Academic Reading is thought to be the most challenging section of all and it consists of 3 (three) separate texts with questions. These texts are taken from newspapers, magazines, books, website articles and they focus on general matters.
The first and the second text will ask you to answer to 13 questions each while the third text consists of 14 questions. Thus, there is a total of 40 questions that you have to answer in 60 minutes. Be careful! Here you are not going to have extra time in the end in order to transfer your answers in the separate answer sheet as in Listening! So, keep that in mind: You have to fill in everything in these 60 minutes and you get one mark for each correct answer.
All three texts consist of 2 to 3 tasks with questions based on the information you get from the text. Do not use your own logic, your knowledge, common sense, any accepted universal truths or anything like that in order to answer your questions: Use ONLY the proof you find in the text in order to justify your answers.
The first and the second text are going to be at about 900 words; the third text is going to be a little bit longer, at about 950 words. The difficulty of the texts is increasing with the first one being the easiest; the second one a little bit harder; and the third one usually the most challenging one but not too much compared to the other two, so don’t worry about that.
Since you only have 60 minutes for all three texts, you should organize your time very carefully. You should approximately spend 20 minutes in each text and try to keep it that way. You may want to spend 15-17 minutes on the first text so as to leave more time for the last one which is longer but this is up to you. It really helps if you time yourself while you practice. This will give you an idea on how to organize your time effectively and it will also help you realize how it is going to be on the day of the exam.
If you prefer video check out this one (including a strategy you can follow!)