross-check to confirm if the match is logical and consistent with the text.

The Exercise**:**

The growth mindset

Over the past hundred years, a strong idea has become important in education. The idea that intelligence is something we are born with has been replaced by the thought that intelligence can change, and that, with the right training, we can improve our own thinking abilities. Psychologist Alfred Binet, who created the first intelligence tests, was one of many scientists in the 19th century who believed in the old view and tried to measure thinking ability. Then, in the early 20th century, new thinkers went against the idea that natural ability is fate. Instead, educators like John Dewey said that every child’s intelligence could be developed, given the right environment.

‘Growth mindset theory’ is a newer and very popular version of this idea. In many schools today, you will see hallways filled with motivational posters and hear speeches about great sports heroes who simply believed they could succeed. A major focus of the growth mindset in schools is to help students stop seeing failure as a sign of their ability, and instead see it as a chance to improve that ability. As educator Jeff Howard noted many years ago: ‘Smart is not something that you just are, smart is something that you can become.’

The idea of the growth mindset is based on the work of psychologist Carol Dweck in California in the 1990s. In one key test, Dweck split a group of 10- to 12-year-olds into two groups. All were told that they had done well on a test but the first group was praised for their intelligence in this, while the others were praised for their effort. The second group – those who were taught a ‘growth mindset’ – were much more likely to put effort into future tasks. Meanwhile, the first group took on only those tasks that would not risk their sense of worth. This group had thought that success or failure is due to natural ability, and this ‘fixed mindset’ made them afraid of failure and less willing to try. Praising ability actually made the students perform worse, while praising effort showed that change was possible.

One of the biggest problems in successfully applying a growth mindset, however, is the education system itself: in many parts of the world, the school environment focuses too much on performance through constant testing, analyzing, and ranking of students – a key feature of the fixed mindset. It is also common for schools to create a certain confusion, when they praise the benefits of a growth mindset but then give fixed target grades in lessons based on performance.

Besides the problem of applying it, the original growth mindset research has also faced strong criticism. The statistician Andrew Gelman says that ‘their research designs have enough freedom that they could take their data to support almost any theory at all’. Professor of Psychology Timothy Bates, who has been trying to repeat Dweck’s work, is finding that the results are often not significant. He notes that: ‘People with a growth mindset don’t cope any better with failure … Kids with the growth mindset aren’t getting better grades, either before or after our study.’

Much of this criticism is not lost on Dweck, and she deserves great credit for responding to it and changing her work accordingly. In fact, she argues that her work has been misunderstood and misused in many ways. She has also expressed concerns that her theories are being wrongly used in schools by being mixed up with the self-esteem movement: ‘For me the growth mindset is a tool for learning and improvement. It’s not just a way to make children feel good.’

But there is another factor here. The failure to put the growth mindset into classrooms might show a misunderstanding of how teaching and learning actually work. Growth mindset supporters David Yeager and Gregory Walton say that interventions should be given in a subtle way to make them work best. They mention that if teenagers see a teacher’s intervention as saying that they need help, this could ruin its intended effects.

A lot of what drives students is their natural beliefs and how they see themselves. There is a strong connection between self-view and achievement, but there is proof to suggest that the actual effect of achievement on self-view is stronger than the other way around. To stand in a classroom and successfully give a good speech is a real achievement, and that is likely to motivate more than vague ideas of ‘motivation’ itself.

Recent evidence suggests that growth mindset interventions are not the magic solution to student learning that its supporters claim it to be. The growth mindset seems to work well in controlled settings, but when applied in classrooms through targeted methods, it doesn’t seem to succeed. It is hard to argue that believing in the ability to change is a good quality for students. Ironically, however, that hope is not well-served by direct interventions that try to teach it.

Motivational posters and talks are often a waste of time and might give students an unrealistic idea of what success really means. Teaching real skills like how to write a good introduction to an essay and then praising students’ effort in achieving that is probably a much better way to build confidence than telling them how special they are, or how capable they are of changing their own minds. Perhaps the growth mindset works best as a philosophy and not as a direct intervention.

Questions 17-22

Look at the following statements (Questions 17-22) and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person or people, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 17-22 on your answer sheet.

NB   You may use any letter more than once.

17   The methods behind the growth mindset studies were not strict enough.

18   The idea of the growth mindset has been misunderstood.

19   Intellectual ability is a fixed feature of each person.

20   The growth mindset should be promoted without students noticing it.

21   The growth mindset is not only about boosting students’ morale.

22   Research shows that the growth mindset has no effect on school performance.

List of People

A   Alfred Binet

B   Carol Dweck

C   Andrew Gelman

D   Timothy Bates

E   David Yeager and Gregory Walton

The Solution**:**

• Statement 17: "The methods behind the growth mindset studies were not strict enough."
  • Key Words: methods, not strict
  • Potential Match: Look for someone who criticized the research methods.
• Statement 18: "The idea of the growth mindset has been misunderstood."
  • Key Words: misunderstood
  • Potential Match: Someone who talked about misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the growth mindset.
• Statement 19: "Intellectual ability is a fixed feature of each person."
  • Key Words: fixed, intellectual ability
  • Potential Match: Look for a person with a view against growth mindset.
• Statement 20: "The growth mindset should be promoted without students noticing it."
  • Key Words: promoted subtly
  • Potential Match: Someone who supports a subtle approach.
• Statement 21: "The growth mindset is not only about boosting students’ morale."
  • Key Words: not just morale
  • Potential Match: A person discussing the deeper meaning of the growth mindset beyond just morale boosting.
• Statement 22: "Research shows that the growth mindset has no effect on school performance."
  • Key Words: no effect, school performance
  • Potential Match: Someone who found no positive results from growth mindset methods.

Matching with the Text:

• Statement 17: Matches with C Andrew Gelman who criticizes the research methods.
• Statement 18: Aligns with B Carol Dweck, who says that her work is misunderstood and misused.
• Statement 19: Corresponds to A Alfred Binet, who believed that intelligence is fixed.
• Statement 20: Is best matched with E David Yeager and Gregory Walton, who support a subtle approach.
• Statement 21: Relates to B Carol Dweck’s view of growth mindset as a tool for learning, not just feeling good.
• Statement 22: Matches with D Timothy Bates, who found no positive results in repeating growth mindset studies.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can effectively work through name matching questions in the IELTS Reading test. Remember, understanding the context, synonyms, and the main idea of each statement is important for accurate matching. Practice with different passages to improve your skills in this difficult but rewarding task.