IELTS Reading Matching Information

IELTS Reading Matching Information questions are one of the four major types of matching questions in the IELTS Reading exam. Candidates often get confused with the different types of matching questions. So, it is essential to know all these question types in detail to avoid wasting time and making mistakes in the actual IELTS exam.

In this blog, we will discuss IELTS Reading Matching Information to Paragraph, look at some matching information IELTS Reading sample, go through the IELTS Reading matching information strategy and finally get hold of the IELTS Reading matching information exercises PDF for a comprehensive practice.

What are IELTS Reading Matching Information to Paragraphs?

In IELTS Reading Matching Information questions, test-takers are asked to match sentences that contain information given in different paragraphs of the reading passage. They are quite common in this section of both IELTS Academic and IELTS General Reading exams.

The given statement can be in the form of facts or examples, causes or effects, reasons, descriptions, definitions, opinions, predictions, and comparisons. However, candidates need to focus on paraphrasing, finding the location and matching the information.

Example of IELTS Reading Matching Information Questions

Let’s have a look at IELTS Reading matching information question with answer key to understand how it is presented in the IELTS General and IELTS Academic Reading exams.

Questions 2 – 7

2 about washing up………….

3 how much to buy…

4 bathroom habits……….

5 finding out where your consumable water comes from………….

6 buying a smaller-sized product…………..

7 the types of plants you should buy…………….

Click here to know the passage and the answer key!

IELTS Reading Matching Information Strategy: Step by Step Guide

IELTS Reading Matching Information questions are complicated, therefore answering them might be difficult for some. However, if candidates follow a systematic approach, these problems can be handled well. Here's a step-by-step guide to help them effectively answer the IELTS Reading matching information exercises:

Step 1: Understand the Task

The first step and the easiest step to answer this question type is to understand all the requirements for the IELTS Reading Matching Information task before starting. In most cases, the paragraphs are labelled with letters, like A, B, C, etc.

However, it is important to remember that the order of questions does not necessarily follow the order of information in the text.

Step 2: Skim the Passage for General Understanding

It is important to go over the entire passage quickly to gain a general idea of the issues discussed in each paragraph before concentrating on the statements. Use the IELTS Reading keyword techniques to avoid reading the passage thoroughly and wasting time.

Always look for headings, subheadings, and keywords and make mental notes of where specific types of information (e.g., dates, names, numbers) are located, as these may be useful later. This will make it easier to find the information more quickly when matching.

Step 3: Read the Statements Carefully

Finally, it is time to carefully read the statements that are to be matched with the respective paragraphs. While reading, make sure to highlight or underline the keywords in each statement, as these will be the key to finding the correct paragraph.

Step 4: Re-read the Passage for Keywords and

After figuring out the main details, go back to the passage and quickly search for relevant keywords or synonyms that can help to find the right paragraph.

Remember that the information in the passage is rarely a direct match with the wording of the question. IELTS often uses synonyms and paraphrases, so it is crucial to work on your IELTS vocabulary and think flexibly.

Step 5: Narrow down the Paragraph

Once the potential locations for the answers are located, read the relevant paragraphs more carefully. Focus on the details and compare them to the statements. In case of confusion, try to eliminate incorrect options to narrow down the choices and avoid mistakes.

Step 6: Match the Information and Repeat Process

Once you’re confident about a match, record the answer. Be sure to double-check the paragraph letter and re-read the statement to ensure it perfectly matches the information in the paragraph.

Remember, sometimes the same paragraph can be the right answer for more than one statement, but that's pretty rare. So, take each statement separately and don't assume anything.

Hear it straight from the IELTS experts on how to tackle the Reading matching information questions! Take a look at the video below!

Common Challenges Related to IELTS Reading Matching Information

Solving the matching information to paragraphs can be mastered by using the above mentioned IELTS Reading matching information strategy. However, to make it hassle-free for the IELTS candidates, some common challenges are listed below that will help them to come up with relevant steps while taking the IELTS Reading practice tests.

• Similar Information in Multiple Paragraphs: At times, the text may have repeated ideas or concepts in several of its paragraphs. For instance, one paragraph would talk about the advantages of eating well, while another would concentrate on doing exercise. Though both might refer to "improving heart health," you have to decide which paragraph specifically answers the question.

• Paraphrased Information: IELTS frequently paraphrases the question, which can make it difficult to match facts. For instance, in the paragraph, the term ‘enhanced memory retention’ might be given, whereas the question refers to ‘improvement in memory’. So, it is important to recognize these notions that have been paraphrased.

• Confusion with IELTS Matching Headings: Most candidates confuse Matching Information questions with IELTS Reading Matching Heading questions. They might sound or seem similar, but they are actually quite different. While Matching Headings requires test-takers to choose the best heading for the paragraph, heading or a title, Matching Paragraph Information requires them to locate specific information in one of the paragraphs.

• Time Pressure: Time management in IELTS Reading is critical. Many candidates struggle with allocating enough time to Matching Information questions. Therefore, practicing skimming, scanning, and focusing on keywords can save valuable minutes during the test.

Practice IELTS Reading Matching Information Exercises with Answers

Now it's time to see how well you understood the material. Complete the IELTS Reading Matching Information exercises and check your answers. Additionally, get the matching information IELTS Reading practice PDF.

Test 1

Zheng He

The Chinese admiral-explorer of the 15th Century

A Zheng He was born around 1371, to a Muslim family in China’s southern Yunan Province, just north of Laos. When he was ten years old, he, along with other children, was captured by the army, and three years later he became a servant in the household of the Chinese emperor’s fourth son, Prince Zhu Di.

B He proved himself to be an exceptional servant, becoming skilled in the arts of war and diplomacy and serving as an officer of the prince. Zhu Di became emperor in 1402, and a year later, he appointed Zheng He to the high military position of admiral and ordered him to oversee the construction of a Treasure Fleet to explore the seas surrounding China.

C The first Treasure Fleet comprised 62 ships. The four flagships were huge wooden boats, some of the largest ever built in history: they were approximately 120 metres long and 50 metres wide. The fleet assembled at the capital, Nanjing, on the Yangtze River, and included 100-metre-long horse ships that carried nothing but horses, water ships that carried fresh water for the crew, troop transports, supply ships and war ships for offensive and defensive needs. The ships were filled with thousands of tons of goods to trade with others during the voyage. In the autumn of 1405, the fleet set sail with 27,800 men.

D The fleet used the compass-invented in China in the 11th century-for navigation. Marked sticks of incense were burned to measure time. Latitude was determined by monitoring the North Star in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Cross in the Southern Hemisphere. The ships of the Treasure Fleet communicated with one another through the use of flags, lanterns, bells, carrier pigeons, gongs and banners.

E The destination of the first voyage of the Treasure Fleet was Calicut, known as a major trading centre on the south-western coast of India. The fleet reached Sri Lanka and India in 1406, and stayed there for several months, carrying on barter and trade. The following spring, the seasonal change in direction of the monsoon winds enabled the ships to sail towards home. On the return voyage, the Treasure Fleet was forced to battle with pirates near Sumatra for several months. Eventually Zheng He’s men managed to capture the pirate leader and take him to the Chinese capital Nanjing, where they arrived in 1407.

F A succession of other voyages followed, back to India and Sri Lanka, to the rich city of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, and along the east coast of Africa, almost as far south as Mozambique. During each of Zheng He’s voyages, he encouraged diplomats from other countries to travel to China, either aboard his ships or on their own vessels.

G Emperor Zhu Di died in 1424 and was succeeded by his son Zhu Gaozhi. The new emperor cancelled the voyages of the Treasure Fleets and ordered shipbuilders and sailors to stop their work and return home. Zheng He was appointed military commander of Nanjing.

H The leadership of Zhu Gaozhi did not last long, as he died in 1426 at the age of 26. His son Zhu Di’s grandson-Zhu Zhanji became emperor. Zhu Zhanji was much more like his grandfather than his father was, and in 1430, he restarted the Treasure Fleet voyages by ordering Zheng He to resume his duties as admiral and make a seventh voyage, in an attempt to restore peaceful relations with the kingdoms of Malacca and Siam. It took a year to gear up for the voyage, which departed as a large expedition with 100 ships and 27,500 men.

I Zheng He is believed to have died in 1433, on the return trip, although others claim that he died in 1435 after the return to China. Nonetheless, the era of exploration for China was soon over, as the following emperors prohibited trade with foreign countries and even the construction of ocean-going vessels, thus ending an era of trade and exploration.

J It seems likely that a detachment of one of Zheng He’s fleets, though not the admiral himself, sailed to northern Australia during one of the seven voyages. The evidence lies both in the Chinese artefacts found there and in the oral history of the native Australians.

Questions 1-5

1 a summary of journeys to various places

2 examples of equipment used during voyages

3 speculation concerning a possible destination

4 details of the composition of a fleet of ships

5 how the weather affected the timing of a voyage

Find answers to the above question from Zheng He IELTS Reading Answers!

Test 2

Keep the Water Away

A Last winter’s floods on the rivers of central Europe were among the worst since the Middle Ages, and as winter storms return, the spectre of floods is returning too. Just weeks ago, the river Rhone in south-east France burst its banks, driving 15,000 people from their homes, and worse could be on the way. Traditionally, river engineers have gone for Plan A: get rid of the water fast, draining it off the land and down to the sea in tall-sided rivers re-engineered as high-performance drains. But however big they dug city drains, however wide and straight they made the rivers, and however high they built the banks, the floods kept coming back to taunt them, from the Mississippi to the Danube. And when the floods came, they seemed to be worse than ever. No wonder engineers are turning to Plan B: sap the water’s destructive strength by dispersing it into fields, forgotten lakes, flood plains and aquifers.

B Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, flood waters lost impetus and volume while meandering across flood plains and idling through wetlands and inland deltas. But today the water tends to have an unimpeded journey to the sea. And this means that when it rains in the uplands, the water comes down all at once. Worse, whenever we close off more flood plains, the river’s flow farther downstream becomes more violent and uncontrollable. Dykes are only as good as their weakest link—-and the water will unerringly find it. By trying to turn the complex hydrology of rivers into the simple mechanics of a water pipe, engineers have often created danger where they promised safety, and intensified the floods they meant to end. Take the Rhine, Europe’s most engineered river. For two centuries, German engineers have erased its backwaters and cut it off from its flood plain.

C Today, the river has lost 7 percent of its original length and runs up to a third faster. When it rains hard in the Alps, the peak flows from several tributaries coincide in the main river, where once they arrived separately. And with four-fifths of the lower Rhine’s floodplain barricaded off, the waters rise ever higher. The result is more frequent flooding that does ever-greater damage to the homes, offices and roads that sit on the floodplain. Much the same has happened in the US on the mighty Mississippi, which drains the world’s second largest river catchment into the Gulf of Mexico.

D The European Union is trying to improve rain forecasts and more accurately model how intense rains swell rivers. That may help cities prepare, but it won’t stop the floods. To do that, say hydrologists, you need a new approach to engineering not just rivers, but the whole landscape. The UK’s Environment Agency -which has been granted an extra £150 million a year to spend in the wake of floods in 2000 that cost the country £1 billion- puts it like this: “The focus is now on working with the forces of nature. Towering concrete walks are out, and new wetlands : are in.” To help keep London’s feet dry, the agency is breaking the Thames’s banks upstream and reflooding 10 square kilometres of ancient flood plain at Otmoor outside Oxford. Nearer to London it has spent £100 million creating new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres of flood plain to protect the town of Maidenhead, as well as the ancient playing fields of Eton College. And near the south coast, the agency is digging out channels to reconnect old meanders on the river Cuckmere in East Sussex that were cut off by flood banks 150 years ago.

E The same is taking place on a much grander scale in Austria, in one of Europe’s largest river restorations to date. Engineers are regenerating flood plains along 60 kilometres of the river Drava as it exits the Alps. They are also widening the river bed and channelling it back into abandoned meanders, oxbow lakes and backwaters overhung with willows. The engineers calculate that the restored flood plain can now store up to 10 million cubic metres of flood waters and slow storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an hour, protecting towns as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.

F “Rivers have to be allowed to take more space. They have to be turned from flood-chutes into flood-foilers,” says Nienhuis. And the Dutch, for whom preventing floods is a matter of survival, have gone furthest. A nation built largely on drained marshes and seabed had the fright of its life in 1993 when the Rhine almost overwhelmed it. The same happened again in 1995, when a quarter of a million people were evacuated from the Netherlands. But a new breed of “soft engineers” wants our cities to become porous, and Berlin is their shining example. Since reunification, the city’s massive redevelopment has been governed by tough new rules to prevent its drains becoming overloaded after heavy rains. Harald Kraft, an architect working in the city, says: “We now see rainwater as a resource to be kept rather than got rid of at great cost.”. A good illustration is the giant Potsdamer Platz, a huge new commercial redevelopment by Daimler Chrysler in the heart of the city.

G Los Angeles has spent billions of dollars digging huge drains and concreting river beds to carry away the water from occasional intense storms. The latest plan is to spend a cool $280 million raising the concrete walls on the Los Angeles river by another 2 metres. Yet many communities still flood regularly. Meanwhile this desert city is shipping in water from hundreds of kilometres away in northern California and from the Colorado river in Arizona to fill its taps and swimming pools, and irrigate its green spaces. It all sounds like bad planning. “In LA we receive half the water we need in rainfall, and we throw it away. Then we spend hundreds of millions to import water,” says Andy Lipkis, an LA environmentalist, along with citizen groups like Friends of the Los Angeles River and Unpaved LA, want to beat the urban flood hazard and fill the taps by holding onto the city’s flood water. And it’s not just a pipe dream. The authorities this year launched a $100 million scheme to road-test the porous city in one flood-hit community in Sun Valley. The plan is to catch the rain that falls on thousands of driveways, parking lots and rooftops in the valley. Trees will soak up water from parking lots. Homes and public buildings will capture roof water to irrigate gardens and parks. And road drains will empty into old gravel pits and other leaky places that should recharge the city’s underground water reserves. Result: less flooding and more water for the city. Plan B says every city should be porous, every river should have room to flood naturally and every coastline should be left to build its own defences. It sounds expensive and utopian, until you realise how much we spend trying to drain cities and protect our watery margins -and how bad we are at it.

Questions 1-6

1 a new approach carried out in the UK
2 the reason why twisty path and dykes failed
3 illustration of an alternative plan in LA which seems much unrealistic
4 traditional way of tackling flood
5 efforts made in Netherlands and Germany
6 one project on a river that benefits three nations

Find answers to the above question from Keep the Water Away Reading Answers !

Test 3

Company Innovation

A In a scruffy office in midtown Manhattan, a team of 30 artificial intelligence programmers is trying to simulate the brains of an eminent sexologist, a well-known dietician, a celebrity fitness trainer and several other experts. Umagic Systems is a young firm, setting up websites that will allow clients to consult the virtual versions of these personalities. Subscribers will feed in details about themselves and their goals; Umagic’s software will come up with the advice that the star expert would give. Although few people have lost money betting on the neuroses of the American consumer, Umagic’s prospects are hard to gauge (in ten years’ time, consulting a computer about your sex life might seem natural, or it might seem absurd). But the company and others like it are beginning to spook large American firms, because they see such half-barmy “innovative” ideas as the key to their own future success.

B Innovation has become the buzz-word of American management. Firms have found that most of the things that can be outsourced or reengineered have been (worryingly, by their competitors as well). The stars of American business tend today to be innovators such as Dell, Amazon and WalMart, which have produced ideas or products that have changed their industries.

C A new book by two consultants from Arthur D. Little records that, over the past 15 years, the top 20% of firms in an annual innovation poll by Fortune magazine have achieved double the shareholder returns of their peers. Much of today’s merger boom is driven by a desperate search for new ideas. So is the fortune now spent on licensing and buying others’ intellectual property. According to the Pasadena-based Patent & Licence Exchange, trading in intangible assets in the United States has risen from $15 billion in 1990 to $100 billion in 1998, with an increasing proportion of the rewards going to small firms and individuals.

D And therein lies the terror for big companies: that innovation seems to work best outside them. Several big established “ideas factories”, including 3M, Procter & Gamble and Rubbermaid, have had dry spells recently. Gillette spent ten years and $1 billion developing its new Mach 3 razor; it took a British supermarket only a year or so to produce a reasonable imitation. “In the management of creativity, size is your enemy”, argues Peter Chernin, who runs the Fox TV and film empire for News Corporation. One person managing 20 movies is never going to be as involved as one doing five movies. He has thus tried to break down the studio into smaller units—even at the risk of incurring higher costs.

E It is easier for ideas to thrive outside big firms these days. In the past, if a clever scientist had an idea he wanted to commercialize, he would take it first to a big company. Now, with plenty of cheap venture capital, he is more likely to set up on his own. Umagic has already raised $5m and is about to raise $25m more. Even in capital-intensive businesses such as pharmaceuticals, entrepreneurs can conduct early-stage research, selling out to the big firms when they reach expensive, risky clinical trials. Around a third of drug firms’ total revenue now comes from licensed-in technology.

F Some giants, including General Electric and Cisco, have been remarkably successful at snapping up and integrating scores of small companies. But many others worry about the prices they have to pay and the difficulty in hanging on to the talent that dreamt up the idea. Everybody would like to develop more ideas inhouse. Procter & Gamble is now shifting its entire business focus from countries to products; one aim is to get innovations accepted across the company. Elsewhere, the search for innovation has led to a craze for “intrapreneurship”— devolving power and setting up internal ideas factories and tracking stocks so that talented staff will not leave.

G Some people think that such restructuring is not enough. In a new book Clayton Christensen argues that many things which established firms do well, such as looking after their current customers, can hinder the sort of innovative behavior needed to deal with disruptive technologies. Hence the fashion for cannibalization, setting up businesses that will actually fight your existing ones. Bank One, for instance, has established Wingspan, an Internet bank that competes with its real branches (see article). Jack Welch’s Internet initiative at General Electric is called “Destroyyourbusiness.com’”.

H Nobody could doubt that innovation matters. But need large firms be quite so pessimistic? A recent survey of the top 50 innovations in America, by Industry Week, a journal, suggested that ideas are as likely to come from big firms as from small ones. Another sceptical note is sounded by Amar Bhide, a colleague of Mr. Christensen’s at the Harvard Business School and the author of another book on entrepreneurship. Rather than having to reinvent themselves, big companies, he believes, should concentrate on projects with high costs and low uncertainty, leaving those with low costs and high uncertainty to small entrepreneurs. As ideas mature and the risks and rewards become more quantifiable, big companies can adopt them.

I At Kimberly-Clark, Mr. Sanders had to discredit the view that jobs working on new products were for “those who couldn’t hack it in the real business”. He has tried to change the culture not just by preaching fuzzy concepts but also by introducing hard incentives, such as increasing the rewards for those who come up with successful new ideas and, particularly, not punishing those whose experiments fail. The genesis of one of the firm’s current hits, Depend, a more dignified incontinence garment, lay in a previous miss, Kotex Personals, a form of disposable underwear for menstruating women.

J Will all this creative destruction, cannibalization and culture tweaking make big firms more creative? David Post, the founder of Umagic, is sceptical: “The only successful intrapreneurs are ones who leave and become entrepreneurs”. He also recalls with glee the looks of total incomprehension when he tried to hawk his “virtual experts” idea three years ago to the idea labs of firms such as IBM—though, as he cheerfully adds, “of course, they could have been right”. Innovation— unlike, apparently, sex, parenting and fitness— is one area where a computer cannot tell you what to do.

Questions 1-6

1 Approach to retain best employees

2 Safeguarding expenses on innovative idea

3 Integrating outside firms might produce certain counter effect

4 Example of three famous American companies’ innovation

5 Example of one company changing its focus.

7 Example of a company resolving financial difficulties itself

Find answers to the above question from Company Innovation - IELTS Reading Answers!

The IELTS Reading section Matching Information questions can be difficult, but candidates can become proficient at them with the correct techniques and regular practice. Recall to concentrate on methods for reading and skimming text, identifying synonyms, and paying attention to details. They can increase their chances of correctly matching material and raise their IELTS band score in the Reading module by paying attention to these pointers.

Moreover, feel free to check out our highly rated IELTS Reading Academic Test Guide or ultimate guide to IELTS General reading with actual IELTS test papers or join our online classes in case of personalized advice.

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