Collins English for Exams Reading for IELTS It is possible to achieve the score you need in IELTS by improving your reading skills with Collins Reading for IELTS. Be confident in all your skills. Collins Reading for IELTS was developed specifically for students planning to take the Academic IELTS exam to demonstrate that they possess the communication skills required for success at university. How does IELTS work? Over 1.4 million candidates across the globe sit the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) every year. The most common way for universities to prove foreign students' language proficiency is with this test. In addition to immigration purposes, IELTS is also increasingly sought by countries with non-English native speakers. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada all request IELTS scores from applicants with non-English first languages. Four separate tests test candidates' abilities in Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. Most courses, jobs, and countries require students to achieve a good mark in all four skills to be accepted. In order to get the score they need, candidates often retake the exam several times. Both General and Academic reading papers are available for IELTS. The Academic paper is the focus of Collins Reading for IELTS. Based on COBUILD, the Collins corpus contains more than 4 billion words, making it the world's biggest database for English. Developed over 20 years ago, Collins COBUILD updates it every month.