IELTS Academic Reading exam question types

An overview of the IELTS Academic Reading exam

Three lengthy texts, ranging from factual and descriptive to discursive and analytical, are part of the Academic Reading test. The texts were gathered from books, journals, periodicals, and newspapers, and they are real. These were chosen for a non-specialist audience but are suitable for students starting university courses or looking to register for a profession.

Finished labeling the diagram:

In this kind of question, you have to fill in the labels on a diagram that connect to a description in the text. How many words or figures you should use in your responses will be made explicit in the instructions, such as “NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the reading,” “ONE WORD ONLY,” or “NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.” You will not receive a mark if you write more than the allotted amount of words. Numbers can be represented by words or symbols. Hyphenated words are counted as individual words. The questions don’t always follow the right order in the passage. However, they frequently just draw inspiration from one part of the book.

A machine, a building’s component elements, or any other entity that can be represented visually may be shown in the diagram. This job type is usually combined with texts that are either descriptive or process-oriented.

Your understanding of a thorough explanation and your ability to connect it to facts displayed in the form of a diagram are both evaluated by diagram label completion.

Determining the author’s statements or opinions:

You will be given a list of assertions and asked, “Do the following statements coincide with the views/claims of the writer?” while answering a question of this sort, in which you must identify a writer’s point of view or assertion. The next step is to choose “Yes,” “No,” or “Not given.”

It’s critical to comprehend the distinction between “No” and “Not granted.” No signifies that the writer’s views or claims directly contradict the statement, i.e., The writer expresses the opposing opinion or claim to that which is stated in the question; “Not given” means that the writer’s perspective or claim is neither supported nor refuted.

Make sure your expertise of the subject is not a deciding factor when choosing your response.

This question type is frequently employed with discursive or argumentative texts since it evaluates your capacity to identify viewpoints or ideas.

Identification data

Do the following assertions accord with the information in the text? will be the question you will be asked when you have to identify information. When responding to a question, mark the appropriate response box with “True,” “False,” or “Not given.”

Understanding the distinction between “False” and “Not provided” is crucial. False indicates that the paragraph contradicts the claimed fact. “Not provided” denotes that the material in the text neither supports nor refutes the statement.

Corresponding features

A list of alternatives and a collection of assertions or pieces of information must match. The choices are shown as a collection of textual elements, with each element denoted by a different letter. You could be asked, for instance, to match various study findings to a list of researchers, or traits to age groups, occasions to historical eras, etc. It’s possible that some options won’t be picked, while others could be used more than once. You can find out if you can use an option more than once by reading the instructions.

Similar headings

When a heading is used, it alludes to the paragraph’s or section’s major theme. You are given a list of headings and asked to match each heading to the appropriate paragraphs or sections when you encounter a question of the matching headings kind. Some headers will always be omitted as there are more headings than there are paragraphs or sections. Additionally, the work could not cover all paragraphs or all parts. Texts containing paragraphs or sections with distinctly stated themes are appropriate for this sort of inquiry.

The capacity to recognise a text’s primary concept or subject and to separate it from supporting ideas is tested by matching heads to paragraphs or sections.

Matching details

In this sort of matching information question, you must find particular information inside the paragraphs or portions of a text that are lettered before choosing the appropriate paragraphs or sections’ letters.

There can be more than one piece of information that you need to identify in a certain paragraph or portion of the text, so you won’t always need to look for it there. You will be informed that you can use a letter more than once in this situation.

This sort of matching information inquiry may be used with any text because it assesses a variety of reading abilities, from finding specific information to identifying a summary or definition.

Your capacity to search for certain information is evaluated by matching information.

Synchronizing sentence ends

In the sentence ending matching task, you are given the first half of a sentence based on the reading text and asked to select the most appropriate method to finish it from a choice of alternatives. There will be more choices than there are questions to make. The next step is to select the appropriate answer to finish the statement. The questions are arranged in the same chronological sequence as the material in the text, thus the first question in this group will have its response before the second, and so on.
Your capacity for comprehending the major ideas is evaluated by matching

Multiple options

Multiple-choice questions come in three different categories:

• Pick the best response out of the four options (A, B, C or D)
• Pick the top two solutions from the available five (A, B, C, D or E)
• Select the top three responses from a possible seven (A, B, C, D, E, F or G)

Each multiple-choice question may require you to either finish a sentence—you are given the initial half of the phrase, and you must then select the option that best completes it—or to respond to a question in its entirety.

The material in the reading text is delivered before the questions in the same order.

Completion of a sentence

You will finish sentences that have been extracted directly from the reading text in this type of sentence completion question. How many words or figures you should use in your answer will be made explicit in the instructions, such as “NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the reading,” “ONE WORD ONLY,” or “NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.” You will not receive a mark if you write more words than are specified in the instruction. Words with hyphens count as separate words. The questions are arranged in the same chronological sequence as the material in the text, thus the first question in this group will have its response before the second, and so on.