IELTS Reading Question Types with Examples

Question Type

Description

IELTS Multiple-choice questions

• It has about 3-4 options from which you have to choose your answer.

• This might be in the form of a question & answer type or a choose a correct ending to a sentence type.

• These answers appear in chronological order according to the passage.

Question Type

Description

IELTS True/False/Not Given

• These questions are very tricky as they consist of several statements: If the statement is present in the article as it is then you need to mark it as true.

• If the statement is found to be the opposite of the sentence which is there then it should be marked as false.

• If the statement given in the question is not at all present in the article then it should be marked as not given.

• Do not spend a lot of time finding the sentence which is not there.

Question Type

Description

IELTS Yes, No, Not Given

• Similar to the True/False/Not given questions, these also have various statements.

• But here you are asked to agree or disagree with the statement based on the opinion of the author.

Question Type

Description

IELTS Matching Headings

• Here, a list of headings will be given and you are asked to match these headings with a paragraph in the passage.

• You should read the headings before you begin reading the text.

• To get the correct answer, you have to read the complete paragraph and not just stop with the first few lines of the paragraph.

• There will also be many other headings that are not related to any of the paragraphs given in the passage, in such cases, try to identify those types of headings too.

Question Type

Description

IELTS Matching information

• Here, you have a list which contains information taken from the paragraphs.

• You are asked to find out the paragraph from which the information is taken.

• Sometimes the question may be tricky because the information given might not be in exact words as given in the paragraph instead it will be paraphrased.

• So you need to read the paragraph to understand the meaning/idea behind it to answer these questions.

Question Type

Description

IELTS Matching Features

• Here, there will be a list of items in the box and you need to match these items by reading and understanding some sentences in the passages.

• The list may be of the name of people or cities. For example, If there is a name of a person in the box of items then the question may be to match the sentence with the person who said them.

• Like other types of match questions, some of the items mentioned may not be available in the passage.

• So, to save time, read the passage before answering each question.

Question Type

Description

IELTS Matching Sentence Endings

• In this, you need to connect two halves of the sentences.

• The first half of the sentence will be already given and you need to find out which is the appropriate ending for the sentence from the list given.

• While choosing from the list you need to keep the following things in mind: There should not be any grammatical errors in the sentence.

• The ending sentence chosen by you should make sense.

• The sentence should have the same meaning as the sentence in the passage.

Question Type

Description

IELTS Sentence Completion and IELTS Short Answer Type

• These are almost similar. In sentence completion, you’ll be asked to fill in the blank spaces using the words given in the text.

• Whereas, in short answers, you’ll have to take words from the given text to write the short answers.

• It is important to pay close attention to the instructions that are given in the question because in some instructions there will be a word limit mentioned and you may lose marks if you don’t follow it.

Question Types

Description

• IELTS Summary Completion

• IELTS Reading Note Completion

• IELTS Reading Table Completion

• IELTS Reading Diagram Completion

• IELTS Reading Flowchart Completion

• All of these question types come under the Completion questions.

• In these, you will be asked to complete a set of notes, tables, diagrams or a summary based on the information given in the text.

• Sometimes the question will be to write a short answer and sometimes you’ll have to choose from the list of answers given.

• Usually, these kinds of questions will only be based on one part of the passage, so you won’t have to read the whole passage to fill in the important information.