What type of questions will I need to answer?

In IELTS Reading, there are a total of 40 questions. The questions test various reading skills, including your ability to identify the writer’s purpose, locate specific information, identify opinions and attitudes, extract information from a text to complete a summary, diagram, table or notes.

There are three separate passages with 12-13 questions in each passage, and there are 1-3 different types of tasks in those sections. For some tasks, you need to write words or numbers from reading passage –

  • sentence completion
  • summary, note, table, flow-chart completion
  • short-answer questions
  • diagram completion

In other tasks, you need to choose options from a list and write a letter on your answer sheet –

  • summary completion with box
  • matching information, headings, features, sentence endings
  • multiple choice
  • matching sentence endings

You may also need to decide if sentences are True/False/Not Given or Yes/No/Not Given, based on the information you read in the text.

Dealing with different types of questions

There are 14 different types of questions in IELTS Reading. When dealing with these questions, the answers to some of them appear serially in the passage, which means, if you find an answer to the first question in paragraph 2, line number 3, then, for the second question, you do not need to search for answers from the first paragraph. You will then look around paragraph 2, where you found the answer to the last question, and then go below.

But some other question types may, may not, or never have answers in serial order in the passage/text.

For your reference, below is the table about which question types’ answers appear serially in the text’s order.

Questions that are always in orderQuestions that may or may not be in orderQuestions that are never in order
Short Answer QuestionNotes CompletionMatching Headings
Sentence CompletionTable CompletionMatching Information
Multiple Choice QuestionsDiagram CompletionMatching Sentence Ending
True, False and Not GivenSummary CompletionMatching Features
Yes, No, and Not GivenFlow-chart Completion 
by Merina Shrestha

About the Author

Merina is an experienced English Tutor, Exam Trainer and Head of the IELTS Teaching Department at BeatMockTest. Merina is also a Freelance Examiner and Materials Reviewer for IELTS Resources.

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