Reading
Three passages, 40 questions, 60 minutes, and no extra time to transfer answers. Practise in an exam-style layout with highlighting and annotation, and get a per-question breakdown the moment you finish.
Sixty minutes across three passages is twenty minutes each, and the third passage is the hardest. Candidates who read passage one thoroughly arrive at passage three with eleven minutes left and lose more marks there than they gained anywhere.
Budget the time before you start and enforce it. If you are still on passage one at minute twenty-two, move regardless of how many answers you have. An unfinished passage three is the most common single cause of a Reading band below target.
This type causes more distress than any other, almost entirely because of one confusion: Not Given does not mean 'I could not find it.' It means the passage neither states nor contradicts the claim.
Work from the statement, not from your knowledge of the world. Find the part of the text on the same topic and compare the claim word by word.
Read the paragraph first and summarise it to yourself in a few words, then look for the heading that matches your summary. Reading the headings first invites you to find one plausible sentence in the paragraph and stop there — which is exactly what the wrong headings are designed to catch.
Do the easy paragraphs first and eliminate their headings. The remaining choices get easier with every elimination.
Marking tells you the score; review tells you the reason. For every item you got wrong, find the exact line of the passage that proves the correct answer, and name why you missed it: ran out of time, misread a quantifier, matched a synonym incorrectly, or answered from general knowledge.
Those four reasons cover almost every Reading error, and each has a different fix. Grouping your mistakes this way is worth more than another full test.
60 minutes for 40 questions across three passages. There is no extra time to transfer answers in either the computer-delivered or the paper-based test.
False means the passage directly contradicts the statement. Not Given means the passage contains no information that either confirms or contradicts it.
On Academic Reading, band 7 typically starts at around 30 out of 40. General Training Reading is converted more strictly, and band 7 typically starts at around 34 out of 40.
Read the questions first. IELTS Reading is a search task under time pressure, not a comprehension exercise, and skimming for a purpose is far faster than reading for general understanding.
The texts are harder in Academic, but General Training is marked more strictly to compensate. The band you get reflects the same level of ability in both.
Three timed passages in an exam-style layout, marked per question so you can see exactly which types cost you.
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