IELTS General Training Reading: three sections, 60 minutes, no transfer time
Reading gives you 60 minutes for 40 questions and no extra time to transfer answers, unlike Listening, so answers must go onto the answer sheet as you go. The paper has three sections of increasing difficulty.
The three sections
- Section 1 - two or three short everyday texts: notices, advertisements, timetables, leaflets. Answers are literal and quick to locate.
- Section 2 - two workplace texts, such as a contract extract, staff handbook or training notice.
- Section 3 - one longer discursive article on a general-interest topic, carrying the hardest questions.
Rules and question families
True/False/Not Given asks what the text says; Yes/No/Not Given asks what the writer thinks or claims. False means the passage contradicts the statement; Not Given means the passage neither confirms nor denies it. Matching headings tests the main idea of a whole paragraph, not a repeated keyword. Completion tasks carry a word limit and the completed answer must fit grammatically. Most question types run in passage order; matching features and matching headings do not.
Worked example
Passage: 'The museum closed to the public in 1998, though its archive stayed open to researchers by appointment.' Statement: After 1998, researchers could use the archive without booking. This is False: 'by appointment' directly contradicts 'without booking'. Had the passage said nothing about booking, the answer would be Not Given, because the test is contradiction versus silence.
Traps
Do not spend 20 minutes on Section 1; it should take about 15, leaving the bulk of the hour for Section 3. Never pick an option because it repeats words from the passage - the correct answer is usually a paraphrase. In Not Given items, candidates import outside knowledge; judge only the printed text. Check singular and plural in completion answers, and make sure a chosen heading covers the whole paragraph rather than only its opening sentence.