Should You Use All Capital Letters in the IELTS Listening and Reading Tests
Updated On
A few people have raised questions about whether IELTS candidates can use all upper-case letters in the IELTS Listening and Reading modules. Here’s my advice:
For the reading and listening tests:
- Answers can be written on the answer sheet in upper case, lower case or a combination.
For example, the answer “Thailand” can be written as “thailand”, “THAILAND” or even “ThAiLanD”. All of these versions would be marked as correct. - This is extracted from British Council IELTS website:
“As you listen, write your answers on the question paper. At the end of the test, you will have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to the answer sheet in pencil. You may write your answers either in lower case or in capital letters.”
It’s the same for the reading, but most of your responses in the reading come from the text, so you should be able to see if it is capitals or not.
For the writing test:
- The correct use of capitals IS NEEDED in your writing test answer. So you should try to follow the normal rules for capital letters. You can read the summary of the rules for CAPITAL below:
a. Places and monuments:
- Tokyo, Paris
- State of Liberty, Fifth Avenue, the White House
b. Personal pronoun “I”
c. Abbreviations and acronyms
- G.M.T. or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
- AM (Ante Meridian); PM (Post Meridiem)
d. Days, months, holidays
- Monday, Tuesday
- April, May
- Christmas, Easter
e. Countries, languages & nationalities, religions
- Buddhism, Christian
- English, Spanish
- The United States, Belgium, Sweden, India, Indonesia
- Japanese, Korean
f. People’s names and titles
- Jesmine Thompson
- Mayor, King, Queen, President, Prime Minister
g. Trademarks, name of company, organization
- Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nike
- Microsoft, Oxfam
h. Begin a sentence or to begin speech
- How are you doing?
i. Titles of books, poems, songs, plays, films
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
- The Alchemist Avatar, The Idiots
Hope you find this small piece of advice useful for you.
Also check :
Practice IELTS Listening based on question types
Explore other Listening Articles

Ann Smith
Post your Comments
6 Comments
Cindy
Posted on Dec 5, 2016
Hi, I have placed an order a couple of minutes ago. Would you please double check with it? I urgently need this book. thank.
Reply
Prithviraj
Posted on Sep 23, 2016
could you please give some tips and practice test links for reading passages , it would be helpful for me ,thanks in advance
Reply
IELTS Material
Posted on Sep 28, 2016
Hi,
Thank you for your comment.
You can find more tips and practice tests in Practice Tests and Reading categories on ieltsmaterial.com
All the best!
Pawan Saini
Posted on Aug 27, 2016
in listening section, if we are not sure if the answer is impact or impacts..can we write it like impact/impacts ..or like impact(s)..
Reply
Mukammil
Posted on Apr 18, 2016
Thanks. This will help.
Reply
IELTS Material
Posted on Apr 18, 2016
Hi, please check your email for the direct links to Cambridge 1 – 11 and other IELTS materials I suggest you should dig in to get Band 7.5+ for the IELTS test.
Hope you can make the most of them and achieve high score in IELTS.
All the best with your IELTS studies,