Lessons / Reading
IELTS Reading (Academic)
Three passages, one hour, and it gets harder on purpose
Forty questions across three passages in 60 minutes, and ielts.org puts the whole section at 2,150 to 2,750 words. No separate transfer time. The hour is all you get, and you manage it yourself. You can move between passages and questions freely, which is a real advantage if you use it on purpose.
The difficulty climb is real
| Passage | Character | How far the paraphrase stretches |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Accessible and concrete. A general-interest topic explained for a non-specialist. | Close: synonym for synonym. |
| 2 | Factual and analytical. Data, methods, competing explanations. | Moderate: whole phrases restated. |
| 3 | Argumentative. A writer with a position, hedged claims, ideas rather than things. | Far: whole propositions reworded. |
The climb changes how you spend the hour. Twenty minutes per passage is the arithmetic. But Passage 1 should cost you less than that, and whatever you save belongs to Passage 3. That is where the vocabulary turns abstract, the claims get hedged, and questions turn on the difference between what the writer says and what the writer merely reports.
Order: the rule, and the three exceptions
Most Reading question types keep a promise: answers follow the passage. Question 8’s evidence comes after question 7’s. Use it to navigate. Each answer you find narrows where the next one can be. Exactly three types break the promise, all of them matching tasks, and all on purpose. They are testing whether you can scan.
- Matching information — Find which paragraph contains a specific detail. A scanning task that ignores passage order.
- Matching headings — Choose the heading that captures what each paragraph is about. The main idea, not a detail in it.
- Matching features — Match statements to the right researcher, study or place, from a shared lettered list.
One more Reading-only rule. When a rubric says “from the passage”, it is literal. The answer must be words that appear in the text, copied exactly. A perfect synonym in your own words scores nothing.
The fourteen Reading question types
Four more than Listening. The verdict tasks, True/False/Not Given and Yes/No/Not Given, exist only here, and multiple choice grows a fourth option.
- 1 Multiple choice One question, four options. The wrong three are engineered to be nearly right.
- 2 Multiple choice, two or more answers Pick TWO of five statements the writer actually makes.
- 3 True / False / Not Given The passage says it, the passage fights it, or the passage never says. Learn to tell the three apart.
- 4 Yes / No / Not Given The same three verdicts, but about the writer's opinions instead of the facts.
- 5 Matching information Find which paragraph contains a specific detail. A scanning task that ignores passage order.
- 6 Matching headings Choose the heading that captures what each paragraph is about. The main idea, not a detail in it.
- 7 Matching features Match statements to the right researcher, study or place, from a shared lettered list.
- 8 Matching sentence endings Complete each sentence beginning with the ending the passage supports.
- 9 Sentence completion Finish a sentence with words copied exactly from the passage.
- 10 Summary completion Fill the gaps in a paragraph that summarises part of the passage.
- 11 Summary completion from a word list The same summary task, but the answers come from a boxed list of words, not the passage.
- 12 Note, table and flow-chart completion Complete notes, a grid or a process chart with exact words from the passage.
- 13 Diagram label completion Label the parts of a drawn object or structure using words from the passage.
- 14 Short answer Direct questions answered with words lifted straight from the passage.