ielts reading test.doc

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Ielts reading Test

1. Beat the fear – read as much as possibleMy first suggestion is to read as much as possible. By this I don’t mean do endless

IELTS practice tests, I mean do as much general reading as possible. I suggest you

focus on reading short articles on topics that interest you or on topics that are common in

IELTS – newspapers and magazines are a great resource here.

One reason why this is such a good idea is that many candidates freeze in the reading

believing it is too hard and so fail to get their band score. If, however, you read enough

“native English” before the exam, you will become more and more confident in looking at

texts where you don’t understand every word. Confidence is a very important concept in

IELTS.

If you look at Daily Exercises, you will find lots of possible exercises for you. The idea is

to find something that interests you and read. That’s all.

2. Improve key skills – skimming andscanning and reading in detail

A major problem in the exam is the length of the texts and you will not have time to read

them all carefully. You need to train your speed reading skills so that you can read as

efficiently as possible. 2 skills here are skimming which is reading quickly for general

meaning and scanning which is looking for specific information.

You may sometimes see advice saying that you don’t need to read in detail. Incorrect.

Bad advice. You shouldn’t read the whole text in detail but you will need to parts of thetext in detail – if you want to get the right answer. Put simply, skimming and scanning are

useful skills to help show you where the answer might be: reading in detail tells you what

the answer is.

You might want to look at this post on improving your reading speed.

3. Time management – experiment to see what worksBecause the texts are so long you need to have a definite strategy for how you manage

your time in the exam to make sure you finish on time. This means deciding:

• how long you look at the text before answering questions

• how long you spend on each question

• how long you spend on each group of questions

• how long you spend on each text

• do you leave time at the end to go back at look at unanswered questions?

There is a lot to consider here. You will find books and websites that insist you do it their

way. They may claim to have a magic formula and that you must do this or you must do

that. Ignore them. Their advice may be good for some people but not for you.

The key point here is that different learners have different styles and different needs.

Much the best advice here is to experiment and try different approaches and see what

works best for you.

See this earlier post on time management.

4. Focus on the question – avoid careless errors



The texts in IELTS are typically quite hard, so candidates spend as much time as

possible reading the texts. Mistake. Why? Well, a huge amount of mistakes are made by

not focussing enough on the exact question. It can be easy if you are in a hurry to miss a

word such as “always” or “often”: the problem is those sorts of words can change the

meaning of questions.There is an easy solution to this problem: it is to go back and look at the question before

you write in the answer. Make sure that the question says what you think it says. You will

normally save yourself 2/3 marks this way.

5. Learn the exam – know the different types of questions

There are 8/9 different types of reading question that examiners may use. Before the

exam, you should make yourself familiar with each type of question as they are slightly

different. What I suggest is that you look at my series of tutorials on the different types of

reading questions as a first step to see what the question types are. The next stage is to

experiment and see what techniques you are going to use for each type of question.

This may mean that you approach different types of questions differently.

6. Train yourself, don’t test yourself One common mistake candidates make is to practise exam questions too much. Exam

practice is important to learn the timing (3 above) and learn the question types (5 above),

but that does not mean that every time you practise reading you need to do it in exam

conditions. My suggestion is that you do some “open book” tests where you can see the

answers as you do the questions. This way you will learn how examiners set questions

and how to find the answers. If you just test yourself, this may not happen. How often and

when you do this training will depend on your preparation programme.

7. Learn how to underlineThis is a very specific piece of advice. You may believe it is wrong to write in books and

generally I’d agree with you, but IELTS is different. A very strong suggestion is that you

should underline words in the text in the exam. There are at least two reasons for this:

1. if you underline key words in the text, it can help you organise the text and this

will save you time in the exam

2. if you find an answer, it is sensible to underline the part of the passage that

relates to the question as a check (see 4 above) and to write the number of the question

next to it in case you find a better answer later

How you do this will depend on you and your style. Some people underline different

types of words in different ways.I’d only add that less is more: if you underline too much,

it can become confusing.

8. Beware word matching – be careful with key wordsOne very common mistake is to match a word in the question with a word in the text and

to think you have found your answer. It is almost never that simple and I am tempted to

say that if the words do match, then that is not your answer. What you are normally

looking for are either synonyms (words with a similar meaning) or paraphrases (short bits

of text that say the same as the question.



One reason candidates make this mistake is that teachers (myself included) tend to say

look for key words in the question. This is helpful advice to show you where the answer

might be and which paragraph it might be in. After that you need to go back and read the

whole question carefully to see what the answer is.

9. The questions follow the text – normally This is a very practical piece of advice and could save you a lot of wasted time. Typically,

the questions will come in the order of the text: so the answer to question 3 will come

after the answer to question 2. This can be very helpful in the exam if you are a quick

worker who goes through the questions once for the easy ones and then a second time

for the harder ones. If you have answer 4 underlined (see 7 above) and answer 6

underlined then you know where answer 5 must come.

One word of warning. In certain types of question (eg paragraph matching) the order of

the questions are jumbled.

10. The questions or the text – which do you read firstThere is no one right answer here.

Text books tend to advise you to read the text quickly first so that you know how the text

is organised. This helps as you will save time later by knowing which paragraph will

contain the answer. This can be a good approach, particularly for high level candidates

provided you don’t spend too much reading and you have notes/underlinings afterwards.

Many teachers say that you should read the questions first and not read the whole

passage. There is logic here too. Normally, you do not have to understand the meaning

of the whole passage to answer the questions, so why waste time reading it? This

approach can work, especially for lower level candidates who might not understand too

much of the passage anyway.

However, thee is always a third way. Life is not black and white. It is quite possible to

decide to use different strategies for certain question types. In paragraph matching you

are going to have to read the whole passage, so you might decide to read first then. In

the short answer questions, you might decide you look at the questions first. As ever, you

decide.

The only bad piece of advice is the one that tells you you must do it their way. Ignore

them. The only right way isa the way that works.

11. Fill out the answer sheet

Okay, this is an eleventh tip. Practise filling out the answer sheet before you get to theexam. Too many avoidable mistakes are made this way. I’d go further: whenever you

practise IELTS reading, use an answer sheet. This is what I do with my classes. Two

points:

1. when you go through the answers in your practice book, make sure that you have

written the answer exactly as it is in the book – anything else will lose you the point

2. you need to fill out your answers in the 60 minutes. They don’t give you any more

time.



IELTS reading – time managementA short time ago I posted a quiz on the format of the IELTS exam. One question

which caused a lot of problems was to do with the format of the reading exam.

Many people apparently believed that you were given extra time to fill in the

answer sheet at the end of the exam. You are not. Indeed a large part of the

difficulty of the IELTS reading paper is down to time management. For most

candidates 60 minutes is barely sufficient and many fail to finish in time – every

minute counts.

The problem – how long to spend on each question

One exam tip you sometimes read is that you should never spend more than 1

minute on any one question. In principle, this sounds like good advice. It is

certainly true that you shouldn’t get stuck and that at some point if you haven’t

found the answer you guess intelligently and move on. However, I am personally

not convinced that 1 minute a question is good advice and is in fact bad practice.

A common mistake – trying to go too quickly

Very often where you are going to lose most time in the reading is if you become

confused. Either you don’t know which piece of the text to look at or which

potential answer is correct. My experience shows me that this confusion is often

the result of trying to move too quickly and that it is sometimes much more

efficient to give more time to some questions than others.

A suggestion – leave more time for some questions

Why? One reason is that the first set of questions you look at are likely to be the

hardest set of questions because you are unfamiliar with the text. In contrast, by

the time you reach the final set of questions, you are more likely to find the

answer quickly just because you are now familiar with the topic and language of

the text and its structure. So a suggestion is to give more time to the first set of

questions than the last set of questions.

A second factor to consider is that there are different question types. Some

questions ask you to look at the whole text (the paragraph/heading matching

questions) and some ask you to look at only part of the text. It is likely that the

whole text questions are going to take you a little longer. So again it may be

sensible to consider leaving more time to certain question types.



Equally, in matching tasks the first question in each group of questions is almost

certainly going to take longer than the last question. For the first question you

have 8 options to consider and for the last only 4. Once again, it can make sense

to give more time to some questions than others.

The best advice?

For me there is no one answer here and it would be a mistake to say it must be

done this way or that way as each learner is different. My advice is to experiment

and see what works best for you and when you get to the exam room have a

strategy which ensures you finish the paper in time.

How to use key words in IELTS

readingWhy do IELTS candidates make mistakes in the reading paper? Time and the

difficulty of the texts are two reasons. Another reason is that they do not read in

the right way and they focus on key words only . Key words can help but only if

used correctly. Used incorrectly, they can in fact cause more mistakes, not fewer.

In fact, my belief is that not knowing how to use key words causes more problems

in the reading paper than anything else.

I want to help you, so let’s look at why and how and when you should look at key

words in the IELTS reading paper.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XmS7jEaQCnw/Sf7IjTLQrUI/AAAAAAAAAJI/DDqGJzQTJH4/s1600-h/IMGP0007.JPG



Why use the key words approach

Key words can help you read more efficiently. This is helpful because the texts are

quite long and normally complex. If you focus on key words, you can read more

quickly by only looking at the part of the text you need to. Great.

Why not to use the key words approach by itself

Sadly, only using the key words approach probably causes more avoidable errors

than anything else in the reading paper. This is because it makes you try and

match words in the question with words in the text. In fact, the reading paper

doesn’t work in this way: you are not matching words but the meanings. This is an

extremely important distinction which it is important to understand.

An example

Here is an example adapted from an English language textbook:

For a few years, there has been a campaign to improve school meals in the UK.

Daniel Brown is the head teacher of a school that banned junk food and started

serving healthy food in 2006. “Our research shows that, since 2006, the children’s

behaviour in class has been a lot better. They are now calmer and they

concentrate more. As a result, they are learning more.”

The question is:

How many years ago did the school start serving healthy food?

Which is the answer?

1. a few years ago

2. 2006

3. since 2006

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/efficient#efficiently

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/efficient#efficiently



You will find the correct answer as a comment. The teachers’ book actually gives

the wrong answer. Why? Whoever wrote the question forgot to check the meaning

of the question, they only looked at words

When to use key words?

Key words are useful, of course they are. However, they only ever tell

you where the answer is in the text. They do not tell you what the answer is. So

my strong suggestion is this:

1. look at key words in the question

2. underline key words in the text

3. always, always, always read the whole question for meaning before you fill

in your answer

It may take more time this way but you will certainly get more answers correct

and this is the goal: not to do it quickly but to do it quickly and well.

Paragraphs/headings – a readingtutorial

A practice test

Before you read my tutorial, you may want to try this practice reading test. It’s a

full-length IELTS reading passage about cats. And just to challenge you I have set

a timer or 12 minutes which is the maximum time you should need for this type of

exercise in the exam.

practice reading test on cats

The task

1. The task is to match between 5 and 7 headings to paragraphs in the text.

2. There are always more headings than paragraphs

3. You may need to read the whole text or only a part of it

The reading skill – skimming

The main skill tested here is your ability to read quickly and get the main meaning

of a paragraph. This means that:



1. If you find a word you don’t understand: ignore it – you are looking for

meanings of paragraphs not words

2. Don’t simply match a word in the question with a word in the text – read

the sentence/paragraph to see how it is being used

3. Concentrate on the openings and closings of paragraphs – that is where

the writer normally makes the main point

Some problems and their solutions

This can be one of the easier types of question but it is also easy to get them all

wrong! Here are one or two difficulties:

1. You may need to read the whole text or a large part of it anyway. Make

this problem into a virtue. I suggest you do this task first – even if it is not the first

set of questions. This allows you to understand what the text is about.

2. You simply match words in the heading with words in the text. Remember

there are too many headings and it may not be as simple as matching

words. Think meaning, not words.

3. Some of the headings seem quite similar. Make sure you spend time

reading them all and try every heading with every paragraph. This may take time

but you will avoid a lot of mistakes.

4. You guess the meaning from the first few lines of the paragraph. The

meaning you need is in the last few lines of the paragraph. Don’t stop reading too

quickly and read the whole paragraph. The problem isn’t time, it’s making

mistakes.

5. You waste time because the first paragraph is the hardest to match. Easy.

Write in 2/3 headings it could be and move on. When you come back after doing

the other questions, it may seem obvious. Don’t guess immediately. Do the task

twice.

The procedure

1. Look at the headings first. Don’t spend too much time on this, as at least

some of them will be wrong.

2. Look at the first paragraph. Try to ignore the detail and look for the main

point. Does it match any of the headings? Try all the headings. If it could be

heading a) or b) – write down a) or b). Don’t guess yet. Come back at the end.

3. Make sure you underline the words in the text that best match the

heading. If you do this, you can easily check your answer, if you want to use the

same heading for another paragraph later on.

4. Move onto the next paragraph and repeat the process. Don’t expect tocomplete all the paragraphs first time around.



5. Go back at the end and make a decision about the paragraphs you didn’t

do first time. Try and be as careful as possible. Don’t rush.

6. If you are uncertain, it sometimes makes sense to use the same heading

for 2 paragraphs. You will get one wrong and one right. If you guess, you may get

two wrong (or two right!)

How to practise

This is a very simple practice suggestion. When you are reading texts (for IELTS

and otherwise), when you get to the end of the paragraph try to summarise what

that paragraph was about.

Types of question

1Text completion – an IELTS reading

tutorial This is the next in my series of IELTS reading tutorials where I look at the different

types of questions you can expect to find in the exam. In this one, I talk you

through the text completion task, showing you some of the problems it can cause

and giving you strategies to deal with them.

Test yourself

Here is a link to a complete reading passage with 6 sample text completion

questions. You can either do it now or take the tutorial and come back to it.

weather forecasts: text completion

The task

http://www.dcielts.com/reading/weather.htm

http://www.dcielts.com/reading/weather.htm



The task is to complete a text with words from the passage. The text you need to

complete can vary, sometimes it is a series of sentences, sometimes a table and

sometimes a short summary.

notes

• Typically, you will need to read 2/3 paragraphs to get all the answers.

Sometimes you may need to read the whole passage

• The questions will follow the order of the passage.

• If there is one thing that makes this task tough, it’s that you need a little

grammar to do it well!

Problem 1 – read the question

Be very careful to read the question carefully as the examiners use different

words sometimes. Look at these examples:

1. Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS

from the passage for each answer.

2. Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the

passage for each answer.

3. Answer the question below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each

answer.

In each case you need to do something different.

1. This a text completion task and you can use 1,2 or 3 words from the

passage for your answer

2. This is also a text completion task, but this time you can only use 1 0r 2

words from the passage

3. This is not a text completion task. The words you use do not need to come

from the passage

Tip: remember in this task you need to use words from the passage. You cannotchange the form or order of those words. You must write them down as they

appear in the passage.

Problem 2 – a test of grammar

The words you use to complete the text must fit grammatically. Look at this

simple example:

Passage

Traditionally, it was always supposed that it was the Egyptians who first

domesticated the cat. The primary evidence for this are the depictions of cats in



paintings and statuary in Egypt from over 3,500 years ago and it is indeed the

case that the ancient Egyptians had an extraordinarily close relationship with

cats. One of the major deities in the New Kingdom, Bast, was a cat-goddess that

symbolised fertility and motherhood and the Greek historian Herodotus tells how

cats were often mummified and given a funeral, sometimes with the mummified

remains of mice so that they could enjoy the afterlife

This traditional view has been overturned, however, by the discovery in 2004 of a

grave in Cyprus that was 9,500 years old in which the remains of a cat were found

next to a human. Clearly, the human association with cats predates the ancient

Egyptians by many millennia. It is now thought that it was in the Fertile Crescent,

modern-day Iraq, that humans first domesticated the cat. Agriculture was

invented in this region and the likelihood is that cats were used to control the

rodents and other vermin that fed on the crops and raided the grain stores.

Questions

The (1)________________ were the first people to have the cat as a pet. We know

this from (2)______________________ created over millennia ago and it is thought

that cats (3)_________________ so that they could enjoy eternal life. There is,

however, some doubt about this (4)__________________ theory because the remains

of a cat were found buried with human remains in (5)____________.

Even before you read, you should be able to predict

1. must be a noun after “The”

2. likely to be a noun after “from”

3. must be a verb form

4. must be an adjective between “this” and “theory”

5. either a place or a time after “in”

Tip: Even if you can’t predict the correct word form before you read, you mustcheck afterwards that what you have written is good grammar.

Problem 3 – recognise synonyms

Another major problem is that the words used in the text you have to complete

will not exactly match the words from the passage. This means that you need to

read for meaning and simply look for the same words in the passage. So there is

no point looking for the word “pet” as the word in the passage is “domesticated”.

A suggested technique1. Read the instructions very carefully: check how many words you can use



2. Read the summary/table/sentences to see what general information you

are looking for. Ignore any specific words, think about meaning

3. Skim the text quickly to find the paragraphs you need to read more

carefully. It’s a good idea to concentrate the first and last question as they will tell

you how much of the text you need to read.

4. Look back at each question one by one and look for what specific

information you need. If you can, try and decide if you are looking for nouns,

prepositions, verbs or adjectives

5. Find the sentence in the passage that you think most clearly matches the

question

6. Check carefully that what you have written fits grammatically and makes

sense too.

7. Spell the words correctly!

2

Multiple choice – reading tutorial andpractice

This is one of my series of tutorials on how to approach the different types of

reading questions in IELTS. The multiple choice question should be familiar to

most candidates. That doesn’t make it easy though. In many ways the skills

needed for this question are the same as for the True/False/Not Given type – only

here you get 4 options and not 3. So, in a sense, it’s harder.

Practice test

To see if you need to read further why don’t you give this practice a go?

Do a practice test

http://www.dcielts.com/reading/concrete.htm

http://www.dcielts.com/reading/concrete.htm



The primary reading skill

As with the True/False question type, multiple choice questions require very close

reading of one or two paragraphs of the text. Very frequently the difficult part is

reading the question carefully too. At least 3 of the 4 possible answers may lookok until you read them closely.

The two types of question – fact and opinion

It’s very important to recognise that there are 2 types of question here those that:

1. ask you for the writer’s opinion

2. ask you to find factual information

Let me explain why this distinction matters with this easy example:

Different people read for different reasons. For example, the attraction of reading

detective fiction can be in the intellectual challenge of finding out who did it, in an

autobiography we can eavesdrop on the conversations of the great and good or

we can laugh at folly in the celebrity magazine. For many children it is a magic

gateway to some other world. Sadly, that is one of the greatest mistakes they can

make.

According to the author , the attraction of reading for young people is:

1. they find out about other countries

2. different from other generations

3. escaping into another world

4. foolish

Without the words highlighted in red, the answer must be 3., with those words it

becomes 4.

Tip: don’t stop reading too soon. An answer may seem right but if the next word is

something like “but” the meaning changes completely

The traps and how to avoid them

It helps to know how the examiners try and trap you. The way they do this is fairly

predictable. Let’s look at another example:

What were the findings of the research in Scotland:

1. anti-smoking legislation was more effective in the USA

2. advertising of tobacco products had less effect on old than on young

people



3. the legislation was unpopular with the print media

4. almost a third of young people stopped smoking after the legislation

These conclusions are the result of extensive research carried out over the past

20 years around various countries into the effect of banning tobacco advertising.

In Scotland it was found that the incidence of smoking fell by 30% in the 18-24

age group after legislation prohibiting the advertising of tobacco products in all

print media was introduced. A separate piece of research in the United States of

America found that when tobacco advertising was banned in 34 states, this

reduced the level of smoking by 50%.

1. Factually true and in the text but doesn’t answer the

question

Answer 1 above is wrong because it doesn’t answer the question. This was not the

findings of the research in Scotland It’s easy to fall for this trap as the information

is correct.

Tip: always go back and re-read the question before you answer

2. Probably true but you’re guessing information

Answer 2 is wrong because we don’t have the information in the text. We might

be able to guess that this is true, but if it doesn’t say so in the text the answer is

not correct.

Tip: always make sure you look at all answers, don’t guess too soon. You may find

a better answer later

3. You’re word matching – read the context

This one contains most words from the text so there is an obvious temptation to

say “yes”. There is in fact no evidence for this in the text at all. A very typical

mistake is to match words in the question and text. You need to read the context

for meaning to avoid this mistake.

Tip:always refocus on the exact wording of the question before giving the answer.

Be suspicious of answers that contain almost the same language as the text

Suggested procedure

1. Look at the questions first to see what topics you need to look for – be

aware you may need to look for synonyms

2. Skim the text to identify the correct paragraphs to read: the questions will

go in order so question 5 will come between 4 and 6

3. Read the paragraph carefully and then re-read the question

4. Ask yourself if you are looking for fact or opinion



5. Delete the answers you know to be incorrect

6. underline the words in the text that give you the answer

3True/False/Not given – reading

tutorial and practicePerhaps the question type that gives most pain to most IELTS candidates is the

True/False/Not given question type. Here are some pointers to help you improve

your IELTS band score with a link to some specific practice on this type of

question.

A practice reading exercise

Before you read on, you may wish to test yourself on this reading exercise which

is designed to test your skill on this question type and gives you detailed

feedback on your answers:

Birdwatching

The question types

In fact there are two question types here:

1. True/False/Not given: fact based

2. Yes/No/Not given: opinion based

In each case you need to decide if the information in the text agrees with the

information in the question. You should note that in the “Yes/No/Not given”

questions, you are normally asked to look for the writer’s opinions rather than

facts.

The key skill

http://www.dcielts.com/reading/birdwatching.htm

http://www.dcielts.com/reading/birdwatching.htm



The key skill here is to understand that you are interpreting the text and the

question. This means that you need to read very closely and pay attention to

what the writer means. Don’t think of it as a skimming question, rather a question

where you need to read the text and the question closely and decide what the

writer means.

A difficulty – Not Given

The “Not Given” variation is probably what makes this type of question so

difficult. How can you deal with this problem? You need to understand that:

• “Not given” does not mean “Not mentioned”. Typically, you will the

“NG”answers mentioned in the text – they simply don’t answer the question

• You cannot add information that is probably true: you can only use the

information given in the text

example

“Water has recently been found on Mars” does not make “There is life on Mars”

true. If there is no further information, the correct answer in “Not Given”.

An avoidable mistake – only focussing on key words

The typical mistake that is made here is: you see a word in the question and

match it with some words in the text. People who make this mistake tend to

underline key words in the question: Look at this example and think about your

answer:

question

The writer claims that women on maternity leave often consider entering some

form of further education because they are unsure of their career path.

text

It is a sad fact that many women who take maternity leave find themselves

stepping off the career ladder, even though they fully intend to full-time work

after their maternity leave is over. For some this is no hardship and for those who

do wish to return to work there is no issue as they have legal protection. The

problem category is those who are in two minds about what to do. These need to

sit down and ask themselves some hard questions:

• Do I wish to return to full-time employment?

• What are about working from home?

• Would I benefit from doing a second degree?



If we underline or highlight these words, we are almost certain to get the wrong

answer: “The writer claims that women on maternity leave often consider

entering some form of further education because they are unsure of their career

path“. If we do this, the answer is probably “Yes” as we can match it with “women

on maternity leave“, “women in two minds about what to do” and “Would I

benefit from doing a second degree?“.

Sorry. That’s wrong. There is nothing in the text to show that this is what the

writer believes that these women often do. What he does is say that this

something these women should or “need” to do. The only way to get that answer

is to focus on the whole question.

answer

Not given

Some practical tips

1. Read the whole question. Do NOT focus on key words. Think about the

meaning of the question.

2. Be especially careful with words such as “often” and “some”. They can

change the meaning of the question dramatically.

3. Be careful with questions beginning “The writer says”: here you need to

think about the writer’s opinions and not about facts.

4. The questions will follow the order of the text: if you can’t find answer 12,

you know it must be somewhere between 11 and 13.

5. Do not spend too long on any one question. If the answer is “Not Given”,

there may be nothing for you to find.

6. One possibility is to mark all the “True” answers and all the “False”

answers and then guess “Not Given” for the others.

A suggested procedure

Here is my suggested procedure:

1. Read the instructions carefully and note whether you are being asked to

look for facts or opinions.

2. Look at all the questions and see what topics they ask about. You may

note key words here, but only to identify the correct part of the text to read.

3. Skim the text to identify which paragraphs you need to read more closely.

Note that the questions will follow the order of the text and so the answer to

question 10 will follow the answer to question 11

4. Mark on the question paper which paragraphs relate to which question: eg,

write 11 against paragraph E



5. Refocus on the question and read the whole question: be careful with

tricky words like “usually”

6. Underline the words in the text that give you the answer. This helps you

concentrate and also allows you to change your mind, if you find a better answer

later.

A variation is to mark the “True” answers first as they tend to be the easiest and

then go back to the “False” and “Not given” later.

4

Matching sentence endings – IELTS

reading tutorial and practice This is the next in my series of tutorials on the different question types you may

find in the reading test. In this one I discuss matching sentence beginnings with

endings and suggest an approach to deal with this task. You will also find a

sample exercise to do online.

An example of the question

You get a series of incomplete sentences and you need to match them their

correct ending using information from the text. There are normally 5 or 6

sentences and 9 or 10 different endings. For example:

Sentence beginnings

1. One effect of the European Union taking over agricultural policy in the UK

2. The Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food decision to move infected

animals around the country

3. The decision to prevent people from walking through the countryside

4. The initial failure of MAFF policy

5. The main reason for not vaccinating against the disease in the United Kingdom



Sentence endings

A. was that it would reduce the profits of farmers.

B. was to bury the animals in quicklime.

C. was to change the previous procedures for dealing with a foot and mouthoutbreak.

D. was a possible factor in the spread of the disease.

E. was challenged in the courts

F. was that a similar programme had worked well in The Netherlands.

G. was intended to stop the disease from reaching previously uninfected areas

H.was to stop the animals being transported to different areas of the country

Understanding how it works

This question is designed to test your understanding of the main ideas in a text.

You will be NOT be looking for exactly the same words in the text as in the

question, but words/phrases that have a similar meaning. In addition, you need to

understand before you approach this type of question that:

1. the questions follow order of the text

2. typically the questions test part of the whole text, not all of it

3. the sentence endings look grammatically similar

4. you will not use all of the endings

A suggested approach

Concentrate on the sentence beginnings

The general idea is that you focus on the sentence beginnings and not the

sentence endings. The simple reason for this is that not all the sentence endings

appear in the text and you will waste time if you concentrate on them.

Find the correct section of text

Find the part of the text that the questions relate to. One way to do this is scan

the text for key words in the question. Once you have found the paragraph for

question 1, then you know that the answer to question 2 comes later in the text

and so on.

As you do this, it is sensible to ignore words that occur in more than question and

words that occur frequently in the text. Focussing on proper names and dates is

often a good approach.



Look for synonyms in the text

The answer will normally be found by looking for words in the text that have the

same meaning as one of the sentence endings, rather than using exactly the

same words.

Check back with sentence beginning

Once you have found the “correct” ending, check your answer by making the

complete sentence.

Think about meaning

Don’t be tempted to word match. If you find a word in the text that matches the

sentence ending, read carefully. This is likely to be an examiner trap. It is notnormally that easy. Go back to sentence beginning and match it with the ending.

Does the whole sentence make sense? Does the whole sentence match what you

find in the text?

Think about grammar

This is a similar piece of advice. Make certain that the sentence you make is

grammatically accurate. It is a mistake simply to match words.

Be methodical – check every ending with every beginning

It is very easy here to write down the first option you think is possible. Don’t. The

examiners set traps. Be careful and look at every ending for each question. This

will take a little more time, but you will certainly avoid mistakes.

The first question is the hardest – give it more time

In this type of question, it makes absolutely no sense to give one and half minutes

to every question. The first question you look at will be hardest as you still have

all the 8/9 options available to you. Likewise the last question will be the simplest

and quickest to do as you will only have around 4 options left.

If you can’t find the answer to the first question immediately, don’t panic. Spend

some time on it, note 2/3 different answers it could be and move on. You can

always come back to it later, when you have got some other answers right.



5

Matching information and paragraphs

– reading tutorial and practice This is the next in my series of tutorials on the different question types you can

expect to find in an IELTS reading. This one focusses on the question where you

need to find which paragraph in the text certain information is found in. You will

find a complete reading text with 6 questions to download or do online. Before

that, I also help you along with 2 suggested strategies for approaching this type of

question and show you some of the more common problems.

How it works

You are given a series of 4/5 questions with information from the text and you are

asked to say which paragraph the information appears in. The information you

need to look for varies, it can be among other things:

• a fact

• an example

• a reason

• a summary

• a definition

Typically, you will be looking for a sentence or long phrase rather than a word to

give you the answer.

Points to note:

1. there will be more paragraphs than questions so some paragraphs will

have no answers

2. some paragraphs may contain more than one answer



3. it’s important to realise that this is a very different type of question to the

paragraph/heading matching question. Here the main idea is that you need to

find specific information in a paragraph and not the general meaning of a

paragraph.

Know the problems

This is one of the harder question types for 4 reasons:

1. the questions can relate to the whole text and not just a part of it

2. the questions do not follow the order of the text

3. the information you are looking for may not be the main idea of a

paragraph

4. sometimes one paragraph may contain more than one answer

The skills you need

This type of question requires different reading skills.

Skimming/Understanding general meaning

This will help you identify which paragraphs you should start reading to find the

answers. I explain this more below but the quick way to do this task is to

understand the whole text before you start looking for the answers.

Looking for synonyms

One of the keys to understanding this task is that you are generally not looking

for the same words in the text as you find in the questions. What you need to do

is look for words or phrases in the text that are similar in meaning to words in the

questions. So you need to understand that this information in a question

why bats hunt in the dark

is matched by this information in the text

natural selection has favoured bats that make a go of the night-hunting trade

How to approach it – start with the questions

There are different ways to approach this question type, but here is my best

suggestion:



1. Read the whole text first quickly to decide what each paragraph is about. If

you do this, you are much more likely to predict which paragraph contains the

right answer. This will save you lots of time.

2. Look at each question in turn and try to predict which paragraph might

contain the right answer.

3. Generally do not focus on key words in the question, think of the meaning

of the question. Be aware that you are looking for synonyms rather words in the

question.

4. Read the paragraph you have predicted. Are there any sentences/phrases

that relate to the question? If so, underline them and refer back to the question.

5. If you cannot find the answer in that paragraph, move on to the next

question and come back to it later. You may well find the answer later when you

are looking at another question.

How to approach it – start with the text

An alternative approach, which can work, is to start with the text. Here:

1. You read each paragraph one by one

2. Then look at all the questions to see if you can find the information in the

question in that paragraph

3. If you cannot find anything, move on. There may be no answers in that

paragraph

The benefit of this approach is that you need to read the text only once. I dislike it

though because you are likely to spend more time this way as you will spend time

reading paragraphs with no answers in them. Also, if you take this approach you

should know that the first one or two paragraphs will take you much longer than

the last paragraphs as you are looking for more information.

ielts reading test.doc

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