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📖 IELTS Reading

IELTS Reading: The Complete Master Guide

2026-07-03 · 2 hr read

IELTS Reading: The Complete Master Guide

This is a complete, practical guide to IELTS Reading. It covers:

Read it start to finish once, then use it as a reference: jump straight to Section 6 for a specific question type, or Section 8 after a practice test.

Table of Contents

  1. Test Overview and Format
  2. The Core Principle — Two Approaches, Not a Separate Strategy for Each
  3. Time Management: The 15-20-25 Rule
  4. Reading the Instructions
  5. Locating Answers — Keywords and Question Order
  6. A Strategy for Every Question Type 6.1 True / False / Not Given 6.2 Yes / No / Not Given 6.3 Fill in the Blanks 6.4 Multiple Choice (One Answer) 6.5 Multiple Choice (Two Answers) 6.6 Matching Information 6.7 Matching Headings 6.8 Matching Features 6.9 Matching Sentence Endings 6.10 Short Answer Questions
  7. Building the Vocabulary That Moves Your Score
  8. Diagnosing Exactly What's Holding You Back
  9. Building a Practice Routine That Works
  10. Common Mistakes — Master List
  11. Key Takeaways
  12. Glossary

1. TEST OVERVIEW AND FORMAT

1.1 Format and Delivery

1.2 Scoring

A band is the 0–9 score IELTS reports for each skill; each row below is the number of correct answers (out of 40) needed to reach that band.

Band Academic General Training
Band 6 23 correct 30 correct
Band 7 30 correct 34 correct
Band 8 35 correct 38 correct
Band 9 39 correct (1 wrong allowed) 40 correct (perfect score required)

Treat these as close approximations, not exact cutoffs — thresholds shift slightly between test versions, and General Training's Band 7 threshold in particular is reported anywhere from 34 to 35 correct depending on the source. The pattern that matters regardless of the exact number: Academic gives you a small margin for error even at the top band, while General Training does not. This is also why the common claim that "General Training reading is easier" doesn't hold up under the actual scoring — the text is shorter and more everyday, but the accuracy bar at the top end is stricter, not looser.

1.3 Skills Assessed

Locating specific information, identifying the writer's main ideas and opinions, following detailed argument, recognizing paraphrase, and managing 40 questions inside a fixed 60-minute window without losing marks to timing or carelessness.

2. THE CORE PRINCIPLE — TWO APPROACHES, NOT A SEPARATE STRATEGY FOR EACH

2.1 The Myth of One Universal Strategy

A huge amount of popular advice collapses into a single sentence: skim (read quickly for the general idea) the passage, then scan (search quickly for a specific word or detail) for keywords, and the answer will appear. It's appealing because it's simple — and it consistently underperforms compared to a strategy built for the specific question type in front of you.

The reason is structural, not stylistic: IELTS Reading uses somewhere between ten and fourteen distinct question formats, depending on how finely different sources split them, and each one is deliberately built to test a different reading sub-skill. The exact count doesn't matter — what matters is that a question testing whether you understand a paragraph's overall idea (matching headings) is not testing the same skill as a question that asks you to locate one specific fact (matching information). Using the same generic "skim then scan" approach for both means the technique is wrong for roughly half of what the test is actually asking you to do.

What this looks like in practice: approaching a tightly-focused question — say, matching a heading to a paragraph — with a vague "skim it, then scan for the general area" method typically leaves a reader unable to confidently name the correct answer at all. Using a technique built specifically for that question type instead makes the correct answer close to obvious, often in under a minute (the full technique is in Section 6.7). Same passage, same question, radically different outcome — the difference is entirely the strategy, not the reading ability.

2.2 The Good News: You Only Need Two Approaches

You don't need a separate memorized method for every question type. Almost every IELTS Reading question type falls into one of two groups, and which group it's in tells you exactly how to work through it. This single framework is the backbone of everything in Section 6.

Group What it means How you work it
Ordered The answer to question 1 appears before the answer to question 2, which appears before question 3, and so on Read the question, skim forward until you find the answer, move to the next question, keep skimming forward. Never jump backward.
Not ordered Answers can appear anywhere in the passage, in any sequence Read the passage section by section. For each section, check which unanswered question(s) it resolves, then move to the next section. After one full pass, return to anything unresolved.

Ordered question types:

Not-ordered question types:

One catch to remember: the very last few questions in a test, numbers 38 through 40, can break the normal ordering rules even for a question type that's usually ordered. Be ready for those final answers to jump around.

2.3 What High Scorers Do Differently

3. TIME MANAGEMENT: THE 15-20-25 RULE

3.1 Why the Official Advice Fails

Every official test opens with the same instruction: spend about 20 minutes on each part. This sounds fair — three parts, one hour, split evenly — but it doesn't hold up against how the test is actually built. Part 1 is genuinely the easiest part of the test. Part 3 is genuinely the hardest: the vocabulary is denser, the questions demand more inference, and you often need a full paragraph of context instead of one sentence to confirm a single answer.

Follow the even 20-20-20 split and the failure mode is predictable: you finish Part 1 with time to spare, Part 2 goes fine, and then you hit Part 3 exactly when the questions get hardest — with the least time left to handle them. Several questions get left blank simply because the clock ran out, and there's no time left to return to the couple of close calls from Part 2 either.

3.2 The Rule

Test part Standard split Advanced split (band 8/9 target)
Part 1 (easiest) 15 minutes 12 minutes
Part 2 (moderate) 20 minutes 18 minutes
Part 3 (hardest) 25 minutes 23 minutes

The advanced split frees up roughly seven extra minutes at the end of the test for double-checking answers or returning to anything skipped. Test it in practice before relying on it on exam day — it's only worth using if you can hold Part 3's accuracy at that pace.

3.3 The One Timing Habit That Matters More Than the Split

If a single question is eating minutes with no answer in sight, make your best guess, move on, and come back at the end if there's time left. One stubborn question is never worth sacrificing the easier marks sitting further down the passage. This applies regardless of which split you use.

3.4 Should You Read the Passage First?

There's no single correct answer — it depends on your reading speed, and there's a simple decision rule to use instead of guessing.

If you can comfortably skim an entire passage in three to four minutes, do it before touching the questions. A quick skim builds a rough mental map of where things are, which matters more than it used to: older tests kept a strict pattern where the first half of a passage held the answers to the first set of questions and the second half held the rest, but recent tests break that pattern more often — answer sets can overlap, sending a later question back to a paragraph you already passed. Without a skim-based map, that catches you off guard mid-test.

If skimming the whole passage takes longer than four minutes, or leaves you feeling overwhelmed, skip it. Go straight to the questions and read the passage piece by piece as you locate each answer.

A test-taker who insists on reading every single word of a long passage before touching a single question typically runs out of time and starts panicking well before the finish line. The same test-taker, switching to reading the questions first and letting them dictate which parts of the passage get read closely, tends to locate answers directly and save several minutes per part. Neither approach is universally "correct" — the mistake is defaulting to a full careful read without first checking whether you can actually afford it.

One habit is worth keeping regardless of which approach you choose: always read the title and any subtitle first. It costs about five seconds and orients you to the topic before you start.

Quick Check — Section 3

4. READING THE INSTRUCTIONS

This is the easiest set of marks to gain in the entire test — and the easiest to lose through simple carelessness.

4.1 Word Limits Are Strict and Absolute

Instruction What it means
"One word only" Exactly one word. No exceptions.
"No more than two words" One or two words — never three.
"No more than three words and/or a number" Up to three words, and a number may replace or accompany them.

Writing one word more than the stated limit loses the mark even when the answer itself is completely correct — there is no partial credit for meaning without following the format. Numbers can usually be written as digits or as words unless told otherwise ("20" and "twenty" are both acceptable).

4.2 Never Add Your Own Article

Never place "a," "an," or "the" at the start of your own answer. If an article is grammatically required, it's already sitting in the sentence around the gap — adding your own is redundant at best, and at worst pushes you over the word limit. Occasionally an answer key shows an article in brackets, meaning it's optional either way, but don't add one unless the format explicitly allows it.

4.3 Spelling Counts in Full

One incorrect letter makes an otherwise correct answer wrong. There's no partial credit for "close enough." Certain words trip up test-takers more than others — "calendar," for instance, is frequently misspelled with an "e" in place of the second "a." This is exactly why tracking your own recurring spelling mistakes (Section 8) matters more than most test-takers assume.

4.4 Understand What's Actually Being Asked

Before searching the passage, know precisely what kind of answer a question needs: "who" requires a person or a group, "how much" requires a number with a unit or currency attached, "which paragraph" requires a location rather than a detail. Reading a question correctly the first time prevents wasted searching.

Quick Check — Section 4

5. LOCATING ANSWERS — KEYWORDS AND QUESTION ORDER

5.1 Two Kinds of Keywords

Underlining keywords is standard advice, but not every keyword behaves the same way, and treating them as if they do costs marks.

Keyword type Behavior Example
Repeated Names, dates, places, and very specific nouns tend to appear in the passage almost exactly as written in the question A specific researcher's name, a decade, a proper noun
Paraphrased Verbs, adjectives, and broader ideas get reworded — this is where marks disappear "inability to fly" → "flightless" · "danger" → "a threat" · "bad news" → "negative information"

If you scan the passage looking only for a question's exact wording, you will read straight past the sentence that actually answers it whenever that sentence uses a paraphrase instead. Before searching for any keyword, ask: is this the kind of word I'll find written exactly this way, or do I need to think about its meaning and search for that instead?

5.2 The "Clue Word" Habit

Once you've identified a keyword — repeated or paraphrased — treat it as a clue word: a locator, not the answer itself. Scan for it (or its synonym), find the sentence it sits in, then slow down and read that sentence (and often the one before or after it) closely before deciding on your final answer. Scanning finds the location; it never finds the answer by itself. That decision always needs a close, careful read of the actual sentence.

5.3 Highlighting as You Go

If a question later references something like "according to Professor Smith" or "in 1953" and you haven't marked anything as you read, you're forced to scan the whole passage again from scratch under time pressure. Highlighting names, dates, and places as you first encounter them leaves signposts you can jump straight back to later, which is a genuine time-saver across a full test — not just for the question you're on right now.

Quick Check — Section 5

6. A STRATEGY FOR EVERY QUESTION TYPE

6.1 True / False / Not Given

Tests: whether a statement agrees with, contradicts, or simply isn't confirmed by facts stated in the passage. Order: ordered — work through statements top to bottom.

What each answer actually means

Answer Meaning
True The meaning in the passage is close enough to the statement — not necessarily word-for-word, just the same idea.
False A clear, direct contradiction — not a subtle one-percent difference in wording.
Not Given The passage does not provide enough information to confirm the statement is true or false. This does not mean the topic is absent — it usually is mentioned. What's missing is the one specific detail needed to decide.

Not Given is where most points are lost, almost always for the same reason: assuming it means the topic was never discussed. It almost always was — the passage simply stopped short of the exact detail the statement needs.

Step-by-step procedure

  1. Read the statement fully and underline its keywords — including any qualifying words (see below).
  2. Predict likely synonyms the passage might use instead of the statement's exact wording.
  3. Skim forward through the passage (this type is ordered — never jump backward) until you reach the section that seems to match.
  4. Read that section closely — not the whole passage, just the relevant part — and compare its meaning to the statement's meaning.
  5. Decide: does it agree (True), contradict (False), or is a needed detail simply missing (Not Given)?
  6. Move to the next statement and repeat, continuing to skim forward from where you stopped.

Worked example

Statement: "The university library is open 24 hours, all week."

The personalization exercise

The fastest way to internalize the True/False/Not Given distinction is to build a small example yourself. Pick one simple, true fact you know for certain — your age, or your city. Write:

  1. A true paraphrase of it, in different words than you'd naturally use.
  2. A statement that clearly contradicts it.
  3. A third, related statement that can't actually be confirmed either way — if the fact is your age, "middle-aged" is Not Given, because that could describe several different specific ages; if the fact is that you live in a particular city, "lives on the west side of the city" is Not Given unless that exact detail was stated.

Doing this two or three times before test day, deliberately designing your own false and not-given traps, makes the distinction click in a way that reading about it never quite does — because you can feel exactly where the missing detail is.

Common mistakes

Tips

Quick Check — 6.1

6.2 Yes / No / Not Given

Tests: whether a statement matches the writer's opinion — not passage facts, and not your own view. Order: ordered.

How it differs from True/False/Not Given

This question type looks identical to 6.1 but tests something fundamentally different. Match what the writer actually thinks, even if you personally disagree — if the writer agrees with a claim you find unconvincing, the answer is still Yes.

These questions usually appear in the hardest section of the test, so expect to need a full paragraph of context rather than a single sentence to confirm the writer's stance. And Not Given works slightly differently here too: if the writer raises the topic but never actually takes a clear position — no approval, no criticism, no verdict — the answer is Not Given, regardless of how much the topic itself is discussed.

Strategy

The same core procedure as 6.1 applies — underline keywords, predict synonyms, skim forward, read closely, decide — but slow down further before deciding. You're not checking "does this match a fact," you're checking "does this match what the writer believes." Look specifically for language of judgment or endorsement (words like "should," "unfortunately," "the real value lies in," or their negations) rather than purely factual statements.

Common mistakes

Quick Check — 6.2

6.3 Fill in the Blanks (notes, tables, diagrams, summaries, sentence completion)

Tests: locating and extracting specific information, and following grammar precisely. Order: ordered — though occasionally a couple of answers swap position.

Strategy

  1. Check the word limit before anything else (Section 4.1) — it governs every answer you write.
  2. Read the task's title or subheadings first; they tell you which part of the passage to search.
  3. Use grammar to predict what's missing before you search: an article ("a," "an") right before a gap usually means a singular, countable noun is expected; no article where you'd normally expect one usually signals a plural or uncountable noun.
  4. Locate the relevant section (this type is ordered — work forward through the passage).
  5. Copy the answer's spelling exactly as it appears in the passage — don't retype from memory.
  6. Check your answer against the word limit one final time before moving on.

Common mistakes

Quick Check — 6.3

6.4 Multiple Choice — One Correct Answer

Tests: whether you can distinguish a genuinely correct statement from ones that sound plausible because they reuse passage vocabulary. Order: ordered — one answer's location helps bracket where the next one sits.

Strategy

  1. Read the question fully before glancing at any of the four options — know exactly what's being asked first.
  2. Go to the passage, not the answer choices. Locate the relevant section and read it closely.
  3. Only then compare each option against what the passage actually says.
  4. Eliminate options that are obviously wrong first, to narrow the field before making a final decision.
  5. Watch for options phrased in extreme, absolute terms ("always," "never," "completely") — these are usually the wrong ones.

Worked example

Passage (constructed example): "While the new irrigation method reduced water use by nearly a third, researchers noted it required significantly more upfront investment than traditional systems, which limited its adoption among smaller farms."

Question: What does the passage suggest about the new irrigation method?

Notice that A, B, and C each reuse real vocabulary from the passage (adoption, upfront investment, method) — that familiarity is exactly what makes them tempting, and exactly why comparing the full meaning of each option against the passage, not just its vocabulary, is the actual skill being tested.

Quick Check — 6.4

6.5 Multiple Choice — Two Correct Answers from Five Options

Tests: the same discrimination skill as 6.4, across more source material. Order: ordered, though the two correct answers can be scattered across several paragraphs rather than sitting together.

Strategy

Follow the same read-locate-compare-eliminate process as 6.4, but expect to read more before confirming both answers — they're often not adjacent. If you can't confirm both quickly, don't get stuck: finish the rest of the test first and return to it once the pressure is off.

Quick Check — 6.5

6.6 Matching Information ("Which paragraph/section contains...")

Tests: locating one specific detail — not a paragraph's general idea (that's 6.7). Order: not ordered — work through the passage section by section.

Strategy

  1. Check the instructions for "you may use any letter more than once." If present, expect at least one section to hold two separate answers. If absent, each section matches exactly one statement.
  2. Read all the statements first and highlight their keywords, so you know what you're checking for as you move through the passage.
  3. Read the passage one section at a time. For each section, ask whether any unmatched statement's whole meaning — not just a shared keyword — is actually covered there.
  4. If you're not sure, note a tentative answer with a question mark and keep moving — don't get stuck on one section.
  5. After a full pass through the passage, return to anything unresolved. By then, some options will already be used up, narrowing what's left.

Common mistakes

Quick Check — 6.6

6.7 Matching Headings

Tests: a paragraph's overall main idea — the opposite of 6.6. Order: not ordered.

This is one of the most feared question types, and also one of the most improvable once the right technique replaces guesswork.

The single most important rule

Do not look at the list of headings first. Read one paragraph in full, and before glancing at any heading option, write your own one-line heading for it — the way you'd title a short newspaper piece about just that paragraph. This forces you to actually process the paragraph's meaning instead of pattern-matching to whatever heading sounds vaguely familiar.

A heading option that only matches one small detail buried inside a paragraph, rather than its overall point, is a deliberate trap — and it's one of the most common ways marks are lost here.

Step-by-step procedure

  1. If matching headings appears anywhere in a section, do it first — working out each paragraph's main idea gives you a running start on every other question type in that same section.
  2. Read paragraph A in full. Without looking at the heading options, write your own one-line heading summarizing its overall point.
  3. Now look at the given heading options and find the one closest to what you wrote. Matches are often near-exact once you've done the thinking yourself first.
  4. If two or three heading options feel similar, isolate just those — cover the rest, or write the finalists side by side — so you're only comparing real contenders instead of getting lost in the full list.
  5. Repeat for paragraph B, C, and onward. Since this type isn't ordered, if you get stuck on one paragraph, move on and return once other options are used up elsewhere — elimination narrows what's left.

Worked example

Paragraph (constructed example): "For decades, the town relied on a single seasonal industry, and when that industry declined, so did the town's population. Local leaders eventually recognized that survival meant diversifying — attracting a mix of small manufacturing, tourism, and remote-work-friendly infrastructure rather than betting on one sector returning to its former size."

Writing your own heading first, before looking at any options, you'd land on something like: "A town moves away from depending on one industry." Now compare that against a typical set of heading options:

Having written your own heading first makes the correct match close to automatic — without it, "history," "industry," and "decline" all sound plausible on their own, which is exactly the trap.

The difference this makes

This is the same effect described in Section 2.1: writing a one-line heading first, before ever looking at the options, tends to make the correct answer obvious — often in under a minute, and with real confidence instead of a guess.

Common mistakes

Quick Check — 6.7

6.8 Matching Features (names, researchers, professions)

Tests: connecting specific claims to the correct person. Order: not ordered.

Strategy

  1. Read the box of options first — usually surnames. This is specifically what you'll be scanning the passage for.
  2. Read all the statements before you start scanning, so you already know what to check against once you find each name.
  3. Scan the passage one name at a time. When you find one, slow down and read the sentence or two around it — relevant information can appear before or after the name — then check it against the statements.
  4. Not every name mentioned in the passage will match a statement. That's expected, not a sign of a missed answer.
  5. Check for the "may be used more than once" instruction, the same way as 6.6.

Quick Check — 6.8

6.9 Matching Sentence Endings

Tests: completing a sentence with the ending that matches both meaning and grammar exactly. Order: ordered — the one exception among the matching-type questions, worked top to bottom.

Strategy

  1. Read all the sentence beginnings first and underline their keywords.
  2. Read every possible ending before choosing — pay particular attention to endings that sound similar to each other, since that overlap is deliberately where the test tries to catch you out.
  3. Locate the passage section for the first beginning, then compare it against every ending, not just the first plausible one — more than one can sound reasonable, but only one matches both meaning and grammar exactly.
  4. If genuinely stuck between two endings, note both and move on. Later answers use up options, which often clarifies your choice once you return.

Quick Check — 6.9

6.10 Short Answer Questions

Tests: locating a specific fact and stating it within a strict word limit. Order: ordered.

Strategy

The same rules as fill-in-the-blank apply: strict word limits, no added articles, exact spelling copied from the passage. Before searching, be clear on the kind of answer the question needs — "who" needs a person or group, "how much" needs a number with a unit or currency attached.

Quick Check — 6.10

7. BUILDING THE VOCABULARY THAT MOVES YOUR SCORE

7.1 Why This Matters More Than It Seems

IELTS Reading is as much a vocabulary test as a reading test. Most of the paraphrasing challenge described in Section 5 is, underneath it, a vocabulary challenge — the failure isn't reading comprehension, it's not recognizing that "widespread" and "far-reaching" mean the same thing in context.

7.2 Guess From Context, Then Verify

When you hit an unfamiliar word — during practice or any general reading — guess its meaning from the surrounding context before looking it up. This trains exactly the skill the test rewards, and the guess turns out to be right far more often than expected. You genuinely don't need to understand every word in a passage to answer correctly; even strong readers hit unfamiliar vocabulary in these texts. The job is finding the correct answer, not translating the entire page.

7.3 Active Reading Beats Passive Reading

Reading passively — moving your eyes across a page without engaging — builds almost nothing. Reading actively, where you stop on an unfamiliar word and work it out, or notice a grammar pattern and ask why it's used that way, builds real ability. Ten focused minutes of active reading outperforms an hour of passive reading.

7.4 Build Your Word List From Your Own Mistakes

The most efficient vocabulary list comes from your own wrong answers, not a random word list. After a practice test, go through every wrong answer and check whether an unfamiliar word was the actual cause. If it was, log that specific word, its meaning, and a synonym or two. This targets precisely the vocabulary costing you marks, rather than memorizing words that may never come up.

Quick Check — Section 7

8. DIAGNOSING EXACTLY WHAT'S HOLDING YOU BACK

8.1 Why "Just Practice More" Isn't a Strategy

It's rare for a test-taker to simply be "bad at reading" across the board. The real cause of a stuck score is almost always specific and fixable — the problem is that checking a score and moving to the next test skips the one step that actually finds it: looking at why each wrong answer was wrong.

8.2 The Diagnostic Procedure

After a timed practice test, go through every wrong answer and look for a pattern rather than treating each miss as unrelated.

Pattern in your wrong answers Likely cause Fix
Cluster around one or two specific question types, everything else solid Strategy problem for that type Re-apply the relevant subsection in Section 6
Cluster in Part 3 specifically, Parts 1/2 mostly correct Vocabulary or general reading-skill gap Vocabulary-notebook habit (Section 7.4) and active reading (7.3)
Correct answers simply stop appearing near the end of the test Timing issue, not a knowledge gap Slow-to-fast practice (below)
Found the right word but still lost the mark Spelling issue specifically A personal misspelled-word log, not new strategy
Struggles cluster around one skill (e.g. locating information) across several different question types Subskill issue — often scanning Practice that specific subskill in isolation

8.3 Slow-to-Fast Practice (the fix for a timing diagnosis)

If timing is the real cause, don't jump straight to a full 60-minute test. Build up in stages instead: first complete a test in 90 minutes and get everything right, then repeat under 80 minutes, then 70, then 60 — gradually building speed without losing the accuracy you already have. Trying to sprint the full test before you can comfortably finish it at a slower pace just repeats the same rushed mistakes at a slightly different score.

8.4 Fix One Thing at a Time

Whatever the diagnosis turns out to be, fix that one specific cause before running another full practice test, rather than trying to improve everything simultaneously. Repeating tests without this diagnostic step just repeats the same weak spots at roughly the same score.

Quick Check — Section 8

9. BUILDING A PRACTICE ROUTINE THAT WORKS

9.1 Use Only Official Material

Cambridge English, IDP, and the British Council are the only reliable sources for practice material. Cambridge English produces the actual exam papers, so its tests — particularly its newest published books — are the closest thing to the real exam, including newer patterns like the overlapping answer order mentioned in Section 3.4. IDP and the British Council administer the test but don't write it, so their published practice can feel subtly different from the real thing.

Random "free practice test" sites outside these three sources are unreliable by design — they tend to be noticeably too easy, which creates false confidence, or too difficult, which creates unnecessary panic. Neither outcome reflects what the real exam will actually ask of you.

9.2 Practice Under Real Conditions

Do full, timed practice tests under real exam conditions: one uninterrupted hour, a test you haven't seen before, no shortcuts. Your first genuine full-length attempt should not be on exam day itself.

9.3 Transfer Answers as You Go (Paper-Based Test)

If you're testing on paper, transfer your answers to the answer sheet after each part rather than saving it all for the end. Current paper-based IELTS uses pen, not pencil, so a late rush leaves no room to fix a mistake, and running out of transfer time can cost marks you'd already earned. This isn't a concern on the computer-based version, where you answer directly on screen.

9.4 Diagnose Before You Repeat

After every practice test, run the diagnostic procedure in Section 8 before starting the next one. A practice routine that skips this step just repeats the same weak spots test after test.

Quick Check — Section 9

10. COMMON MISTAKES — MASTER LIST

Mistake Where to fix it
Using one generic "skim then scan" strategy for every question type instead of the approach built for each Section 2
Splitting the 60 minutes evenly across all three parts instead of protecting Part 3's extra time Section 3
Reading the entire passage carefully by default without first checking whether that's actually affordable in the time available Section 3.4
Writing more words than a fill-in-the-blank limit allows, or adding an unnecessary article, and losing the mark despite a correct answer Section 4
Scanning for a question's exact wording when the passage actually uses a paraphrase Section 5.1
Assuming Not Given means a topic was never mentioned, rather than that one specific detail is missing Section 6.1
Substituting your own opinion for the writer's on Yes/No/Not Given questions Section 6.2
Choosing a multiple-choice option because it reuses familiar vocabulary rather than checking its actual meaning against the passage Section 6.4
Matching information or headings based on a shared keyword rather than the full meaning of a statement or paragraph Sections 6.6–6.7
Looking at the heading options before writing your own summary of a paragraph on a matching-headings question Section 6.7
Checking only your final score after a practice test instead of diagnosing why each specific answer was wrong Section 8
Practicing exclusively with unofficial "free practice test" material Section 9.1

11. KEY TAKEAWAYS

12. GLOSSARY

Term Plain-language meaning
Ordered question A question type where the answer to question 1 comes before the answer to question 2 in the passage, and so on.
Not-ordered question A question type where answers can appear anywhere in the passage, in any sequence.
Skimming Reading quickly to understand the general meaning of a passage or paragraph, without reading every word.
Scanning Searching quickly for a specific word, name, or detail without reading for overall meaning.
Close reading Reading a specific sentence or short passage slowly and carefully to decide an exact answer — the skill that actually resolves most questions, after scanning has found the general location.
Paraphrase Expressing the same meaning as the question using different words in the passage — the main source of difficulty in most question types.
Not Given An answer indicating the passage does not provide enough information to confirm a statement as true or false.
Qualifying words Words like "some," "all," or a specific category name that narrow or broaden a statement's meaning — missing one is a common way to pick the wrong True/False/Not Given answer.
Band score The 0–9 scale IELTS uses to report performance, in 0.5 increments.

Keep this guide as a working reference: return to Section 6 for your weakest question type, and to Section 8 after every practice test.